St. Charles Japanese garden

Before anything else I just wanted to say...THIS IS MY 100th POST!!! It's awesome that I managed to keep this blog goin!

We visited the Japanese garden at St. Charles Il. one afternoon when we were around the area. The weather wasn't so nice as it was raining like crazy that day. It's surprising how it's like a week after the winter season officially started that we barely had any snow yet. I can't complain though, I don't like snow a lot. So we parked by their parking lot and walked around. The place by the way had a lot of trees.

So out I went with my camera in hand. I had my 17-40mm attached to my 5d. It was kind of a mild to a moderate drizzle and it was a good thing I had my weather resistant lens attached to my camera. In this kinda weather, having a sealed lens attached to your camera is a plus, although be very careful still...it's weather resistant not weather proof! It can only handle a small amount of moisture and then the water gets in.

I set my camera to aperture priority. Set my aperture to around f5, and then set my ISO to auto. It was overcast and the scenery had barely enough color to it. In cases like this, I'd rather set my ISO to auto than deal with adjusting it later, when the lighting situation changes. This is actually a perfect time to use this feature. It was pretty dark so my camera still shot pictures at less than 80th of a second at f5 with an ISO of 320. I set my file type to RAW rather than JPG so I'll have more flexibility in post processing my photos.

Basically the sky looked grey, the surrounding was dark and everything else felt gloomy. I'll deal with that later during post processing. All I wanted is to just go around and shoot some good scenery.

The garden was awesome. It had a bridge, a mini creek, a little house, everything that you'll find inside a Japanese garden. Although, the best time to view the garden is during times when there's snow on the ground. It still looked pretty without the snow so I continued shooting. When I was done, I had every view of the bridge and creek...that was the highlight of the garden I guess.

I'll probably be back here when there's snow...or better yet when the flowers start blooming in the spring!


I think this is a museum by the garden. Didn't have the chance to go there as it was raining.


A lake near the garden. It was foggy when we went.


The 17-40mm provided me with an awesome angle of view of the trees.


I bet this looks awesome in spring and summer


The garden during winter. Would've been more awesome with snow.