swingalingadingdong: LONGWOOD GARDENS

This past weekend I spent a day at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA with my cousin, Madeline. Longwood is host to over 1,000 acres of gardens, woodlands and meadows plus a few waterfalls and towers. It's an awesome place to go and take pictures to enhance your skills; also, it was a great place to be since I found a 50% Groupon and only paid $9.00 to get in! That is always exciting!

Towards the front of Longwood Gardens you find this awesome treehouse. You're able to go upstairs for a tour inside and it smells delicious in there; like fresh cut wood! Up at the top you have a few wooden dragons guarding the place. It's very fairy tale-like.

Madeline and I couldn't decide what exactly this was. Is it a gazebo? No matter what it is, the placement is great! It kind of sneaks up on you as you round the corner of the path. As you get closer to it you can see so much detail, especially in the ceiling (roof?, haha).

While we walked around and took picture after picture Madeline taught me some things including slowing down/speeding up shutter speeds. This allowed me to basically freeze moving water in time and get some awesome shots or blend the water together to make a cool-fuzzy look.

I "practiced my water" a lot to see what kinds of pictures would come out.

After awhile we started to get silly with our photography. Madeline had a fisheye lens extension and we used it to magnify ourselves. ;D

We also started using our timer setting to complete self-portraits.

haaayyy!!!

In total, we spent around 4 hours at Longwood Gardens just wandering around, talking about what's going on in our lives and taking pictures. I got a nice little tan and some great shots -- so, long photography story short: