Through this year with Spartan Scoop, I’ve gotten to go outside more often and see the beauty of the things around me. With my photography, I have been able to take beautiful photos like this CD. This CD photo was taken to show how interesting the light that shined off it was. I wanted to show how it works and show how beautiful the things we don’t always notice can be.

With my photography, I have been able to go to different places like Maclay Flats. I’ve learned about many different things from history to science and more. I also learned about plants like this one here. This Douglas Hawthorn stuck out and I noticed how the flowers shone in the sunlight and felt that I needed to take a photo. 

As I progressed through the year, I got to understand cameras more and what makes a picture great. While taking this photo, I was looking to capture the grooves of the bark from the tree. I loved how defined they were, and my mom actually had the idea of taking the picture facing straight up. This photo was a perfect capture of exactly what I wanted to take.

Throughout editing all these photos, I learned how to use Lightroom. This photo was taken at the Peak when I was driving home from Maclay Flats. I parked at the peak to take some random photos, and I got this beautiful photo. This Crabapple tree was blossoming, and I loved how vibrant the flowers were.

I’ve been noticing more things the more I’ve gotten to do photography. It was the middle of my walk through Maclay flats when my mom and I noticed this growing Ponderosa Pine. The buds were really interesting and I wanted to capture that. It was like they were just waiting for the perfect moment full of sunshine to be photographed. 

I was walking past this before I caught a glimpse of something orange. I looked closer and saw that it was Sunburst lichen. I love lichen so I needed this photo. I loved how blurred the sides of the photo got and how the forest green background looked. This, in my opinion, was one of the best photos from this year that I’ve taken.