Roses in the late afternoon summer sunlight

I have been waiting for ever for the Roses in our yard to really bloom, I know there aren't a lot of rose pictures just of some thorns and a rose that was vibrant and free of blemish. The late sunlight made the new thorns glow, not really used to that.
I thought this one would be kinda cool in b&w with different filters.
Red filter
Orange filter
Yellow...
and green.
The green filter made all the veins stand out, I would have liked to have lighten it more but the result was not favorable, lots of artifacts, pixely, in general it looked horrible. This last photo is the happy medium. To me it almost looks like a black rose! So I thought everyone would like to see what color filters do in b&w.

My favorite two subjects and other things

Time seems to just speed up, these photos are from late Feb. during a rare day of sun, the kids were going nuts inside and making chaos. Obviously I took them out to play for a bit before lunch and the following pics were what i took...well some. I had wanted to get those two hugging for a while but the camera was always packed away.

Of course they cant hug forever before falling over in a fit of giggles.

Ok, so the next few are not of kids, I like them because they show detail, texture, or something else. Lately I've really been into black and white, funny thing is I see more little things that are not so obvious in color because color distracts the eye.

This is a block of green glass, the light was hitting it just right to make it glow, i thought it was interesting.
Lots of texture here, the leaves almost look like sand paper

you gotta admit those eyes are very expressive!

Being goofy, which side did he get that from, Sari and I are still debating that one

In the sunlight this little girl's eye glitter like sapphires, I need to capture that. The big cheesy grin will do for now.

She knows when the camera is trained on her, I swear.
Mike and Cathy came over that day, and just about every time Mike picks Annie up she pulls on his beard just like this. I finally made a copy of it and gave it to him.
Till the next post!