Teddy Bear Picnic Harp Ensemble -- 7/12/2012

I was looking up the Foster Botanical Garden's web site and came across this free Twilight Summer concert series so I decided to check it out. I chose the Teddy Bear picnic "Harp Ensemble" since it sounded interesting. When I got there, I noticed there were teddy bears around..and lots of kids dressed as fairies and other costumes. I felt strangely under dressed.

Since I got there early, I decided to check out the green house and the orchids with my 100mm macro lens.  I was editing this shot and saw what looks like a profile.. pretty cool.. can you spot it??

I forgot to look at the name of this but my friend said it's called dancer orchid or something..I supposed it looks like it's dancing..looks more like a starfish to me..the 100mm took a bit of getting used to since the focus is not as fast as my 70-200mm it kept searching..but the result was pretty sharp.

The sun was still beaming even though it was after 5pm..It was hard to correct the exposure.. which lead me to start practicing shooting in manual mode instead of my trusty shutter priority mode.

Shooting Manual is hard.. but then the lighting was difficult w/ the sun beaming directly into my lens made it even worse..I felt I really didn't know what I was doing.

I did recovery in PSE and was able to pull what few shots I had.  I actually enjoyed the music way more than the shots..

The kids were really cute and they were really into the music and the finale Teddy bear parade.

OK.  I REALLY didn't know what I was doing.. and I totally overexposed this shot.. but then after looking at it for a while, I kinda liked the effects of the extra glow that came off this shot so I decided to keep it.  I gotta go practice some more so I can figure out what to do...doh..