Updates, upgrades, and moving on!

Ok! This needs to stop! This sitting on piles and piles of material. This keeping a backlog that keeps getting more giant with every passing day. It is pretty safe to say that, at this rate, I will never get to it. And maybe that is just fine. I need to let go of it and post as soon as I feel the first inkling of doing so. The more time passes, the bigger the chance I will get overwhelmed by the piles.

So, that is that. And now you know why the heck I had fallen off the edge of the Hive realm. Time for a fresh start! Damn! Just typing this out makes me feel better! I can be very harsh and demanding of myself. It is ok. I just took a little break instead.

It is pretty powerful stuff to let yourself stop holding on to things of the past.

It is time to move on.

I spent a lot of time this year on expanding my garden. It has been my main focus in the spring and summer months. Now, I am enjoying the fruits of my labor. August is the month when all my flowers become happy and show off their beautiful blooms. They are stunning, and every time I walk through my garden, I can’t help but smile. Even the storm we had in June could not keep them from their destiny. The wind knocked down most of my dahlias, and they lost a bunch of the stems. Yet they recovered and overcame it.

I am happy to share these images of my flowers as I finally took the step to upgrade to a new camera from my old one - the Nikon D3300. I had heard many great things about Fujifilm cameras, and upon my research, I decided X-H2 is a good fit for me.

I am satisfied with my choice. It captures so much detail and depth in the images and the colors! I love it! And it is pretty great for videos.

Of course, I am still to learn all it has to offer. I screwed a bunch of images by overexposing them. I am not sure how I managed that, but probably because I did not look hard enough. It is very punchy, yet I get some out-of-focus images if I am not careful. So, it might be true that Fujifilm needs to improve upon that.

For now, I only have the lens that came with it as a kit - XF16-80mm F4 R OIS WR. As an amateur, I am pretty pleased with the range it provides for the time being, and as we all know, lenses are expensive. Woah! I have a lot of learning to do before I am ready for that kind of investment.

All photos in this post were shot with Fujifilm X-H2, and apart from very tiny cropping here and there and resizing, they are unedited. I did not feel the need to adjust a thing about the vibrancy and colors of the camera itself.

All this is lighting the fire under my bum to improve my photography skills and take them to the next level. I will be taking some courses soon! ^^

_{Most of the shots of my flowers turned out to be close-ups except this one. But further in the post, you will find more of the opposite spectrum the lens I have has to offer.}

_{Aaaa! Could these colors be more perfect?! Love, love!}

_{This is one of my favorite shots of the day. Bumblebee is flying away! So cute!}

But then we found ourselves walking on a path through the mosquito-infested forest (luckily, you can’t get the annoying buzzing in your ears and the bites through this photo, and, instead, it looks like an enchanted fairy forest with the bright green greenery) leading to a bird watching tower near Burtnieki lake. The meadows there are part of a nature reserve. Many endangered and not endangered birds and other lifeforms find a peaceful solace.

We did not see any birds or animals. Maybe we heard them somewhere in the distance. We only saw humans who left the place before us and who came after us. The tower, however, was a nice spot to catch a moment of quiet and chill until more people arrived again with their noises. Humans are so noisy. At least there were no mosquitos up there, and the view was pretty nice.

_{@lemony-cricket and I thought it would be a neat spot for an outdoor office.}

_{No. I probably will not start a new bird-watching hobby any time soon. It would be cool to see them up close. Sure! I would need binoculars or a telephoto lens for my camera, but that is not on my priority list.}

_{Wouldn’t you want to touch this grass? xD I am going to send these photos of the grass to all those who need a reminder to go outside more.}

What else is new? That is the question I always ask humans. We are traveling to Croatia soon and going to Hivefest there. And I am looking forward to the crisp autumn after, which I shall spend on more artsy ventures as my garden will demand less of me. Those pesky weeds will not stop growing! Grrr!