I Heart Faces / Autumn Splendor

This week's I Heart Faces challenge is Autumn. I took this as part of a photography class assignment asking us to capture motion! What is more fun, and more fall than tossing the leaves from the giant leaf pile into the air and watching them fall all around you!



Don't forget to stop over at I Heart Faces and check out the beauty of Autumn!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 13

Day 13 of the Gratitude challenge is the written word. This is my written word, a recipe I wrote down for a squash casserole that was given to me by a friend of mine. I tried it out tonight for a possible place on my Thanksgiving Day menu, and while it was rich and savory and delicious, I'm just so used to my squash having a sweet taste from brown sugar and butter. It's going to be a tough call on which squash I end up making on the big day and might even be a game day decision!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 12

Day 12 is Hands! I had a picture all planned out for this that I staged this afternoon but then ended up catching this moment at the birthday party we attended tonight. All the older kids were having a blast trying to high five Evan and teach him how to "pound it". This was the Birthday Boy trying to show Evan a "pinky promise".

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 11

Today's installment of the 30 Day photo challenge is Something Old. Last night I was trying to come up with ideas on what to photograph. I don't own anything antique or and I am sure an image of a person being tagged as "something old" wouldn't sit very well with that person! Ha! So I was stuck. And then I remembered we do have something old, something very antique that belonged to Charlie's grandfather. So my something old is an image of Charlie's Howard Pocket Watch that was made in 1907, originally belonging to his great grandfather, passed onto his grandfather and now it belongs to Charlie.

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 10

Today is Nature. I'm not exactly a very nature oriented person so I wasn't sure how I was going to depict nature today. I could have gone into my archives but the point, for me anyway, is to practice and take new images. So into the pouring rain I went with my camera to try and snap some pictures of the rain. This was my favorite of the bunch. I love the few rain drops hanging on to the branch for dear life! And I can only imagine how cool it would have looked with a macro lens, but those are really expensive and I'm not really looking to do a lot of Macro Photography.

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 9

Today in the 30 Day Photo Challenge is to photograph an inspiring person. I snuck into David's room and took this tonight of Charlie when he was reading to the boys. He is inspiring to me for all that he does for our family, he's the smartest person I know, an amazing husband and the WORLD'S BEST DADDY!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 8

On to day 8 of the 30 Day Photo challenge which is favorite color! My favorite color is Orange. Orange is known as a "hot" color, it's often used to promote food and toys, and is a color that "demands attention". No surprise that I LOVE this color!

This orange windbreaker has been in this family since David was 18 months old and it's been passed down to each brother. It's only fitting to snap a picture of Evan wearing my favorite color in a jacket that has been worn by both his older brothers!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 7

Today's challenge was to photograph something funny. The boys have been playing with these silly glasses that I picked up at the Dollar Store for a Halloween fun. Originally it was just a photograph of Evan, but then the other boys wanted to get in on the fun! So I spliced the three images together to make one new image!

I Heart Faces / Black

Today's challenge at I Heart Faces is featuring the color black! I took this of David over the weekend in his beloved Darth Vader winter hat while he was outside rolling around in the leaves!



Head over to I Heart Faces and check out all the other amazing entries!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 6

Day 6 is Books, and I am so excited since Santa brought me my 50mm f/1.4 lens a little early. I have been wanting to try photographing shallow DOF with text. I grabbed one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and opened it up to a random page. It's not perfect, but I did want to get the entire open book into the image as well. Something for me to continue practicing!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 5

Today's challenge was the Morning Sky. I am grateful that it was today and not tomorrow since I would have to get up at 6am to get the morning sky, and today getting up at 7am was just right! I don't love this image but that is what the sky looked like at 7am this morning looking outside my picture window in my great room. You can see the grain in the shadows from having to up the ISO. What I should have done was set up my tri-pod, but I was lazy and it was cold outside! And if I really wanted to get a spectacular morning sky, I could have gotten in my car and driven over to the nearby Country Club, but again. I'm LAZY!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 4

Day 4 of the 30 Day Photo Challenge is leaves! Today was a great day to be outside and photograph leaves. I snapped some neat images of the swirling leaves blowing in the wind, and the boys rolling down the hill in the leaves, but in the end my favorite ended up being close up image of some leaves on my lawn!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude

I found this idea on Pinterest and decided that it would be a good way to get in some more practice. Especially since Santa, out of the kindness of his heart, came all the way down from the North Pole to deliver the 50mm prime lens I have been wanting, a little early!

Since I'm a little late to the game, I am going to post the first three in this blog post!

Day 1: Favorite Food
This was easy, I just made my favorite dinner tonight and photographed it for my food blog!

Cuban Pork! YUM!


Day 2: Smile
I have lots of pictures of smiles, but I want to use one I actually took today so I am posting this one of my Shaunie kicking the leftover snow from the freak October storm we had last Saturday!


Day 3: Happiness
I don't think it gets any better than a picture with my 3 little guys!! I am lucky that they genuinely love to play together, it's never forced! They have lots of fun together and I think it shows!

Happy Halloween!

Another Halloween has come and gone. This year was especially fun since it was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood! People go all out here with decorations. It's too bad that Trick or Treating was made harder with all the snow but the boys still had fun! Shaun & Evan headed home after about 1/2 hour or so and David and I finished walking the block. We had a blast and can't wait until next year. I'm holding out hope for a Harry Potter theme for next year!

The boys checking out the freak snow in October!


Yoda, Obi-Wan-Kenobi & Darth Vader


Our family Star Wars theme!


David checking out our neighbors witch statue!


Evan Trick or Treating!


Shaun getting ready to get some candy!

I Heart Faces / Let Them Be Little

This weeks challenge over at I Heart Faces is featuring the the little ones; the babies and Tiny Tots! I am submitting this image of my (not quite) 18 month old (all the way on the right) and his brothers, friend and cousins all trying to jump rope. Evan is ALWAYS trying to do things the big kids are. He refuses to accept that he's just a tiny tot! One part of me wants to scream "just stay little" but the other part enjoys watching him grow and explore new talents!

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If you're in need of a baby fix, head over to this weeks I Heart Faces thread, it will be impossible not to smile!

Fall: My Favorite Time of Year

I love fall, it's my favorite season. I love the colors, the smells, the activities, the comfort foods, the decorations, and most of all the cool crisp air of a beautiful sunny fall day! Last weekend and into Monday was about as perfect as it could be.

Of course no fall day would be complete without an impromptu photo shoot! Took me a lot of tries but I finally got my annual fall portrait of the boys! Now I can replace the summer portrait with a fall one!

Look how much they have grown in the last year!


And just so that I could be IN some pictures for a change, I was able to pass the camera over to Charlie and quickly grab this shot after Evan climb up on my back, while I was laying on the driveway photographing the older two racking leaves!



And no fall day would be complete without making a big pile of leaves to jump and play around in!




It's a big, big world!


 I love fall and I love my boys!

Week 2 Homework Assignment

Tuesday night was my last photography class. I am sad that it's over since I really enjoyed the night out talking about ways to take great images. I learned so much in the process and was happy to get some positive feedback from the teacher. Below are the images I submitted for the assignment. Part 1 of the assignment was to capture and stop motion.  I did this before during the first class using a pinwheel.  It's fun to play with shutter speeds.  In this class though, we learned how playing around with stopping and capturing motion can create some really creative images.

The first image I used was of the boys throwing leaves from the pile into the air.  The blurriness of the leaves gives the impression of movement.

I took this one of the Halloween decoration in the yard. Because of the windy day and the slow shutter speed, I was able to create a ghost like feel. As opposed to the next shot of the ghost where it's all in focus.  I think the first image is much more interesting to look at!

And now using a fast shutter speed, I am aiming to stop the motion, or capture it!  I love this one because you can see every pine needle in clear focus, it just looks cool!  Plus it doesn't hurt that they are obviously having a blast!

Here is another example of capturing motion.  Plus I also incorporated some viewpoint into this one that makes it a really fun image!

Depth of Field has probably been one of the trickiest concepts for me.  Especially trying to find the right balance of blur/sharpness.  This picture is finally me acing it!  This is my example of creating a shallow depth of field.  You can see the blurriness of the front and back but Shaun is completely in focus, creating a small area of focus or a shallow DOF.  Something that is worth mentioning is that the better the lens, the easier it is to get really great shallow DOF.

And my example of a deep DOF where everything from the foreground to the background is (for the most part!) relatively sharp!

This was the most fun I had doing the assignment, working on angles, perspective and viewpoint!  Thinking outside the box of the typical shots from 5 to 6 feet.  This image got a lot of compliments from my peers.  Everything down from the angle, the point of view, to the lighting right down to the look on Shaun's face.  I am really proud of this image!

I had a fantastic time in class and I am looking forward to taking a few more.  I made my wishlist and I think after Santa (hopefully) brings me a Speedlite for Christmas, I'll be signing up for the Studio Lighting class after the Holiday!

I Heart Faces / Tickled Pink

October is Breast Cancer awareness month and in honor of that, I Heart Faces is doing a PINK themed challenge!

The photo I chose to enter is a photo of my niece Savanah. Savanah is the lone pink in a family of all boys!! 8 cousins in total and she is the only girl! She is all about pink right down to her strawberry blonde hair! She loves her princesses and she loves pink!

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Check out all the other pink entries in this weeks Tickled Pink challenge!

Rules of Composition

Last week I started the Intermediate DSLR course.  It is three sessions designed around the creative part of photography.  In the first class we learned all about the rules of image composition.  The rules we discussed were:

Rule of Thirds
Balancing Elements
Leading Lines
Symmetry and Patterns
Viewpoint
Backgrounds
Create Depth
Framing
Cropping

Our homework assignment was to incorporate these themes into our images and email them for discussion.  I was really looking forward to getting some feedback on my attempts at these rules but my homework was eaten by the interwebs and never received by the teacher.  Here are the images I chose and the rule I was working on (all images are straight out of the camera or SOOC)

The first image was trying to use the rule of leading lines.  Leading lines in photography are lines that lead you through the photograph.  I feel like the eyes follow the slide making the slide a sort of leading line in this image.

This next image was using the rule of viewpoint.  I took this image from up on my parents deck looking down at the scene.

This was my attempt at balancing elements and symmetry since the design of the play set that Evan is in has symmetry in the blue posts and the round circle.  But after the class, it might be kind of a stretch.  In any case, I still like the image!

This is my Rule of Thirds image.  The idea of rule of thirds is that if you divide the photo into 9 equal parts the subject will fall within the lines.  Basically that you're not centering your subject right smack in the middle.  Generally it is not pleasing to the eye.  I also think you can use this image to show some depth too with the 3 levels of the sandbox, the rock and then my nephew Carter on top of the rock.

So that was my assignment and I had a lot of fun trying to incorporate these rules into my images.

I Heart Faces / Hands

The theme this week at I Heart Faces is hands. This is a picture I took of my friends son on his First Communion, hands in prayer. I am so glad she reminded me about this beautiful picture so that I could enter it this week! Thanks Sally!!

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Please go check out all the beautiful images of hands over at I Heart Faces!