Photography Club: Wild

Our new and improved Photography Club was a success!  Thanks to all of you who voted. The photo with the most votes was Bright Flower.

The theme of our next challenge was wild.  We each had 10 minutes with the camera in Bass Pro Shop because you can't get much more wild than that! 

All the Better to Eat You

Deer Wild

Food Please!

Masked Bandit

Please leave a comment to vote for your favorite Wild picture!

Friday Favorites: July 15

It's been a big week for our family as we entered a new stage of life!

• My favorite of the week (OK, the year) is being a grandma!  So much fun and way less pain involved than becoming a mother.
• Settling back into being at home; including my sleeping in my own bed and using my own shower.  It's the little things that comfort me.
• My awesome neighbor taught me I should have harvested my lettuce sooner; that's why it tasted bitter.  Then she showed me how to harvest the seeds.  I'm ready to try again after the summer heat breaks!

There's other cool things going on in the blog world too.

• I love this all purpose card at Think Fast.
• Check out these black and white parfaits Celebrations at Home shared.
• I Heart Faces has a great post about cake smash photography.  I started reading Your Baby in Pictures by Me Ra Koh.  The post and the book go well together.  I was fortunate to hear Me Ra Koh speak at evo '11.  I enjoyed hearing her inspiring story.  It was empowering to realize creativity, in all its forms, is therapeutic. It helps us to make sense of the world around us and our place in it.  I've always enjoyed photography, and now its more meaningful to give it a purpose and direction through my children and grandchild.

What are you loving this fine Friday?

Friday Favorites: June 17

Happy Friday!  This week has been busy and most of my project deadlines end over the weekend.  I'm looking forward to slowing down a bit next week.  We'll see if that happens.  Through the craziness, I have several favorites.

• Grass / Trampoline - The grass is finally in enough to open access to the trampoline which entertained kiddos for long stretches yesterday.  Trampolines + sprinklers = super happy kiddos!
• Silhouette - My super cool toy totally intimidates me.  I'm so excited I used it successfully for a couple of Girls Camp projects.  I'll have to show you next week.
• Plans that come together and people who help make that happen - My kiddos have been so helpful this week, often without even being asked!
• Family Photo Challenge - Don't forget to vote for your favorite picture in our first challenge.

There's some cool stuff going on beyond my little house.

• It's Free Font Friday again at Creating Keepsakes, and they have a digital sticker download you can use on Photoshop.  The Photoshop thing would be cooler if I understood how to make it work.
• Nellie Design has cute printable tickets for Father's Day.  This might work well with our gift for Dad.
• I'm not a fan of creamsicle Popsicle, but I'd try Your Homebased Mom's Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes.
• I heart Faces shares a tutorial on photo editing for those pictures that are too dark.  The even have a linky tool if you want to try your hand at the process.

So what does your weekend hold?  Big Father's Day plans?

New and Improved Photography Club

Thanks to the suggestions and encouragement to my last post about our Family Photography Club, we made a couple of changes.  First, a couple more of the kiddos decided to participate.  Second, we added a hands-on challenge element that turned out to be a ton of fun!


I still want to learn the mechanics of photography, but in small doses.  I caught the new kiddos up to what we learned so far, keeping it very simple and brief.  It really wasn't that much since it was mostly introductory material.  Then we briefly went over the standard focal length lens and discussed a little about how it relates to depth of field and distortion.


Then came the fun part!  I had searched around for a few challenge themes.  We went with I heart Faces current theme - Bright & Vivid.  Everyone had 10 minutes to take shots in and around the house of things that are bright and vivid.  We were allowed to use photo software to crop our pictures,then we chose our favorite to submit.  Since their submission was already closed, I thought I'd post them here and let you vote for your favorite.

Buttons
 

Bright Flower

Spiral Ball

Toys, Toys, Toys


Please vote for your favorite in the comments section!

Photography Club

My efforts to keep our family photography club have been a little hit and miss with everyone so busy.  We did spend some time recently learning about how the lens works.  We looked at a couple of examples from Ansel Adams where he replaced the lens with different diameters of pinholes.  Then he used a convex lens with the same subject, an old barn.  We saw examples of how light travels through flat, concave and convex lenses.  


While this is all very interesting, and I believe helpful; how the camera works can be a little dry.  Maybe that is part of why we've been having such a hard time making time for photography club.  I've been going through my old college photography text boo, but I'd like to get more hands on.  Any suggestions?  Maybe the text with photography challenges?

Favorite Feeds Friday: March 11

Happy Friday!  I hope you have something special planned for this lovely weekend.  We have a beautiful weather forecast with temperatures in the 80's.  Plenty of Saturday will find us outside.  Until then, here's some great feeds I found on my friendly Google Reader this morning.

• Small Fry & Co. has an interesting series on re-purposing a tablecloth.  Today she featuring a lunch bag.
• If you have preschoolers or kindergartners, Room Mom 101 has a cute color activity that would be great for St. Patrick's Day next week.
• I thought Fritos in popcorn sounded a little weird at first, but I liked salt on my cookies - so why not try Your Homebased Mom's White Chocolate and Frito Popcorn?
• I Heart Faces has a great lesson on utilizing natural light effectively indoors.
• Little Birdie Secrets is hosting a giveaway for your choice of adorable handmade goodies from Crafty Pirate. On second thought, don't check that one out - it will increase the competition for my entry!

What's your favorite distraction this fine Friday?

Wanna Be

I admit it, I'm a wanna be.  I have a list as long as my leg of all the things I want to learn and master.  Even though I'm short , that's still a long list.


I wanna be a better writer.
I wanna be a photographer.
I wanna be a better mom.
I wanna learn to play the piano.
I wanna be well read.
I wanna motivate my Cub Scouts.
I wanna loose weight and be healthier.
I wanna learn how to use my new Silhouette.
I wanna learn Photo shop.
I wanna improve my blog.
I wanna find my long lost ancestors with Ninja family history skills.
I wanna grow a garden.  (I'm not sure I'll ever get that one down.)
I wanna have my food storage.
I wanna be a good cook.
I wanna decorate my home and create a peaceful atmosphere.
I wanna throw parties (not just my kid's birthday parties).
I wanna understand more about nutrition.
I wanna catch up on my scrapbooks with beautiful layouts.
I wanna spend time with my family and friends and not feel rushed.
I wanna appreciate the beauty around me.
I wanna have my own business.
I wanna help others.
I wanna strengthen my testimony.
I wanna finish my Wood Badge tickets.
I wanna celebrate life.
I wanna feel connected to those around me in a meaningful way.


Is that much to ask?  I guess it is, especially all at once.  Since I'm not taking a class this semester, I'm trying to decide where to focus my time and energy.  I think all of the things on my list have merit, it's deciding which is the best use of my time that has me a little dizzy.


Several bloggers have chosen a word to focus on for the New Year.  Last year I chose progress.  It's one of my constant words, but I had to go back and see what word I chose last January.  Several of the items listed above are goals I'll be working on this year and some will have to wait. This year my word is direction.  I need to choose the best direction to focus on and choose a plan to get there. 

Favorite Feeds Friday

Ah! The first Friday of December; too soon it will be the last Friday of December and the end of the year.  Buckle up and hang on through the Christmas rush.  Enjoy the season and the year-end with some of these great ideas:

• Share your holiday traditions with Chocolate Cake Moments.  She even has a link to seven ideas of her own.
• Somewhat Simple has a link for a free 8" x 10" photo canvas.  This will be a nice touch to our family portrait!
• Joy the Baker shares the recipe and pictures of classic vanilla cupcakes with chocolate butter-cream frosting.
• Booking Mama shares a review of the middle grade book When You Reach Me.  It sounds good!  She's even giving a copy away.

What are your fine finds this lovely Friday?

Favorite RSS Feeds of the Day

I saw this really fun idea to feature my favorite RSS Feeds of the Day.  (I only wish I would have noted where I saw it.  Don't you hate it when you're sure you'll remember something, but then you don't?) Here's a few that caught my eye today:

• One Minute Writer's prompt of the Day: Key
• TravelinOma: Raise your Expectations
• Mother Huddle's latest Bullet List
• I Heart Faces's Ideas for Back to School Photos

What's your favorite post today?

Chihuly

Dale Chihuly is a glass artists who had an "exhibit" at the local Botanical Garden last year. I finally scrapbooked it yesterday. I like how the layout turned out. It was a great date night. We took a ton of cool pictures, even with our little PHD (push here dummy) camera.

I also had a realization. I haven't ordered my pictures from December yet, so I have more layouts to do by November than I thought. I better get cracking!

Pictures Taken

Yesterday I finished taking pictures of our Christmas ornaments and decorations (except those few that we always seem to find a few weeks after all the decorations are packed). Now I can move on to the writing part!

A Family Book

I loved how my scrapbook layout "Images of Christmas" turned out, but there wasn't enough room to tell the whole story of the decorations I pictured - not to mention all the ones I didn't picture. I've started photographing them all and will record my memories of them all in a "book". I don't know if or when I'll publish it. It'll be on the computer for now. I'm not even sure if I can get all the pictures taken this month, they might have to wait until next November. And writing the memories will take much longer. Nevertheless, I think it will be a project my children and maybe my future grandchildren will cherish, or at least appreciate when I'm not around to tell them the stories myself.

Photography Club - Aperture

Last week we had another installment of our photography club. We learned about aperture. Aperture is how much light the lens allows. It works in conjunction with shutter speed, which determines how long the light is allowed to enter. It's pretty straight forward, except that the smaller the f-stop (the scale of measurement that is used for aperture) the more light that is allowed in the lens. This is a very simplified definition of aperture.


My pre-digital textbook discussed depth of field along with aperture. Depth of field is the range in focus. Pictures that have the foreground, the background or both out of focus have a shorter depth of field. On the film camera in the book, it was very clear the relationship between aperture and depth of field. I was having trouble translating it to the digital camera. Fortunately, we had a guest "speaker" to our photography club. Our good friend, Mary, came to visit with us. She's an awesome photographer and gave us some instruction on photography and my kiddos new camera. As far as I understand, depth of field is defined by aperture. Now I just need a little hands-on experimenting to completely get my head around it :) I'll post pictures after we have another field trip!

Isn't It PRETTY!

OK, it's very similar to the picture in the post when I talked about shopping for a camera. But the shopping is done and now that camera is accessible! Although it's pretty funny to be taking a picture of a super-cool camera with my little PHD (push here dummy) camera. I am currently negotiating a "rental" agreement with my photography club buddy!

Camera Shopping

I took my photography buddy (one of my kiddos) camera shopping yesterday. My kiddo isn't ready to buy, we were looking at features and prices. Mostly, we were trying to figure out which camera model and the goal amount to save. After a disappointing trip to Ritz Camera (they closed a couple of months ago), we're thinking the Canon EOS T1i. Hopefully it will be in my kiddos hands within the next couple of months!

Photography Club Field Trip

OK, it was a field trip around the neighborhood, but we thought we'd get out and see if we could put anything we have learned into use. We learned two things:

1. We need to learn more.
2. We need cooler cameras!

Nevertheless, we had a good time. Here's a couple of pictures we took on our field trip.

Photography Club

We had another quick photography club meeting yesterday morning. We're still working through my old college photography textbook. We looked through a section of works from student photographer's entries into a photo contest and looked at them through the eye of the judges. Next meeting we'll start getting to the nuts and bolts of how cameras work.

Photography Club

One of my kiddos is interested in photography. Fortunately it is my wealthiest child. I enjoy photography, always drool over the cool SLR cameras, and I even took a photography class in college. Since I still have my old textbook (and I do mean old - it predates digital photography), we decided to start our own "Photography Club". We're going to start by going through my old textbook and learning the basics about cameras and composition. We started off last night by learning some of the different types of photography jobs. I lean toward the portrait/artistic type of photography. I'll leave the photojournalism to others with stronger nerves and stomachs!