Word-full Wednesday: The Lake Michigan Edition

I have a friend named Tara. Many of you know Tara too. If you are one of the lucky ones who know her, you know that she is a very, very talented photographer. Her pictures of the beach, in particular, completely blow me away, and when I see that she has posted new pictures of the beaches near her home in Florida, I always have a couple of thoughts in my head:

1. “My God, is that beautiful!”
2. “Tara is so talented!”
3. “I wish I could take some pictures near a beach right now!”

On Monday, I finally had my chance to try my hand at grabbing some of my own gorgeous beach shots. After we set the world record for dropping off a college sophomore, we had a little bit of time on our hands. I decided that since I brought my awesome camera along and only got the two pictures (one of the dorm room door and one of D looking all goofy-like, posing in front of his mountain of belongings), we should go ahead and take the left turn out of campus, drive a couple blocks, and park the car near a beautiful stretch of beach along Lake Michigan so I could pretend to be a world-class photographer. I’m so glad we did.

While we were there, we found out that J had never skipped stones before (what???). Jim gave him a little tutorial and the two of them had some fun trying to see how many times they could bounce the stones off the surface of the water. It was such a peaceful, lovely half hour we spent there: I can’t wait to go back.

My Olympus PEN E-PL1 has some great built-in filters, and I used the pop art, soft focus, sepia, and grainy b/w filters on a couple of the pictures below. Every single one of them is straight out of the camera. Enjoy! (I hope I made Tara proud!)

Turbulance

Pop art beach

Tutorial

The Wind up

Skippin Stones

Birds

J by the Lake

Shiny waves

Campus from afar

Thinking

J and Me

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