July 19th, Is it 5:15am Already???

We had a rough night at the hotel. The hotel wasn't our first choice. It wasn't our second choice...it was our 5th choice. We were pleased to find it clean and comfortable. But Sam didn't have a ton of running room, which is what he really needed after our 4.5 hours of driving.

At bedtime, Sam asked to go home. That was a bad, bad sign. He finally fell asleep around 9pm. He woke up about 4 times before Adam's alarm went off at 5:15am. Why in the world would we want to get up so very early? Photos, what else :)

Adam earned himself a cookie (LOL) by not complaining or trying to renegotiate a few more hours of much needed sleep. I despritely wanted the chance to make some quality landscape portraits...the kind you can only get 20 mins before and 30 mins after the sunrise. I think my smooth water photos turned out pretty well, but I came to the conclusion that I need a natural gradient filter (I thought I could 'fix' the problem in Photoshop, but it's too tough, so here's the properly exposed sky in one and properly exposed foreground in the other)...I think I'd like a polarizing filter as well, to cut down on the reflectiveness of the water (why is it that I have a running list of gift ideas and, yet, Adam's birthday is the next one up and he doesn't need/want anything???).

Here's an editted one:


Here's the originals:



These photos make me extremely excited for my photo adventure with Melanie when I go home (there's a waterfall very close to my Mom's new house...I'm hoping that she'll want to come too- hint, hint :P )...