our bees are thriving. our beekeeper, becky, from the university of minnesota stopped by this morning to check on the colony. we are very proud parents of 25,000 bees give or take. i suspect one of the reasons our bees are doing so well is the abundance of wildflowers (aka weeds) that they have to sip from. in point of fact, this photo is one shovel of “grass” from our backyard: dandelions, creeping charlie, clover. it’s all bee food. now i can stop pretending to care about my lawn and can openly embrace not caring: it’s for the bees.
one spade of backyard
saint paul, minnesota
The bees need all the help they can get so I believe you are completely justified in embracing the not caring about the lawn!!
If you are willing to share some technical advice: How do you get your crisp white backgrounds without shadows or weird tints to the whiteness?
Hi Jacqueline,
It has been a learning process. Here is what I usually do: I shoot the image with a +1 exposure. Then I pull it up in Photoshop and us the “curves” tool to brighten the whites even further. Sometimes this washes out my specimen too much, so when that happens I am forced to go in and use the “dodge” tool to whiten/brighten just the paper background and not the specimen. I get asked this a lot. so I plan to add a “technique” section under my about button. I will have it up in a week or two. Feel free to email with any other questions in the meantime.
Mary Jo
All right. I like your reasoning. If only I had bees, I too could claim the condition of my yard was planned.
Love all your photographs.
Thanks for the tips! I don’t have photoshop, but I think I can play around in Picmonkey, and try the things you suggested.