One of my favorite days . . .

. . . of the year.  Today I went to the annual show of the Monterey Bay Dahlia Society.  This is the third year that I've gone, and I really enjoy it.  It's a very challenging environment for taking pictures -- poor light, bad backgrounds, people all over the place,but I really like doing it.  I take my monopod, and off I go. 

[Linkup to The Simple Things]

This year, there were many, many flowers, each one more beautiful than the next.  My goal is to get the best angle I can and then I work with it in Photoshop -- lots of cloning, lots of texture.

Sometimes I can achieve quite dramatic effects --

(Linkup to Quotography)

And then I usually buy a bunch of dahlias when I leave and go home and try to get them in a better light, using the 100mm and so on.

(Linkup to Your Sunday Best)

When I got home, I put the flowers in a vase on a high table, and shortly thereafter, Buttercup decided she needed to admire them.

  [Linkup to The Creative Exchange]

Of course, she couldn't leave it at just smelling them, and things went quickly downhill from there.

Before I knew what was happening, she was knocking over the flowers, trying to climb up several pictures on the wall, sending two other framed pictures crashing to the floor, breaking a tile that was under the flowers -- good grief!  Bad kitty!


But of course I still love her . . .