Sherry,

I don't consider what you do with a camera "playing", it's more like professional tinkering. ;) As always your pictures are beautiful. You are lucky to have lots of lep activity all season to "tinker" with, and I always enjoy seeing them. As a farily serious photog most of my life, it's kind of sad not to have anything to take pictures of anymore.

FWIW, there are lots of freeware graphics applications that are downloadable on-line that can manipulate your pictures as you want. All would be way better then nothing, and they cost you nothing but the time to grab them and install them. Me, I get stuck in ruts with applications these days and don't play the constant update game everytime something new or supposedly better comes out like I did for so many years. Not even new versions of apps I've used for years... they always change so much they are a PITA to relearn and mostly for new features I don't need anyway. So most of what I run is old versions, some very old, but thet do anything I want and I've used them so long I know how to use them fully. For graphics I'm still running an older full version of Paint Shop Pro. Lots out there that are far more powerful. I could have any of them with a kid in the business, but for my uses easier to use is much better.

Larry

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Sherry, beautiful photos of a wonderful assortment of butterflies. You are so blessed to have the land and the environment to provide so much diversity of plant life for the little creatures.

Since you mentioned the constraints of the software that came with your new camera, there is free photo editing software called Picasa 3 by google that is very good for basic editing, cropping and easy uploading. It allows you at least a gig of free web album space and provides the code to use to insert photos into the Gardenweb forums. This is what I use for much of my editing, cropping and uploading for use on-line. You might want to take a look at it since it's 'free'. No cost to evaluate and keep, if it meets your needs.

Here's a link to my Picasa garden web album, that I've been adding to for a couple of years. Nothing special here but when I want to share a photo with a friend or insert code for a photo into a forum message, it's really quick and simple to do. This will give you an idea of how the photos present on-line. The nice thing is, as long as I leave the photo in the album, it will always display, no matter how old the forum message gets to be. With all of these photos, I've only used a small fraction of my free web album space. You can also create different web albums and assign some to be private albums; for instance, family photos you might wish to share among your family. {{gwi:536248}}__Garden Flowers - plants

I so enjoy your (and everyone's) photos so please post more frequently.

~Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa 3 - free photo editing software & on-line album space

Thank you, thank you, Larry and Mary!

I've got to go to Walmart, but when I get back, I'll "play" with the free software you recommended.
Sherry

Mary, I downloaded the Picasa software, and I really like it.
Here's the picture of the male spicebush swallowtail done on Picasa -
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I also used the software to edit a picture of a red admiral that spends every evening on my road. I call him my road admiral -
{{gwi:536249}}
Sherry

A small price to get to ses your wonderful pictures Sherry. Like the road apple. :0

Sherry, the photos look great! Beautiful color and sized where we can now see the detail. I have a small planting of three young spicebush plants. Maybe someday I will see one of these little beauties in my neighborhood.

Sherry, is the blue bloom the dwarf 'Nano Blue' Buddleia? I've got three of those waiting to be put into the ground and I'm hoping they remain a bit smaller than my only other Buddleia 'White Profusion'. I'm having to remove some of the back lawn near the garden beds to provide a planting bed for them but well worth it as the butterflies and hummingbirds so enjoy the Buddleia blooms.

I'm glad you find the software helpful. Now get busy, lady, and show us more of your lovely gardens and little visitors ... :-)

~Mary

Thanks Larry and Mary!
The butterfly bush is Ellen's Blue, Mary, and about my favorite butterfly bush ever. It doesn't get as big as White Profusion (or Royal Red or many of the others) but it's not a dwarf - mine is only about 6' tall. It didn't bloom as much this year as before, so I plan on pruning it hard early next spring.
Sherry

I was thinking about getting Blue Chip, Purple Haze and Ice Chip to plant in containers on my patio, just never got around to it. Have a perfect spot for them that gets sun from dawn to dusk. Maybe for next year so instead of the touch and go on the plants in my xeriscape that is common with the few leps that come around here they may linger a while.

That's a good idea, Larry - we all need some nectar plants with long blooming periods!
Sherry