Hello Peas!!  

Well, this is my second photo challenge... and I signed up for it forever ago.. been anxiously waiting to go out with my camera and play with those beautiful rays of sunshine!  Of course, I waited until the week before this challenge was due to start watching for a particularly beautiful time of the day... things are *just* starting to get green here (winter and the icky part of spring seemed to drag on forever!).. and of course I wanted some nice green in with the sun right!?  I had this image in my head of what this photo was going to be.  My kids.. playing... in a field.. or down the trail in the trees out back (it gets beautiful sun in the evening)... nice pretty dream like photo.  Can you visualize it?  I can.  Well, it seems winter wanted to come back for a second round!?  Seriously.. it has been gross here all week!  We even had snow!  Cold and dreary and yucky. :(

As I am typing this.. I am resorting to plan B.  A cool backlit photo that I took of the kids kind of recently in the playroom.  Of course, if the dreary clouds go away before the sun goes down.. maybe there will be a pretty lens flare photo in with this challenge! hee!  If not, well I guess you will know it stayed yucky.  My fingers are crossed!

Anyhoo.. I have rambled enough don't you think!?  

This weeks challenge is 'Backlighting, Sunbursts and Lens Flare'.  Sometimes lens flare is not a desired element to a photograph.  I think it can be beautiful!  I loooove the way sun can light up a persons hair when you shoot with the subject between you and the sun... especially a late evening sun.  Nice and warm and golden.  There are many ways to artistically use composition and sun flare to enhance a photo too!  Picture a couple facing each other and a lens flare between the two.  So many possibilities! 

I challenge you to take your camera and face the sun!  Use it.  Play with it.  Compose photos differently... play around!  Capture those rays!

In this photo, I focused closely on the ball.  Allowing the bright sunshine to make a 'haze' over all of the unfocused background.  I love the look of backlighting.  I used my 50mm 1.4 lens, with the aperture set to 1.8... which nicely blurred the background.. along with the bright backlighting.

Sorry I couldn't give the example I had hoped.  But I really really REALLY can't wait to see what you come up with!  I think photos using sun and backlighting are my favourite types of photos!  I will watch for some pretty sun, and will add a picture as soon as I can! ...I just hope this icky weather goes away!

Thanks for playing along!! 

Jen :)