Thursday, April 21, 2011

Eyes...

This is my favorite pic of Lan's eyes. He has lots of different colors in his eyes and this is one of the few that I have taken that actually shows it. (Please note that while I did take the picture it was edited by Amy for a blog post on "To Take it My Way" my computer crashed earlier this year and I could not find it anywhere in my archives.

Ryley's eyes are very reflective and if you look close in this one you can see me in them:) I love his brown eyes but he likes to squint them when he smiles:)

This is one of Amber's little girl. Her kids have the most beautiful blue eyes!

And one for fun:)

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Eyes

I am having a hard time with the exposure on my pics, but I love how Sadies eyes really stand out on this pic.  I need to read a manual on my camera.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Week??? Eyes!

I don't know what week I am on anymore but I know I have been a total slacker! We all got the flu a few weeks ago (I am still suffering from a few side effects that won't let go!) then going out of town has left little time for blogging and picture taking but I need to get myself in gear!! I thought I would pick an easy theme this time to hopefully get myself back in the groove. However, I may have to pick topics that relate to my other hobby, gardening. I am starting seeds tomorrow!! I am excited because I love to watch them grow but it is A LOT of work and very time consuming so hopefully I will be able to keep up with both hobbies and my crazy life! :) So back to the topic... I know your kids have some beautiful eyes so lets see them!! I guess it could be your cat or dog's eyes too :)

Monday, February 14, 2011

Week 7 - Perspective

This week is all about perspective. Think about the perspective of young children, animals, bugs etc. and show us your images that represent it...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Me!

As I was sorting through old pictures trying to find some that represent me and what I like I realized that there are a lot of things that I like and if I were to include them all this would be a REALLY long post! So I tried to break it down to a few things. I know there are things that I left out but hopefully this will give you a pretty good idea. I also realized that I don't take pictures of things that I dislike and because this is Friday night and I have a crazy day tomorrow I will just list a few things:)

My #1 dislike would probably have to be cockroaches! I don't like to say the word "hate" and try not to use it very often because I don't like my kids to use it but I think I can honestly say that I hate cockroaches!! When I was in high school I had a full time job milking cows and for two weeks out of the year for some reason we would have this surge of cockroaches that would come through. I was paranoid the whole time I was milking because I didn't want to step on one and hear it crunch. I even had to call my sister a few times to come milk for me because I couldn't stand it anymore. I can handle mice, spiders, and most bugs but NOT cockroaches!! Another dislike would probably be rock and roll music. I don't like listening to music that I can't understand the words to. Hmmm... it is late and I can't seem to come up with more dislikes so maybe I will add them later...

Now for the likes...

This photo has two likes in one. I love to read and I love to cook! When I have time that is and it seems like the more kids I have the less time I have to read and bake but I really enjoy doing both.
These are some of my favorite books and cookbooks.
I love the country! This is the dairy that I grew up working on and I love that I was able to learn the value of work growing up where I did.

Love the farm!! I have so many good memories of the farm!
I love my country and the am so very thankful for the freedoms and blessings that come with living here.


I love camping with friends and family! Camping is probably my favorite summer activity. I would go camping every weekend if I could.

Since this is a post about me I thought I would post a pic of me and the love of my life :)

I love to garden. It is a lot of work but I love the reward of the harvest and being able to walk outside to get the things I need for dinner right from the garden. Plus it gives me a reason to get my hands dirty in March when it is too cold to go outside still :)

I love sunflowers. It is probably my favorite flower. My kitchen in my old house had tons of sunflowers in it but I didn't really feel like it went with the decor as well with this house so I did away with most of them but I still have a few sunflower things hanging around.

I love that I live in a place where I can enjoy sunsets like these!

I love photography and that because of it I can take pictures of my kids like these :)


And more than anything I LOVE LOVE LOVE my family!! More than anything I LOVE my family!!!
Last but not least, I love my savior, Jesus Christ.

Well that is me in a nutshell. Maybe I will add things as I remember but this will do for now :)

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Week 6 - YOU!!!

So this week it is all about YOU! Take pictures that reflect who you are. Your likes/dislikes, hobbies, favorite color etc.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Bubble Overload


This kid is always busy. I like his eyes in the reflection. And he's concentrating so hard - look at his tongue!




Everything is a contest at our house. Even playing with rubber duckies.



Is he really eating bubbles? I didn't notice at the time. Augh. At least it's cute.



Just a good action shot.  As always, I had super fun subjects. I wish my camera was as good. =o)  

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

Bath Time!!


So like I said in the theme post I saw a series of photos that someone did, highlighting her kids' bath time. I tried to find it again so I could post a link but I couldn't, sorry. Anyways, I know that mine need some work but I do feel like I came away with some fun photos that I will cherish for a long time, thus progressing in my goal to take more pics of my kids in the winter :)

I wish I had a white tub with white walls and a beautifully lit bathroom, of which I have none. I have a beige tub with green walls, and although my lighting isn't terrible it isn't great. I would have liked to have shot with him facing more towards the window to get more light in his eyes but I couldn't figure out how to do it without blocking most of the light. The color I felt was off in some so I took the easy way out and turned them black and white. Of course this was after I started editing them thus the inconsistencies. I think the series would flow better if they were all one or the other, but some I liked in color and others in b&w...

Even though it doesn't look like there is a body attached to his cute little head, I still like it. I wanted to get the feel of look over the side of the bathtub at his level.


What's a bath without a rubber ducky :)







I know you have all heard me say that this kid LOVES his dad but this series really shows it. I had to really coax the half smiles that I got out of him previous to this but all his dad had to do was poke his head around the corner and he was immediately all smiles, so I was able to get these :)
Settings were f2.5-2.8 ss1/160-1/200 iso 400-640

I thought it would be fun to document it from pre-bath to out of the tub BUT after he had been in for a few minutes and I wanted to look through all the cute shots I'd been able to get thus far, I pushed play on my camera and got a message "NO CARD!!!" I am such a blond sometimes!! So note to self... make sure there is a card in your camera BEFORE you start shooting!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Finishing up the Action Shots...

There was one more shot I really wanted to get and I didn't want to procrastinate it into next week and when I saw the boys outside playing I knew I had to take the opportunity while I had it. My kids are really cooperative when it comes to shots like this, which is really nice :)

Here I just combined the two so I don't hog up too much space :)

Settings on these were f2.8 ss 1/400 iso 100
shot with my 50mm

This is my panning shot that I really wanted to get and since my boys aren't world record fast on their bikes;) I had Lan jump on the four wheeler so I could get what I wanted. I told Ryley he could ride if he would look at me and wave as they went by:)
Settings: f6.3 ss 1/80 iso 100

Caught in Action!

I just had to add this last action/motion picture for kicks and giggles even though it is not much of a "motion" shot...


Sometimes you just gotta go!



Someday this picture will be great blackmail! :)

Week 5 - Bath Time!

Thanks everyone for your action/motion shots (and Amy for the bathroom shots:). It was fun to see everyone's take on it. So I saw a series of photos the other day online highlighting bath time and I want to try it. I know I just did bathrooms but after this I promise we will stay away from the bathroom for a while :)

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

better late than never right?

every time I would go into my bathroom to...you know...I would think about this assignment and feel like a bad student for not getting it in, so to appease my guilty conscience I am turning it in anyways.

oh my bathroom, has seen better a days that is for sure! For those that don't know I live in my grandma's house, the house where my mom grew up, the house that was OLD then. We tried to figure out how old this house was one day and the closest we could come up with is that it is over 110 years. It is a pioneer house at it's finest! So when taking these pictures I was trying to take pictures that might mean something to me on that sad, sad day when it is knocked to the ground and a new house is built on its dust.
at one time the bathroom was pink, and it was pink until long after all her kids (including my rough-tough cowboy uncles) moved out. It makes me laugh, if you ever had the privilege of knowing my grandpa or my uncles you would laugh too. There is NOTHING pink about those men and I am surprised they put up with the pinkness. It has been painted over, but there are a few spots that over time have worn off the blue overcoat and the pink is showing through a bit. The door knob is one of those spots. I kinda wish that the door knob itself was a little more focused, but at the time I was really trying to bring the focus to the pink...
1/250 f2.5 ISO 200 and I bounced my flash
in a house that NONE of the bedrooms have working lights the bathroom has 2
1/400 f2.5 ISO 200 bounced my flash
I feel privileged to have original art aka junk with a functional use as our towel rack...I won't show you the TP holder (it is a piece of OLD wood)
alright this one is not old nor does it tell the stories of this old house, but it is our most reliable clock in the house, as long as we remember that it is an hour fast. It is the only clock that did not get changed with the time change, and now if we did I am sure we would be late to everything! In a few months we will have to remember that it is actually the correct time. :) \
1/200 f4.0 ISO 200 flash bounced

There are quite a few patches of cool texture in our bathroom as well-the box that holds our towels has the coolest wood top with awesome texture, and then there is the tub...it has been painted over so many times, worn off and painted again that the texture is very cool there too, but since those aren't fun pictures I wanted to do something fun with them...I give you texture overlays...

just grabbed some old pictures really fast and opened my textured images copied and pasted them onto the picture changed my layer mode to overlay (I also usually like softlight too) and voila I do erase the texture off their skin so they don't look mottled and sickly
wood texture
bathtub

Monday, January 24, 2011

Catching Up...

Since I was a total slacker last week I am hopefully going to catch up and get all the "shots" I wanted to do this week:) Here are mine so far...

I wish I would have had him face me so I could see his face. I only took a couple of them flipping and this was the only one in focus. I tried focusing before they flipped, trying to get them in the focus and not the background. However, I must have refocused because the focus fell on the trees in the bg and not on the boys.


Hmmm... I think he didn't get the memo that it is still winter!!
All of the above jumping ones were f3.5 ss 1/1000 iso 100

These ones I tried to do an effect called panning... I think the subject has to be moving faster than they could go on their bikes:) I am still going to try it later in the week but I thought I would post these anyways since these technically are still "action" :)
f3.5 ss 1/800 iso 100

This is one I tried the other day... This is just one showing more motion I guess :) When I couldn't get the original look I was going for I tried a slower shutter speed but since it was so bright outside I had to raise my f-stop really high in order to get the slower ss.

f20 ss 1/40 iso 100

Action/Motion Week


A little bright maybe? I don't know what my settings were. Amateur here! I'm learning.




Obviously this is from the summer. I stare at it a lot. I wish the flowers weren't blurred - I assume they weren't actually in motion. =o) I'm curious if there was a setting that would have helped or if I just didn't keep my hand steady enough.



Just a fun action one. I like the shadow and her bouncy dress. I played around with cropping. Any suggestions to make it tighter but not lose the distance? I like that she's relatively small.

Okay, that's my first post. I love playing along but I know I have a LONG way to go. =o) Thanks for looking! I'd love to hear your suggestions.