I had dinner with my girlfriend and her parents at their house in Portola Valley and her mom lit these beautiful candles during dinner. When the sun went down I noticed that they made a beautiful reflection and I went into my car and pulled out my camera. Dinner had long since ended and I didn't feel rude pulling out my camera in the middle of dinner. I'm pleased with how the photos turned out. I shot 3 exposures for this photo and then manually blended them to get the outcome that I wanted. The underexposed photo was blended to get a crisp, not so clipped version of the flame, and the overexposed photo was used to get a better exposed reflection. This is NOT an HDR.

My girlfriends parents have a lot of flowers around their porch and they were out in full bloom looking gorgeous. While my gf was making dinner I decided to take my camera out and take advantage of the golden hours to get some great looking flower photos. In this photo, Mr. Flower stuck his hand in an electrical socket and get zapped, causing his hair to stick up!

My girlfriends parents have a lot of flowers around their porch and they were out in full bloom looking gorgeous. While my gf was making dinner I decided to take my camera out and take advantage of the golden hours to get some great looking flower photos. In this photo, I thought it seemed like I found myself some Siamese twins!

My girlfriends parents have a lot of flowers around their porch and they were out in full bloom looking gorgeous. While my gf was making dinner I decided to take my camera out and take advantage of the golden hours to get some great looking flower photos. Q: Can you guess what this is? A: It's the end of a cactus!

This little wooden cat reads more books than anyone I've ever met! He sits on the porch outside the kitchen at my girlfriends house and reads all day. My gf's family loves to read (all of them almost always have a book, magazine, or newspaper in their hand) and the cat fits right in. I thought it looked neat so I snapped a couple photos. Do you like this (tilted) version, or the straight version better? Help me decide!

This little wooden cat reads more books than anyone I've ever met! He sits on the porch outside the kitchen at my girlfriends house and reads all day. My gf's family loves to read (all of them almost always have a book, magazine, or newspaper in their hand) and the cat fits right in. I thought it looked neat so I snapped a couple photos. Do you like this (straight) version, or the tilted version better? Help me decide!

My girlfriends parents have a lot of flowers around their porch and they were out in full bloom looking gorgeous. While my gf was making dinner I decided to take my camera out and take advantage of the golden hours to get some great looking flower photos. This photo almost reminds me of an alligator ready to chomp!

My girlfriends parents have a lot of flowers around their porch and they were out in full bloom looking gorgeous. While my gf was making dinner I decided to take my camera out and take advantage of the golden hours to get some great looking flower photos. In this photo, I use a flower basket as an example of depth of field and focus!