Personal Photo Challenge {Movement}

This month's Personal Photo Challenge was twice the challenge for me. First of all, I was challenged to learn more about capturing movement in photography and putting that into practice. The second challenge was to do that without my trusty 18-55 mm lens. Oh no!! This lens, the one that I have used the most, is not focusing reliably, and I never know when it will take the shot or not.  Very frustrating. I suppose I will need to look into having it repaired. 

In the meantime, I used a lens that came with my old 35 mm Canon Rebel, a 35-80 mm lens. It's not as good for close-ups, but it did the trick for these action shots. 

(All photos were taken with my Canon Rebel T3.)

I used Bekah as my assistant. I had her ride her bike round and round as I clicked. "Go faster, please." "A little closer." "Can you ride any faster?" "Again, please." She's a good sport! And her front tire was slack, so she was really putting forth some effort to accommodate. I was lying on my belly in the back yard taking pictures when Ron arrived home from work. "You never know what you're going to see here," he says. (Like he's the only man who has ever come home to his wife lying in the back yard while his daughter rides in circles?! Oh, come on!)

I edited this photo in PicMonkey, increasing both highlights and shadow, and cropping for focus. 

One morning recently, I looked out of my back door and saw a mysterious thing in the bird bath. It appeared motionless, meaning it was not a bird. A snake getting a drink? A frog? Why was it still sitting there?

Needing to know what kind of creature was in my bird bath, I put on my glasses. Still couldn't tell. I couldn't remember where the binoculars were, so I ingeniously (ha!) grabbed my camera and gingerly stepped out of my backdoor. I thought that I'd photograph the creature, then zoom in on the image and identify it. Unfortunately, the close-up was fuzzy. But it looked like it might be a grasshopper. Okay, that's good. I'm not afraid of them. 

While I was hyper-focused on my bird bath mystery, something suddenly buzzed over my head! After the adrenaline rush (you can tell I'm a true nature girl, can't you?), I saw that it was merely a hummingbird coming for her breakfast. And since I had my camera, and since the upcoming challenge was "movement," I bravely turned my back on the bird bath creature and took some shots of Mrs. H. B. 

(The bird bath creature remained motionless. Kati went out later and identified it as...a leaf. How embarrassing.) 

Again, I went to PicMonkey to edit. I cropped the image and increased the shadows. 

Thanks to Donna for hosting another photography challenge! 

Next month's challenge is Still Life. (Maybe I should have taken some close-ups of that leaf, huh?)

Click on the button below to see more.
And be sure to visit Donna to see how she met her own challenge this month! Wow!