City Life.

Heading into the big city later today. Hoping to get some shots. I've been such a slacker!! In the meantime, here are a few more that I played with the other day.

Just another...

 

M

Hipster in the Snow

Family Portraits.

Found a few pictures from Mardi Gras that I decided to play with today.

(Comments/critiques are fully welcome. I have a long way to go with finding my photographic "voice", so to speak, and a really long way to go technically, so any input is welcome.)

Daddy Whistling

Grandma Waiting for the Throws

Always Waiting

Lost.

Not really me. I'm doing pretty good at the moment. But I keep feeling that this blogs needs to be something, that I need to be putting something of myself out there, but not... ugh. I don't know.

So, hodgepodge. Scattered focus. ADD.

Yeah. I'll work on that. Right about...

Shiny! Yeah, not like anyone sees any of this but me. Lalala.

Have a lot of projects in the works. Eldest is starting at the local community college for her junior year of high school, so all of a sudden our laid back, unschooly house feels, well, schooly. I'm not sure how I feel about that. But it has me focusing on math, for the twins, the eldest, and myself.

I've been playing on khanacademy.org. It's fun. Even Bug Boy seems happy on it. We'll see how long that lasts.

I've been wanting to get back to taking pictures, but I'm not seeing things through that eye at the moment. This particularly sucks because I have these awesome film cameras just no inspiration at the moment.

We've been working on rehabbing Michael. He's getting stronger, rebuilding muscle, all is well.

Been right about a year since I quit smoking and started vapeing. I still love it. Haven't touched a tobacco cigarette since July of last year. Also lost some weight. Nothing much. Can't really see it. But hey, I quit smoking and didn't gain weight. At all. Whooohoo!

Speaking about photos (I was, wasn't I?), I've been going back through some older pictures and looking at them with new eyes. I seldom get the picture I see in my head, and I need to work on that. But compositionally (is that a word?) I like a lot of what I take. The colors and focus and such may not be where I want them to be, but I'm guessing (hoping?) that just comes with practice. So I've been playing in post-processing with some photos I originally considered marginal, or were flat out mad about taking. Play with the color, crop a little from the edges, add some effects then remove them just to see the picture from a different point of view. And I'm liking what I'm seeing, for the most part. So that's something.

Projects, projects, projects:

• Math taker
• Math teacher
• Everything else teacher
• Physical therapist
• Photographer (or post-processer, or wannabe, or something)
• Organizer
• Researcher of stuff for congregational anniversary
• Planner of family things
• Sanity keeper
• Wife

Yeah, guess which of those don't happen?

So, that's what's on my mind tonight. I'll leave you (me) with a couple-few redone pictures from 2013.

Allium

Bird in a Field

Random Guy in Park at St. Louis Arch

Getting Ready for Bugs

Carrots! Yum!

Back in April, I posted about planting carrots. Sunday, we enjoyed the fruits (two of them in fact, well, I guess the roots) of the harvest!

Molly was so incredibly excited. The Little Finger carrots seem about perfect size. The Atomic Purples are still a little short and thin, even though the plan was to harvest them small. I suppose that's a good thing, because apparently Molly keeps checking which one she's pulling, and recovers it if it's a purple, because she claims she likes the orange better. She sure ate the purple, and its greens, like it was going out of style!

I have to say, the raised box of carrots has been wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. It took some time to mix up the soil mix we used (peat, a couple of types of compost, some vermiculite) but we have had absolutely no maintenance to do. Molly watered on a daily basis in the beginning when it didn't rain, and about every other day once they got to decent size. And by "watering" I mean she filled up a small watering can, squatted down, and poured it around the box haphazardly while she chatted with the plants. No weeding. No stressing. Oh, and harvesting? Yeah, we followed the greens to a root, she used her little index finger to loosen the soil around the top (mostly to check the color), and we gently tugged to pull them out. Rinsed off in hose water, munched right there. If you look closely on the purple carrot, it has already had a bite taken off of it.

I'm already working on deciding how to set up raised beds over than whole section of yard for next spring. We'll also probably plant some carrots for fall in this bed once it's fully harvested, as well as a second we'll make and put right next to it.

Yay carrots!

Howdy Stranger.

It's been a while since I posted. It's been a rough month. Let's correct that: It's been a rough several months. There have been a lot of changes happening here, and while ultimately they are all for the best, they still bring growing pains. I don't like growing pains. Really.

This past week I've tried to stay lower carb than I had been. I finally started feeling rather decent. Yesterday I blew that with a couple of huge iced drinks from Starbucks and some fries at Red Robin. But that's okay. On a whole-week basis, the difference is huge.

I went for a walk this week. I stayed home for 8 days. Okay, that may not sound good, but for me, it is. Normally I find excuses to leave home strictly because my anxiety levels are maxing out. I did have to miss the graduation ceremony and party for some dear young friends, but that was because I was feeling rather sick last Saturday... sadly, likely my blood sugar going nuts from too much junk food and not enough protein. Yesterday I went to the St. Louis Arch and took pictures of strangers. Stalking people is amusing. And I've found that no matter the age, nationality, race, sex, etc., nearly everyone acts the same at the Arch. It was amusing, and enlightening.

I was lucky enough that a little two year old saw me aiming my camera at her, and came running to me. Her dad let me take a gazillion pictures of her while they were waiting for her mommy. Unfortunately, the light had changed and I didn't adjust my camera settings, so they were grainy and blurry. Some were salvageable, however, and I hope they like them (dad gave me his email address). And when I came to the computer this morning, I found that I had inadvertently taken a picture of the two of them earlier. So, here's that picture (as it doesn't reveal their identity), and a spare.

Some photo progress.

I'm getting a little bit better handle on this camera thing. Yesterday was the local Homeschool Prom, and they have a tradition of taking pictures outside in the late afternoon before heading to dinner then the dance. Last year, I took a ton of pictures, and very few were usable without hefty editing. This year, a good 80% or more were sharp as a tack, and didn't need as much cropping. So, I'm getting the concept of working in natural light down a bit better, as well as framing on the first shot rather than taking a larger scene and hoping that there's a usable crop in there somewhere.

I don't want to post anything here without the permission of the other kids' parents, so I'll just throw in one of the solo shots of Alexis, unedited. No color fixes, no sharpening, no cropping, nothing, just SOOC. Tada!

My baby!!

Next weekend, a nearby small town is having a local festival. I'm tempted to go and shoot pictures of random people. I need to get over my feeling that I'm creeping people out by aiming a camera at them. Well, maybe I am creeping them out. Still, it would be good practice. We'll see.

Playing.

My dear mother- and father-in-law are visiting for a week or two. Today they played outside with the kids, and I was able to get a few pics of the little brats that actually turned out okay. I LOVE the smile on Michael's face, but I have that horrible merge with the playset ring. Bah!!!

Warrior Girl

Smiling!

When did she grow up?

Photo Play

Just a few more images from our time Down South that I happened to actually like without much editing on most of them. (Edit: Posting them on the blog loses some of the sharpness, or oversharpens, or something, particularly the street view pic.)

Grandma

Michael made a new friend

Street Guitar Banjo Cymbals Thingamajig

Bottlecap/Tincan Tap Boys

New Orleans Street View

Pretty Pictures.

I love taking photos. I do decently, considering my hands shake - a lot - and I just can't seem to learn my camera and get it to see what I want it to see.

That's my biggest issue there: getting the camera to see what I see. I still feel like I'm just taking snapshots. I look at the photos that my friends take (unedited, SOOC shots, groups of them not just the "chosen few"). I can't get my camera to do that. It's a user issue, not a camera issue, for the most part. I would like to get another lens or two that go outside of the kit lens that came with my camera. But really, the biggest issue is me.

I keep scoffing at taking a photography class, but I think I'm going to have to. I just can't wrap my head around certain things about SLR photography.

So this isn't a totally pointless post, here are some edited photos I took over our Spring vacation. I had to do the photos of the kids before my parents shot me, but I did get some shots in New Orleans that I'm itching to get to working on.

Grow little carrots!!

Today Molly and I worked outside, building a 2x2 raised bed for her carrots. It's our first raised bed, as well as our first time planting carrots.

I mean, they're generally $1 per pound, why plant? But I've gotten very interested in playing with heirloom veggies. And gardening is such a huge learning curve.

My husband's congregation takes very good care of us, and while we aren't rolling in the dough, we are comfortable. But the economy has been hard on this area. Our congregation is aging and shrinking. Taxes are, quite frankly, eating us alive, and with just the few changes I know about, our tax bill will likely triple next year. So while growing our own food is not a necessity at the moment, it's a huge part of my long term plan. The more we grow, the less we buy, and the less we drive.

I'll save my rant about the state of the country's food supply and my growing ickyness about what we put in our bodies on a regular basis for another post. Sometimes I feel hypocritical munching on Doritos and bitching about GMO corn, but it is what it is.

But today, just today, it wasn't about taxes and toxic chemicals and GMOs. It was about an awesome day of work, in the sunshine, with my beautiful girl who cannot wait to pull and munch her first Little Finger or Atomic Purple carrot out of soil she mixed herself in a box she helped to build.

Playing with Photography

Focal length: 18mm
Exposure time: 1/20
f/3.9
ISO 800

Subject: Birdie
Date: 11/22/2012
Edited: Playing in Picasa