Opening my eyes

To be completely honest,  as I drove into town, our NEW TOWN, this summer, I wasn’t really impressed with the scenery. I saw pretty trees, lots of green, there was rolling hills around but nothing really caught my eye. This is probably because I was a little distracted by the fact I had just left MY HOME with all of its accompanying friends, oh the friends…sigh, and was starting  over yet again. The weeks started rolling by, much quicker than normal and I had come to love this new home of ours. THE PEOPLE, oh the people,  are fantastic. I have never felt more at ease in a new location… EVER.  No instant best friends for any of us but lots of really kind, genuine, friendly, down to earth people who have made this the easiest transition to date.  However…

I still hadn’t been inspired by the nature in my surroundings. No biggie but pretty unusual. That is until I talked one of my new walking buddies to take me some parks I saw the map. This is where I saw for the first time, or maybe finally opened my eyes a bit, I saw something beautiful, and INSPIRING.

No it wasn’t the ancient ruins in Turkey, or beautiful sunsets along the water in Mississippi, not my ever favorite mountain in the back ground or a dense forest with a winding path, it was something different yet familiar and wonderful.

These pics can also be found on my photography website.

I swear my walking buddy thought I was crazy. It might be the fact that I was overly excited and even a bit emotional. For me, at this park, I found the piece I’d been missing. Finally I realized… I am HOME.

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A Definite Shift

A while back I talk about how I unintentional uncluttered my life. Well, my life now seems full and thriving but there has been a definite shift in what occupies my time. Sewing and general crafting has a very modest presence in my mind while family and home have taken the very front of my thoughts and seem to take up my time as well. Photography also has a much larger presence and seems to be filling my need to create. It doesn’t keep me up at night like sewing and crafting did but I do find that I wish I had more time to play around with my camera.

I have decided to embrace the change and just let some things go. This blog being one of them. I still plan on having my Birthday Give Away this year but I suspect it will be my last. We will see though.

I may drop into this space from time to time and I may be here regularly again someday too. For now, I can be found at my photography blog aprildanyelphotography.com with my current project 365 Photography Challenge still underway.

So unless I come here sooner, I be back here in April with some sewing fun and my Birthday Give Away.

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365 Photography Challenge :: 54-60

      

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365 Photography Challenge :: 47-53

 

 

I’m a day late but we’ll just pretend that I’m not. I hope you all are having a wonderful Thanksgiving.

      

 

 

 

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365 Photography Challenge :: 40 – 46

 

Getting tired of these pics? Sorry, people this is all I’ve got right now. Taking all these pictures has inspired me however to get my family history organized, starting with my own family. So, for the next little while I can bet that most of my free time will be spend going through pictures and getting things organized. I have set a deadline for myself to get Year 14 organized so I can print it up in a book on time. That gives me until the 27th of this month. If you didn’t get that, we will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this month. 15 years!

 

Now back to the regular scheduled program :: pictures 40 – 46. For most of this week I didn’t have the use of my editing software. So, I decided that I’d post some instagram pictures.

    
 

 

 

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365 photography challenge :: 33 – 39

      

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365 Photography Challenge :: 26 – 32

 

This week I played with an improve indoor portrait shoot for Hollis. I learned the importance of focusing right between the eyes so that both eyes are in focus. It makes a huge difference.

        

 

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365 Photography Challenge :: 19-25

 

 

       I am super torn between the photos this week and am having trouble deciding which one I like best.  If I had to choose only one I think I would go with the big fire engine wheel but there are 4 others that are right behind. This project is turning out to be so good for me. I’ll have to talk about it some more when I have time to write a proper post.

 

ok baby, I’m coming

 

 

 

 

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365 Photography Challenge :: 12-18

 My favorites this week are the ones of Bron and Hollis. I really love Bronwyn’s new toothless smile but it is the coloring of this one that makes it my favorite. To get this look all I had to do was decrease saturation of color and put a warm filter on her eyes to give them their color back. I really love how this looks. The one of Hollis in the stroller is my favorite because of the lighting. This one was an accident. I was just sitting on the porch after a walk playing with white balance, trying to figure it all out, and this nice relaxing picture came from it. I think the white balance was set at daylight but I’m not sure. I loved it so much I didn’t even edit other than sharpening it.

The beginning excitement is now starting to fade but I still love the time I spend taking and editing pictures.

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365 Photography Challenge 5-11

I am so glad that I inflicted myself with this challenge. I had forgotten…

This week has reminded me how much I love taking pictures. There is just so much out there to photograph. I also realized that I’m not just a random photographer. If I see something of interest I instantly have a finished image in my brain. This surprised me. Now I just need to keep practicing so I can figure out how to get the image in my head to appear on my computer screen.  Or maybe I need to be more flexible and leave more up to chance. I might just like it. Either way I am so glad this project pressures me to get out and take some pictures and then sit down and “process” them in photoshop. I’m always glad I did.

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365 Photography Challenge: 1-4

Do I dare start a year long challenge??? I don’t have the best track record with following through with things so I’m scared to announce here that I have.

I’ve had this nagging feeling for quite a few years now that I need to figure out how to use my camera and it is time to get down to business and just do it. My good photographer friend generously sold (practically gave) me her “old” Nikon D70 with 4 lenses and that was the just the jumpstart that I needed.

Enter 365 Photography Challenge

I’ve decided that I’m going have a post everyday on a new blog for an entire year. I’m not committing to take a new picture everyday or edit or even writing a new post (thank you delayed publishing) everyday but my goal is to have a new post show up everyday in this new space for a year.  My hope is that this will encourage me to use my camera and my editing software and (crossing my fingers) figure it all out.

Right away I realized that I am such an amateur and really even a beginner. I took photography classes in both high school and college but never really took the lessons seriously and so I didn’t internalize much and have so far to go. It’s actually really embarrassing to be posting this here at all. But I trust that as with anything I’ve ever worked at, it gets better with time and practice.

Here is a link to my new home for photography. Please don’t feel obligated to stop by, it is pretty raw, but feel free to visit anytime if your interested in my photography journey.  Since photography is now one of the “crafty” things that keep me up at night I want to include a portion of this journey here. The plan is to give a weekly overview about what I’ve learned and post my pics for the week.

Here are my first 4 pics. Looking at these I am so humbled. I have so far to go. I think they are nice and a good start but far from what I wanted my camera and software to create. I just need to remember to have patience and keep it up.

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