Joy.... in the simple things

Joy.... in the simple things, a photo by sometimes suzie on Flickr.

How was I to know when I named this photo how true the sentence would be.

So after more than a year of not posting photos to Flickr I have made an effort to pick up my camera, take photos and post. I have enjoyed the creativity.

So, going back to when I posted every day, I would look to see if by chance one of my photos happened to just maybe get "Explored".
What dose it mean to be Explored? Well, the people of flicker call whatever it is that picks the top 500 most interesting photos "the donkey". We are never sure other than if a photo gets a bunch of likes and or comments on it might make it on the list but really it is a mystery.
If your photos makes the top 10 photos of the 500 it is referred to as "front page".
I have had 32 photos Explored with my first one coming a very long 6 month after I started posting on a daily basis. The Donky was very elusive to me but of this 32 photos I had one of my macro photos make the front page and I was beyond excited.
Now, back to my recent posts. I have been posting in both the Macro Monday's and We're Here! group using their themes to inspire me. I have loved having the camera in hand again. I have felt a bit rusty that is for sure and was shocked to say the least when someone commented that my "candle" photo had been explored. Huh?
Imagine my surprise when my nest photo for We're Here! was ALSO Explored. Double Huh? And then this photo, my 3rd for the group was also Explored.... and I was SHOCKED.
This photo was taken in a rush and I had to quit taking photos and go pick up the girls so I had to make due with what I found in the camera. I ended up liking this one although the focus isn't as sharp as I would like I loved the floating leaves and in the end the theme was "childhood memories" and that was playing in the leaves.
I decided to check to see if my last photo managed to get explored and to my surprise it had and while checking on it I also found that this photo has made it all the way to the 14th photo with over 22000 views.
Needles to say I am shocked and excited and I know this "explore" run will end it sure has been exciting and made picking up my camera even more fun.

It's been the "Joy in the simple things"

Dueling Apples

I met Chantal at Starbucks this morning with our computers so we could catch up with each other and start our "new" challenge of encouraging each other to blog at least twice a week. So..... this is my first blog post to meet our challenge. 

Chantal and I have know each other for 15 years and I have truly been blessed with this friendship and I am grateful for her in my life.

Fairy World

The girls spent hour upon hour working on their Fair World. Everything they used was from outside. Branches, moss, dried pine needles, stumps, pine cones and anything they found became part of the world. They spent so much time working together creatively and the outcome was quite amazing. I really don't think the photo does it justice.

Halloween Costumes

 A few years ago Sarah asked me to make a her a costume and I searched the Internet for something easy to do and I made her a spider costume {Emily wore it this year} and she won the contest at school and ever since then she has asked me to make her costume.

 

This year she requested a turtle to go along with her turtle obsession. So i searched the Internet to find something that was doable for me. I found something that included a hoodie and making the shell and cutting out two colors of green and gluing them on. It was a little time consuming but easy to do AND Sarah absolutely loved it which was the point after all.

Ian was a smarty pants with smarty candy taped to his pants, Emily was the spider I made for Sarah a few years ago {it won again for the school contest, go figure}, and Sarah was the turtle {she didn't win}.

{Oct. 28, 2010 - blogging phone photos}

The Cousins are here!

And my kids couldn't be more excited! 

BTW, I was blog stocking and found this very cool gadget called wordle where you put any words you want and it puts together this fun little word picture like the one I made above about my family. I don't know how to make it bigger on my blog but if you click on it you can see it bigger. You are suppose to be able to link it to your blog and it will make a word picture from reading the common words from your blog. {I can't manage to get that part to work though} You can change the font style, color, and direction. It is so much fun to play with and look at all the other word pictures that other people made like this one that I liked so much.

The Assignment: Garage Shoot

And this is what I got. Who knew that there could be such beautiful light in the garage. 

I posted one of Sarah on the instructors critique gallery asking about why I consistently have a problem with the focus being too soft and this is what she said:

Yes! Great light! There definitely is a little camera blur. Just pop that ISO up to 400 and you should be fine. I am not sure what focal length you were using but this is very flattering. I like the way you filled the frame. There is nothing distracting in the background. The eye contact is good and the catchlights are great. Look how great the colors look in that light. Try using the TV mode (shutter priority) on these. Set it to the closest thing to 1/focal length. So a focal length of 200 would need 1/200. At a minimum, set it to 1/100. Increase your ISO if you need to. Also make sure that one of your focus points in landing on the eye. Try to hit right on the corner of the eye, by the nose. Try this again with a faster shutter speed and you will have it!

I have read it a couple of times and Im not sure I get the info about the focal length but I plan on reading it over a few times with my camera in my hand - maybe I will get it then.

Metal

This weeks assignment was METAL. At first I had no idea what I was going to take a picture of but as I pulled into our driveway today Terry was welding something in the front garage. As soon as I saw the sparks I knew that is what I wanted to photograph for the assignment and I even had my camera on my front seat so I went to work. I shot 30+ photos and was having a tough time getting a usable picture. All I would get was a blue glow or my camera would focus and refocus as I tried to take the picture. It was frustrating but I did get this one {and only one} photo that I posted for the instructor to critique. {I told her of the trouble I was having and asked what I should have done}

And this is what she said:

Wow! I could see the thumbnail on this and had no idea what it was until I opened it up. I love that you thought to take this picture. This is all about shape and light. Handholding this at 1/25 can cause blur. If you get another opportunity to shoot this, keep using aperture priority but try increasing your ISO to 400 or 800 to see what you get. This is kind of like shooting fireworks. You try a lot of different things to see what works! Aren't you happy you have a digital camera rather than trying this with film? :) I also think it would be cool to get some close ups of your husband's hands as he is doing this work. Great job!

I also took these of just the metal because I like the way the fading light hit it.

After reading Barbara's advise {the instructor} I decided to try again. Tonight I went back to the garage and bracketed the ISO from 100 to 1600 but still no luck. I wasn't getting anything until it dawned on me that my biggest problem was the fact that once I focused my camera would refocus and I would lose the shot. So in the end it didn't matter what ISO but I took my camera off auto focus and got a shot with an ISO of both 200 and 1600 - so go figure. 

                       ISO 200                                                  ISO 1600

Both manual focus - it seamed to do the trick however it was still a bit hard to get the sparks and I had to make sure it was focused in the right spot but it was fun trying - lucky for me Terry was willing to indulge me. In the end I like the first picture I got the best but I think it had to do with the lighting. It was in the evening as the sun was setting which is a much softer, beautiful light compared to the afternoon light of the second try.

The artist

Creative Me

I am L O V E I N G this online photography class that I am taking {thank you, thank you, Tara!}. This weeks lesson is "Finding The Light". My first lesson in finding the light was accidental. My father was into photography {where I got the bug and my first used 35mm camera} We had gone to Yosemite National Park and I borrowed his camera and walked around for the day taking pictures. The first picture I took in the morning was of Half Dome and I continued on my photo walk. I walked by that first spot at least two more times and noticed how the light had changed the look of Half Dome and snapped the photos. Once they were developed {LONG before digital cameras} I was thrilled to see the difference the light made. Since then I have been intrigued by light and the way it looks at different times of the day, season, and weather. Of course I can't find the pictures {I really wanted to revisit what inspired me in the first place} but I will keep searching. One of our assignments was to put the camera on auto and change the ISO {mine went from 100 to 1600} and take the same photo and see how even with the change of ISO the camera metered and changed the shutter speed and the aperture for the correct exposure no matter the ISO. Since I got my digital camera I have set it on auto and never looked back and I am excited that this class has me experimenting with my camera and brushing up on f-stops and film and shutter speed and how they effect your photo and has me shooting a ton of photos for no reason or event - just for the creative part of me.

A little behind...

While in Sunriver I kept checking email {when I had Internet access} and I never got an email with our weekly challenges. I was confused and disappointed {I wanted to see what the challenge was while in Sunriver for different photo opportunities}. Once I got home I spent some time on the Big Picture Scrapbooking {who I am taking the photography class through} web site and ran across the message board and once there found a message called "weekly challenge" and once I clicked on it I found that our challenge for the week was "Blue". Just the word blue. So here is my take on blue, not some of my favorite pictures I have taken but blue none, the less.

My "Fly by the seat of my pants" project

The day of the bunco party to be held at my house Chris Samwick and I decided to go on a mission to make Bunco Boxes for all the guests to take home with them. She located the bells, and I tried to locate the dice (see previous post). I found these cute take out boxes in pink and took a 3x3 square paper, inked it, put a ribbon on it and cut out the word bunco and a flower (12 times). It was all done very last minute - we were still stuffing the boxes when the first guests arrived - but I think they turned out cute, If I do say so myself. The box contains: 9 dice, 1 bell, 8 score cards, and instruction on the game.