A photo walk

Today I actually got out with the sole purpose of taking some pictures. Well some adult conversation as well. Funny thing though, I forgot my camera and was stuck using my phone. Regardless, I feel like celebrating because I went. 

   
           

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38

Well, it happened. I turned 38. Funny though, when I imagine what 38 years is like, I don’t feel I fit the bill. I suspect that is normal though.

Pics from my birthday walk with Hollis.

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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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Trying out instagram

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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: 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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Made the Cut

 

Well, I have officially decided to not cut this blog out of my life. Didn’t know I was thinking about it? Well, I was. Since I am tired of feeling guilty about not posting here I decided to set a goal and write here weekly. I’ve found a two hour bit of time in my life, once a week, that if I am prepared I can sit and upload pictured and actually think about writing a blog post.

 

The sad thing though is the fact that nothing has been going on. I started a project a few weeks ago… but haven’t touched it since. No new pictures had been taken. Nothing. Well, one thing has been going on. We decided to homeschool Bronwyn this year for first grade. It has been going smoothly and because of it I have this 2 hours where I sit at a table waiting for her while she enjoys an awesome art class and PE. Hollis is still young enough to sleep through most of it and so my blogging time has been discovered, but what to talk about??? Hmm.

 

 

Knowing that I didn’t have much prepared to post about today I snapped a quick picture of Bron as we were leaving. Nothing exciting happening at the time but I love the fact that she was so proud of her stripy outfit. She was beaming anytime anyone noticed it today. People can be so nice to notice and say something.  So, since I couldn’t get the Wi-Fi working during my 2 hours I spent the time reading my camera manual (again) and playing in photoshop and am just blogging about it all tonight.

 

 

 

Here is the original and my favorite manipulations of the picture I snapped of Bron today.

 

 

 

Plastic Wrap (kinda creepy; just looking at it make it hard for me to breathe)

 

 

 

 

Gradient Map (not sure what that means)

 

 

 

Sketch Photocopy (my favorite)

 

 

Find Edges (very close second)

Well, thats all I’ve got for today. See you next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Wonderful Surprise

Warning – This is not a crafty post but one I would feel ungrateful if I did not write, as I have been touched so much.

Yesterday Bron and I hopped on our bikes for a little ride just as the sun was getting low on the horizon. I had just finished my second gift for the month and wanted to get a photo of it down by the docks in my little neighborhood and also wanted to enjoy a bit the beauty that is found there.

As we approached my desired dock I ran into Whitney, a sweet lady in our neighborhood and church congregation with a contagious enthusiasm for life and also a talent and passion for photography. Before this particular meeting I had dreaded ever meeting her in a situation like this. And I have to admit that as I realized that our crossing paths were inevitable this particular moment, I cringed as I saw her pull out her camera.

I have admired her photography since the moment she passed her card to me and had a minute to check out her website.  Each photographer has his/her own style and I just loved hers. But it was my silly struggles with body image that kept me always trying to increase the distance between myself and her camera. This desire only increased as my body became more and more swollen as the months have progressed in my pregnancy.

So, it was only with love for her and her sweet enthusiasm that I agreed to “just stand there” and let her dance around me. After a few minutes, I relaxed a bit and after an agreement that she wouldn’t show me any photos of myself that didn’t look great, I let her do her thing. I found it all very silly.

Until I saw these

This first picture almost made me cry.

I have always wanted (secretly) a beautiful pregnancy photo. But have always settled for a quick snapshot just for documentation of what I looked like for the sake of the unborn child.

Not only does this photo give me a beautiful pregnancy photo, it captures so much about me.I have stood in this same area many times gazing at the beauty of the area in which we live with thoughts of deity, my life, and how blessed I am swirling in my head. I am looking toward the water just like my mother is always doing. This makes me realize the many ways she has influenced my life and how proud I am to be “just like her.”  Seeing me hold my unborn baby represents so much for me. The fears, trials, uncertainty, gratefulness, love and trust that this experience as an expectant mother brings.

This photo makes me want to be a better mother. The way she is gazing up at me brings to memory the many talks we have heard in General Conference this past weekend that focused on my responsibility as a parent and gave direction on how to be the parent that my Heavenly Father and Savior want me to be. This photo clearly shows my daughters love for me and makes me realize that I am her mother and who else should lead her to God but me.

This last photo may only be meaningful to me but I love it.

I shows me, as always, as a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, holding my family dear to me along with trying to balance my desire to create and share this love of mine with others. The fact that I am laying on the ground in such beautiful location was just the perfect touch as it  represents my love of nature and desire to be near it. While I am on my back I am looking up which reminds me of my need to consistently desire to know how I might become better and the knowledge that I have  of my need to remember that this answer will not come from the world but only if I become in-tune enough to hear and follow the promptings that will only come from above.

Thank you Whitney for such a wonderful and surprising gift. I will treasure these always.

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Another one

Bron in puddle with Nisa, a photo by By Small Means on Flickr.

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Riding Home

Biking home from school, a photo by By Small Means on Flickr.

Discovering new tricks in Photoshop.

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Forcing myself to use my camera – Keesler Birthday Party

I defiantly find myself labeling my camera as a tool for art rather than as a tool to document. This sadly leads to many many missed documenting opportunities. Ones that happened but will probably not be remembered very long. I think I have this problem because I don’t have a tangible way to keep photos. I really need to start printing photos, making photo books or something. It’s just not doing it for me to have files on my computer.

What do you do with your photos?

Anyway, here are some pics from the Keesler Birthday Party. I find these photos to be a little boring. They all seem to pretty much the same. I’m just happy I actually documented an event. And it helps that my kids look pretty cute as well.

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Family Photos – an attempt anyway

This was a very frustrating photo session. Two of the kids cried at one point or another and the other just scowled and stomped around. Needless to say it didn’t go as I’d hoped but we walked away with a few decent ones. The best of the family photos is a little sad but I’ll have to call the ones of the kids keepers since I’m scared to try this again. At least in such a formal way.

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Only in the South

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Tried to distort with iphoto

The results were surprisingly beautiful.

Original is here.

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Sticks

Decreased the saturation and now I love this photo.

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On a Fig Leaf

Veins

Hatched?

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Yard Pics

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Some photos from our recent beach trip.

Family pic in front of Med with Castle in the back. I took this one with self timer. Wish I had noticed the table and chairs before.

Anamur Castle – Love the moat

This photo took forever to get right, and even needed to be touched up afterwards to get the right colors. Love it now. Almost like I remember it.

Tried to focus on the tracks of his merman tail. Oh the burdens of being on land when you have no legs.

Our car and most of our house hold goods are on their way to Mississippi. The movers are coming again this week to pick up pretty much everything else. We’ll be living on what ever we can carry in our suitcase for another month after that.

Pool, here we come.

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Warmth

We hit 80 today! I’m so glad we took some time to enjoy it because tomorrow it’s suppose to drop back down to the 60’s.

I love the lighting in this picture. Can’t you just feel how warm they were on that pavement?

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Crazy Horse

We went to a birthday party this afternoon to the coolest place. I am kicking myself that today was the first time going there. It’s pretty much in my back yard and all I had to do was walk (drive) around the fence to get there. We still have  a few months left here so we will be making up for lost time and visiting again soon.

These were all shot on shutter priority. I tried aperture priority but that’s not working for me yet. Here are my favorites from the afternoon.

Can you tell I spent most of my time at the party hanging out with Bron?

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Some progress and a couple of gifts

The camera didn’t come out as much yesterday as I’d hoped. I got a few early morning shots of Magnus on the tramp and I did bring the camera with me to pick up Bron from a friend’s house.  The first shot has a lot of back light and I was trying to capture him thru a net. I should have taken it from a different angle. I show it here because I think it really captures his desire to fly on a broomstick. I also think its funny that he was using the stick horse to fly with.

I am actually pretty happy with this second one. This was taken inside with very little natural light. I took it with shutter speed priority and was forced to shoot it at 1/8 sec. I did use a tripod which helped but the only reason it isn’t blurry is because Bron was really concentrating on getting that egg out and was holding very still.

This final one is my first gifts of the month. A couple of notebooks made using my tutorial. I’ve had these all cut out and ready to sew for about 6 months. Now they’re finally finished and ready for my give away. So, if you’d like one of these notebooks for your own leave a comment and I’ll enter you in my general birthday give away drawing on my birthday the 30th. 

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Blurry Bron

I turned the dial on my camera off the automatic mode, thumbed through my camera manual and my editing software manual and took some pictures. All of my photos started off black (no the lense cap was not on, ha ha, but I did double check that too), then I couldn’t upload RAW pictures, than once I figured that all out I had to work on learning the reason my photos were getting totally over or under exposed. It turns out that when the aperture reading is flashing at you, you should adjust it. It wasn’t until the late afternoon as the clouds were thickening and the sun was starting to set and I lost all my light that I figured things out.  Right after this shot my batteries died and I called it a day.

I wonder if I will remember anything I learned  when I have a go at it all again today.

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Roman Bridge

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Unknown Flower

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Covered Walkway – Adana

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Adana Mosque

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Mushroom Roadblocks

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Smooching Snails

No romance here. When your all done, you just leave.

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Stringy Greens

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Handwashing station in Tarsus

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