A Day Among the Daffodils

My sister and I visited Lakeview Cemetery to take pictures of Sal on the hill of daffodils for which the cemetery is justly renowned.  It is also the resting place of many famous people -- among them President James Garfield.  There are many others, but we didn't have time to visit them on this trip. We did stop at the James A. Garfield Monument for a while, but spent most of our time with the lovely spring flowers.  We will definitely be going back to this amazing cemetery to take lots more photos!

We took some shots of Sal on the windsills at the Garfield Monument.  Unfortunately for Sal, the sills slope slightly (I suppose so rain will run off), and poor Sal took a tumble from one of the sills onto the hard pavement below.  As you can see, it's quite a distance.  Luckily the only damage was a chip on the back corner of her headstock and a little scrape on one of her bottom edges.

Anne taking photos of Sal on a dangerously sloping sill.

The statue of Garfield inside the monument.

After driving around the winding roads in the cemetery, we came upon the daffodil hill and began to take many photos.  I had in mind panoramic pictures of thousands of daffodils, and therefore didn't take many other types of shots.  After seeing my sister's far superior photos later, I was initially depressed by my lesser photography skills, but later realized I'd learned something from this experience, too.  Don't just take the shot you THINK you want -- take lots of shots of all kinds.  It's digital!  No film to develop!  It doesn't cost anything!  You may find that you prefer something you hadn't originally thought of!  (Between us we literally took hundreds of photos, but less is more, so here are just a few.)

One of the wide shots with lots of daffodils.  This was what I was thinking of, so this is what I took.

Anne setting Sal up for more pictures.  We did lots of tiptoeing through the daffodils -- avoiding stepping on them of course!

One of the pictures resulting from that set-up.

Anne's clearly superior photo of Sal. 

Another fantastic photo by my talented sister.

I thought it might be cool to cross the street and get a picture of Sal sitting on one of the amazing monuments that mark many of the graves -- with the field of daffodils behind.  Unfortunately, the angle didn't work and Sal had another misadventure, but all's well that ends well.

Sal was able to comfortably rest on this part of the monument.

On the other side, she posed for this lovely shot by Anne, but the "daffodils in the background" idea didn't work.

Anne and her fabulous camera were ready for another shot when...

Sal plummeted from the monument to the ground below.  I didn't think there would be any action shots of Sal (except for her being played, of course), but I was wrong.  Anne had her camera ready, and captured Sal in mid-air.

Lesson learned from two uke falls in one day:  be extra careful when posing Sal on sloping surfaces that are far from the ground! Perhaps a tiny piece of Sticky Tack should be used in such a case?

And, last but not least, it's Photo Contest time!  Anne and I have had many of these little competitions.  We each take a picture of the same thing and let people vote.  Which picture is better?  So take a look at the two photos below and decide which one you like best.  Of course I can't tell you which one I took and which one Anne took.  Which one is best?  You be the judge.  ;)

Photo One

Photo Two