This is the first year that we have hung lights for Christmas, and we did very little actual decorating. We hung the icicle lights, and set out the train, but that was it. We also have some candy cane lights for lining the sidewalk, but we didn't put them out. I wanted to take some pictures of the lights on the first measurable snow fall of the year.
I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. I'm not sure why not, other than I just haven't. I'm thinking I may try a 365 project again, maybe starting at Thankgiving.
I took this picture of my son on Friday evening after work. He was throwing leafs up in the air and letting them fall. I love how this picture in particular came out.
The Fourth of July came and went. We saw fireworks on three different nights, but the first night we watched them from afar, the second night, I didn't take my camera because it was my sons first time watching fireworks and I wanted to enjoy the experience with him (good thing too, because he was tired and spent the whole time cuddling on my lap), and the last night I got fireworks. Next year, I find my tripod in advance, instead of propping my camera on top of the car.
I have gotten quite a few hits to my pictures of the beach from last year, from people looking for pictures of the Gulf oil spill. Fortunately, for now, the beaches I grew up on have not been impacted by the oil spill, but I'm afraid that it's coming, and glad that I got these pictures last year.
This beach is located on the northern tip of Estero Island in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. This photo was taken from our 7th floor hotel room at The Pink Shell Resort and Spa. You can see Sanibel Island in the distance, including the historic light house, if you view the original size.
These shots are just so calming. I miss the beach.
I told you I'd have to get the nerve. After considering it, I decided not to edit out my imperfections, so here I am in all my not so pretty glory.
It's not the exact shot I was going for, but I like how it came out anyway.
I decided to try 365 again, and made Thursday day number one.
We finally made it to see the new polar bear exhibit on Friday, and I got a couple of great shots of the girls. This is one of my favorites because you can see the fine detail of the fur and the rock she's laying on. I did some post processing on this because I really wanted the bear to stand out, and the sunlight was pretty inconsistent throughout. I have an idea for today's shot, if I can get the nerve to take (and post) it. We shall see. I'll need to find my tripod for it though. My children apparently believe it's a toy and it seems to have disappeared.
I think I might give 365 another shot. I'm in a better place now than I was when I started it the first time, and I'm having a great time pulling the camera out most days. The summer months are a little more encouraging for daily shooting than winter. This might be photo 001/365 if I decide to start again. I have some great shots from the zoo today that I want to post as well. We shall see.
This is an older picture. I was looking for the original, then realized that it was probably on the laptop we bought that crashed within a week of purchase. Fortunately, this evening I found my external hard drive and, low and behold, there were pictures of last years vacation, as well as my sons first birthday, nieces second birthday, and daughters third birthday. I have never been so relieved.
This is one of my favorite shots from that vacation. I have several, but something about my one year old son watching the sunset, the colors, the atmosphere... I just love this. There are others on my Flickr if you want to check them out.
I bought a cord to get my flash off camera so I could get a little more creative with my lighting. What a waste of $30. The cord is so tightly wound that I can't get the flash more than six inches from my camera and if I try to face the flash away from me, the tension in the cord pulls the flash back around and faces it directly towards my subject. I was so excited to play with different lighting, and now I'm just pissed because I wasted the money and I'm back where I started from.
This is one of the roses my sweet baby insisted on buying me for Mother's Day. They've pretty much had it, but before I tossed them, I wanted to take pictures of the pretty wilted flower. This was one picture that I actually managed to get the flash facing away from the flower, and bounced it off of a piece of white foam board. I like the resulting lighting.
We visited with my parents this weekend. It's very seldom that things align so that we get to spend time at bothof their houses. I cooked my mom an amazing steak on the grill, along with baked potatoes, kabobs (assembled by my youngest sister), hamburgers, and hot dogs. My other sister brought Birthday cake for my niece, who turned two last week. My brother and his kids were there too. Only my youngest brother was missing; but overall it was a good Mothers Day celebration.
Today we went to my dads and the kids got outside to play. It was a bit chilly, but we got to enjoy the sunshine for a little bit. My son definitely loves football.
My husband has asked that I remove some of the pictures of our kids from the internet, so I deleted them from Flickr and Facebook. It makes me angry that we live in a world where I can't post some of the cuter pictures of my kids on my Flickr account or blog because somebody with less than pure intentions might see it.
My daughter wanted to get me pink flowers in a pink vase for Mothers Day. We went out Friday night to look for my gift and I had suggested that we get live potted flowers instead of cut flowers so we could plant them in our flower bed instead of having dead flowers in a few days. We went to a nursery and looked at every flower they had and my princess didn't like any of them. I personally liked the orchids and rose bushes. But no, princess didn't like any of them.
We went to Wal-Mart to get stuff so I could cook my mom dinner for Mothers Day, and wouldn't you know that she decided the pink rose bouquet that she saw right inside the door.
I took some pictures last night using my lensbaby and bouncing the flash off the ceiling and the wall, and this morning using natural light. I love the dreamy feel of this image created by the lensbaby.
I love Flickr. I do. I like being able to share my photos, I like being able to view other peoples photos. I like seeing how people do the things they do with their cameras and learning about how to do new things with my camera. It's awesome. It's a great learning tool and a great way to see great photographers.
And then there is the darker side of Flickr.
Now, I'm just speculating here, but, I used to not put pictures of my kids on here, at least not publicly. I was afraid of pedophiles looking at their pictures and doing unsavory things, but I started to get over it, especially because there are SO many kids pictures on Flickr.
During this past week, I have added pictures of my kids out playing because I was playing with my lensbaby and they're fun to take pictures of. No big deal, right?
And then I looked at my stats, and where my hits are coming from.
"wet pants"
"wet boys"
"wet"
Really?
Wet pants was not even part of my tags, just happened to fall in the descriptions of the pictures, and it's taking these people to a picture of my son running around in a diaper.
I'm disturbed, really.
And it makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. I removed the words wet and pants from the caption of my photo. But who knows who has already seen it.
And then there are people that add me as a contact, with no pictures and no other contacts. Why? Are they really a pedophile that just wants to be able to easily access my kids pictures? Where do you draw the line? Do I just stop putting pictures of my kids on Flickr?
Sometimes, I'm really just disgusted by the world we live in. And I'm mad at myself for exposing my kids to that without even thinking.
I bought a Lensbaby Muse this weekend and I've been playing with it for the past few days. It's going to take a lot of getting used to and playing with, I think. Today was the first that I took it outside and took any action shots with it. They're still not coming out with any consistancy. I have to remind myself that it's only day three and I can't expect myself to be amazing with it. I'm not even consistently good with my regular lenses. I also bought a cord to get my Speedlite off camera, so maybe I'll get to have a little fun with that too.
We've been spending a lot of time outside lately. It's been warmer (aside from Thursday and Friday) and we have weeds growing all over our yard in the form of dandelions and these purple flowers. Our maple trees are sprouting new leafs and we've had a few bees.
We got a gallon of bubble solution and spent the evening outside last night and again today. It's been great.
Although I hate that my new job requires I work five days a week, and that I have to work until 5:30 once a week, it is nice getting home by 4:00 the other days of the week, and being able to take the kids outside before bedtime.
I'm working on writing and illustrating a childrens book, or two, or three. I have a lot of ideas. The more I write, the more ideas I have. I can write them. The question is, can I illustrate them. I'd like to illustrate one of them. Just one. Then I am more than willing ot pass off the illustrations to somebody else.
I'm trying to get my creativity back. It used to be my life. Now it's hardly anything.
I haven't blogged in a while. I've been having a hard time getting a good shot every day, and an even harder time getting things uploaded in a timely fashion.
I knew I wanted to take this picture, at least the one of me laying face down on the bed, for a long time. I decided to add in some additional sequential pictures for effect. I kind of like it, but it's something I will probably reshoot later.
I bought this little black dress for my 10 year high school reunion. My husband said he'd take me out somewhere we could wear it when we returned to Ohio. It's been hanging in the closet for six months now.
I think I want the shot of me in bed from a higher angle.
I really don't have much to say about this. I love the shape of the icicle, and I love the light reflection off of it. I used my Speedlite and angled it towards the snow covered ground, so it reflected back up and off of the ice. The ice is so distructive though; it's pulling shingles off of our roof.
Not my 365 shot, but maybe it should have been. The more I look at it, the more I like it.
I called the gas company to report a gas leak outside. I wish I could take all of the credit, but really it was the contractor that was here to fix our basement that noticed the smell. I just made the call.
The gas company said that had somebody not called, the leak would have been in their house within a matter of weeks, and they likely would have gotten carbon monoxide poisoning.
We hardly talk to anybody on our street, but the neighbors came over to thank me for calling and saving their lives. I joked that I almost felt I should apologize after seeing the holes in their yard. I'd like to think they would have done the same.
Really, I can't take the credit.
I'm finding myself increasingly disenchanted with the Project 365 group on Flickr. I like to take pictures to take pictures, to see an improvement in my work, and to get critique from other photographers with more knowledge and experience than I have. I'm really just starting to learn how to use both my camera and my photo editing software to get images that I like.
It is frustrating to post pictures on the Flickr group and not get any responses, or even any views, but 100x more so when you deliberately post your pictures on threads that are supposed to illicit comments from other photographers. Three of my last four five pictures have had zero comments from the person that was supposed to comment on it.
I guess I just have to accept that some people are just so self absorbed that they do whatever to get their pictures seen and forget everybody else.
Anyway, as you can tell, I'm on a little tirade today. So many little things that are just irritating the ever-loving crap out of me today. Nothing monumental.
I'm ready for spring. Actually, I'm ready for summer.
I walked around my yard trying to figure out what I wanted to photograph today, and decided my neighbors yard was more interesting, so I shot it through the fence.
ETA: I was stewing over a particularly bad experience at Burger King last night; yes, still stewing this morning. The girl asked us to repeat our order several times, then when we got to the window, she was playing with a cell phone, or one of her coworkers were. This is the second time in less than a week that the person at the drive thru window was on a cell. They got our order wrong, even after we asked to make sure that it was right, and then I tried calling the resturant three times this morning to complain, only to have nobody answer the phone. So I got into my car and drove out there, asked for a manager, and told her everything that was wrong with the experience.
I came home with three free cheeseburgers, the two pies they didn't give us last night, and replacement drinks for the ones they screwed up last night. And hopefully somebody will be told to stay off of a cell phone when you're working. I work at a desk all day and still try really hard not to answer my phone while I'm working; only breaks and lunch.
I made it through a month of 365. I honestly can't believe it. I haven't blogged everything, because quite honestly, I have been having a hard time getting pictures on the computer. This past week has been hard for me to get pictures at all. There has been so much going on that I haven't really been thinking about pictures until late in the evening.
Here's to 31 days down, only 334 to go.
This week, my motivation and inspiration have been lagging. Tonight it took until 10:30 before I really got the motivation to get off the couch and take a picture. Last night, I just took a picture of our steaks because I was amazed at how big they were.
We're still cleaning up from the sewage back up that happened last Friday, we we're emotionally and physically exhausted. So far, the insurance process has been pretty decent though. Maybe we'll be good as new in a few weeks.
This was only the beginning of the problem. It turned out that the county's sewer line was backed up; however, we did not know that when the plumber started snaking our sewer line. By the time the last person left our house, shortly after midnight, we had spent $1400, had our carpet torn up in one and a half rooms, and had a seven inch section of drywall cut out of our downstairs bathroom and family room.
This was when the water was still clear and not quite as stinky, before we realized it was sewage. Thank goodness I didn't let the kids swim in it, huh?
I haven't been blogging as much lately, but I'm pretty impressed with myself for sticking to this for the past 20 days (21 if you count today's picture).
Yesterday at work, I saw this keychain sitting on my desk. I received it from a vendor. Anyway, I decided I wanted to do something with a level or balance or something, using this keychain.
Tada! My son's blocks and a keychain on a piece of black posterboard.
I still haven't found my remote switch yet. After thinking through the last time I saw it, I'm sure it has to be in our house. At first I was worried that it fell out of my pocket, but then I remembered I used it to take some long-er exposure shots of water going down the drain after I used it at work. So it must be somewhere in my house.
Tonight I was struggling to come up with a shot that I was proud of. I'm trying really hard with this 365 project not to use pictures of my kids, or at least not identifiable pictures of my kids. That was all I had for today though, until I went out and checked the mail.
I didn't check the mail until between 8 and 8:30 this evening. It's the first moment I've had to myself, aside from the two and a half hour nap I took this afternoon.
Anyway, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the neighbors houses, so I ran back in and got my camera. I had to wait for our security light to go off so my pictures weren't overexposed.
I had to mess with the levels a little to eliminate the light pollution from the city. I live about 10-15 miles from downtown, but on overcast and foggy nights, I pick up a lot of pollution in my images.
I've been trying to comment on people on the Flickr group. The past few days, I haven't been finding as many images that catch my eye. I don't know if everybody else is having the same blahs I am, or if I'm just not seeing the same as I usually do.
Nothing fascinating or artistic about todays picture. I was playing with my speedlite, trying to figure out the manual features on it. Grabbed my daughters princess musicbox and put a piece of posterboard behind it to bounce the light from.
I am have been reading about making your own lightbox and am hoping to do that this weekend. I've also been reading about reversed lens macro, so that might be something else I try during my 365 project.
I find it interesting that today, the day I choose to come into work at 6:30 am and take pictures of the rows of cubicles, is pretty much a terrible day at work. I'd say that it was the worst day I've had in recent memory, but that title officially belongs to pretty much every day leading up to Christmas. That's when I had two different customers yell at me on two different days to the point that I cried. I haven't cried at a job since probably 2001, until the week of Christmas.
I originally planned to take pictures of the top of the cubicles to convey the image of the corporate maze, but I much prefered the straight shot down the aisle, instead focusing on the monotony and blah-ness of the office environment.
This is a new office environment that we moved to the last week of August. Our former digs were not-so-affectionally referred to as "the dungeon." At least the 31st floor gave us some light.
I am still amazed by this picture. It was snapped from the 31st floor of my office building just becuase I went on break this morning. I stood up to leave and saw the sunrise and instantly exclaimed how beautiful it was.
Several others stood at the window and looked at it, and one asked if I had my camera and I realized, "Oh yeah, I do have my camera" so I grabbed it and snapped this shot. It caught the pinks and purples perfectly.
Taken after a long day at work, on my drive home. I don't understand this merge. Scratch that; I don't understand the idiots that don't know how to navigate this merge. There are signs for a mile telling drivers that the lane is ending, but people persist on believing that where they need to be is somehow more important than where the rest of us need to be, so they squeeze as far up as they can in the ending lane, stopping traffic in five lanes instead of just planning ahead.
This merge is truly so obnoxious that I generally take backroads home, so my blood pressure doesn't boil at the thought of some pompous idiot thinking he's more important than the rest of us, or I don't pull some stupid roadrage move like jerk my car in front of one of said pompous idiots. I've done that before, mind you. That's when I decided to take another route home.
I spun this top over and over again, trying to capture the motion and color in one. I think it came out of a cereal box, but I'm not sure. It wasn't on the couch when I left this morning, but was there when I got home from work.
I planned to do a bulb exposure, but apparently my remote switch is MIA. Last time I remember seeing it, it was in my coat pocket and I asked what that was doing there. I was leaving work Tuesday or Wednesday of last week. I hope I didn't drop it in the snow.
According to my mom, the last time she remembers the Ohio River being completely covered in ice was when she was 15 or 16, so as soon as my sister came in this morning and said the river was frozen from one side to the other, we hurridly got dressed and headed towards Gallipolis (Ohio).
When we arrived, we discovered that a barge had come through and broken up the ice, but the river was still mostly ice covered. After taking a few shots from the Ohio side of the river, we hopped in the car and headed to Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia, headed through the flood gate, and snapped a few more pictures.
This picture is of the Silver Memorial Bridge, which replaced the Silver Bridge that collapsed in the late 60's.
I was trying to find something to focus on through the decorative glass of my living room window. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck, climbing on a kitchen chair with tripod and camera in tow, trying to line this shot up.
After spending what felt like hours trying to get a decent shot, I finally got this bush in focus through the glass and was satisfied with the outcome. I wasn't thrilled, but it is pretty close to what I was looking for.
I got my daughter this bracelet, her first piece of "real" jewelry, for Christmas. She wore it for the first time today and it struck me that I wanted to get a picture of it. Of course, she wouldn't sit still for a picture, so I took this after she went to bed.
After many pictures of just a bracelet and feeling that something was missing, I thought I'd put my wedding ring in the middle of it, for size comparison, and there it was...the shot I was looking for.
I bought a Speedlite 430ex II today and was having a little fun playing with bouncing the flash off of a white box. Desaturated the color in PSE.
Four inches of snow likely isn't a lot to many people, as they regularly see more than that every winter. However, the intensity that the snow was falling from the clouds this afternoon made the streets very trecherous. My company let everybody leave at 3:00, which is nice, since I didn't get home until 4:45.
As I was sweeping off my car and waiting for it to warm up, I grabbed my camera and snapped some shots from the top of the parking garage. There is a lot of interesting architecture downtown.
Perhaps later in my 365 project, when it's a little warmer out, I'll wander around downtown and get some more creative shots.
Today, I leave you with an image of building tops and a soft layer of snow.
I want to redo our bathroom, eventually, when we're no longer underwater on our house. I didn't realize how rusted out the drain was, until I focused on it.
I think I've mentioned it before, but my kids have been sick for the past week. I've given more baths in the past five days than probably the entire month leading up to this evil stomach bug.
I am ready to kiss this nasty mess good-bye and I hope none of you have the misfortune of encountering it.
I took my camera to work again today, but still didn't find the time to go out during my lunch. It's too daggone cold for me to get super brave, but I keep looking at area's I'd like to stop and photograph. It just seems I never have the time.
It's snowed quite a bit this week. This picture was captured on my way home from work.Stopped at a gas station, saw the light shining through the snowflakes, directly over the apartment building behind it, and pulled out my camera.
Slowly but surely, I'm starting to feel less self conscious about just pulling my camera out. Hopefully by day 365, I wont worry that people think I'm weird for taking pictures of random things.
It's barely winter, and I'm already ready for summer. Snow and winter wouldn't be so bad, if it were 90 degrees or so.
Today we got about a half inch of snow. We're supposed to get another 1-4 inches on Thursday.
Again, I had another idea for a photo, took my camera to work today and everything, but my daughter is still sick so I left early and took her to the doctor, so I didn't get to explore downtown in the snow.
I took this picture shortly after midnight, then decided I'd rather have the shot from in front of the scale instead of above it. I waited until I had great lighting this afternoon, took the picture I wanted, and discovered I have ugly feet.
I still want the picture I had in mind when I took this shot. Maybe I'll rehab my feet for the next couple of weeks and try again later this month?
It was supposed to be a depiction of how I don't believe in New Years resolutions, but instead ended up with this...a commentary on how I hate my weight.
Day two of 365...I saw the snow start to fall just before I went to bed last night. We woke up this morning to a thin coating of fresh snow over everything. The sun was up too, with sparse cloud cover, so the snow had that sparkle to it.
I couldn't get exactly the shot I wanted, but I did manage to capture some of the sparkle, as well as a little bit of a flare from the sun.
I don't know if I'll actually stick to a 365 project, but I happened to come across a group for 365 projects on Flickr and thought I'd give it a shot.
This is not the greatest picture, since I decided around 11:30 PM that I was going to start a 365 project on January 1, and needed something quick to fill slot 1 of 365.
I swear, we cleaned our living room no less than 20 times throughout the day today, both my husband and I being home with the kids. And yet, when they went to bed, I was still left with a pile of toys in the middle of the floor, and I haven't had the energy to get up and put them away, knowing full well that they will be dragged out again tomorrow.
So today, this picture epitomizes my life, and the stress that I've felt all day.
