The Photo of Today, which is likely inappropriately named

While I'm calling this The Photo of Today (which, btw, is not called Photo of the Day since I doubt I'll have a new photo to post ever day), it was actually taken yesterday. It took me over 12 hours to get this off my camera and into Photoshop because I had a Photoshop crisis last night. Somehow PS lost my registration information/serial number and it wouldn't open. Well, that was annoying enough but then I couldn't find my PS disk anywhere and I needed it to reinstall & have my serial number. Holy moley, I was panicking! One hour (at least) later, I found the disk...exactly where it should have been. (Don't you hate it when that happens? Or is it just me that sort of thing happens to?) So, I got Photoshop reinstalled, everything was hunky dory, but it was bedtime. This morning, I still wasn't able to open the file because I needed to reinstall the latest version of Camera Raw. Ahhh, the joys of computers! :) Finally, everything is back to normal and I was able to edit the picture & get it ready for you to be The Photo of Today!

If you're wondering what this is, it's a flower/bloom off the tree in our backyard. This just goes to show that it's getting closer to spring, at least here in Texas. If I was a fancy-schmancy person, I'd call this picture "Springing" or something clever. When I saved it for uploading, I just called it Treeflower.jpg . LOL! For anyone who cares about such things, this was shot with my Rebel XT with my 28-135 IS lens racked out, using a Canon Close Up filter with manual focus, and handheld. (Yes, I know, Scott Kelby, you said I MUST shoot Macro on a tripod. But my tripod wasn't available to me at the time. That's my argument & I'm sticking with it! I used the IS plus steadied my camera on the bench where I was sitting.) ISO of 200 shot in Manual mode at f/18 and the shutter speed was 1/100. It was underexposed a bit but I shoot in RAW so it was bumped up in there. It also made the usual visit to the PS playground for some cropping,defog, noise reduction, sharpening, Soft Light color pop, and vignetting.

Gee, Chris, couldn't you have just said, "Here's a pretty picture of a spring bloom" and left it at that? Guess not! :)