Category: Photography

A year is a really. long. time. And 365 pictures? A LOT of pictures. There’s only so much wandering around, camera gripped expectantly in one hand, that a girl can do in search of the perfect photo opportunity. Sometimes, you have to get a little silly.

There’s a group on Flickr called Theme of the Week (TOTW) that I’ve been following for months now, but only recently started playing along. The people who post there are really quite clever and creative — but have WAY more time on their hands than I seem to! The theme this week was “Literary Genius” and I couldn’t resist playing along.

You know I’m a Stephen King fan from way back, and I think the first line to the first novel of his Dark Tower series is perhaps one of the best opening lines of all time: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

(You like the cracked desert texture on that? The background is actually a beige plush blanket, but I layered the image with a photo of a cracked and rusted yellow pipe I drove past and stopped to photograph the day before. I didn’t end up using the pipe picture, but it sure adds a bit of desert character, doesn’t it? Have I mentioned how much I love photoshop? And Stephen King? And, erm, George Lucas?)

And then there’s this one, inspired by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Yesterday, I had TOTW and Douglas Adams in mind when a woman walked past me pushing her dog in a stroller.

I swear, I stopped dead in my tracks four steps past her, debated it for a nano-second, and turned around and asked the woman if I could take a photograph. It’s a stroller. for. dogs. If that’s not bizarre and inexplicable, I don’t know what is!

The silliness has been with me for quite some days now. The TOTW last week was “Lyrically Inspired.” I’ve walked past this stump near my house maybe three million times and have never been inspired by it — and then in a flash last Friday on the way home from work, it leapt out and smacked me with both a stinky pun AND a TOTW idea. I called it (*snicker, chortle*) “I’m stumped!” I crack me up!

And the lyrical inspiration? Why, Rush’s “The Trees”, of course!

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

(I was ridiculously pleased with myself for this stunning combination of spot-on theme adaptation, excellent musical taste and wretched punniness, and was quite disappointed when Beloved only rolled his eyes at my obvious self-delight and the photo garned a measly two comments on Flickr. Sheesh, tough crowd!)

Moving right along, there were some less silly things that I photographed this week as well. Well, this one has an inherent silliness about him, but that’s along with a whole bunch of other good stuff and not the entire reason I photographed him! I love the sparkle of mischief and personality in his eyes — pure Tristan.

Much as I love the boys’ adorable faces, I like their other parts, too! (This one had to be judiciously edited to remove a curve of rather adorable bathtime bum cheek to make it safe for Internet consumption but take my word for it, the version I kept for myself is even *more* adorable than this one!)

(Simon long ago coined the term “fancy” to mean the way your fingers and toes get all pruney in the bath. When your digits get fancy, it means it’s time to get out of the tub!)

And although, or perhaps because, it is now officially autumn, Mother Nature still has many colourful gifts to share.

I figure with all the google traffic I get searching for various sorts of “postcards”, I’d put this up to give the searchers their money’s worth:

This one wins the prize as the most vexatious photo of the week. I really liked it, and apparently so did lots of other people. It has tonnes of comments, and plenty of people have “favourited” it — but it stubbornly refuses to jump into Explore even though other pictures of mine with half the number of comments and faves are in Explore right now. Very strange.

Oh well, it’s still a pretty picture, and that’s the whole point, right?

Well, either it was a particularly beautiful week in the universe, or I’m actually getting good at this 365 thing, because I liked the pictures from this week a lot. A couple of days, I had a hard time choosing from very disparate shots (let alone the 16 shots I took of each composition!) to select a single picture of the day.

Of the week’s photos, I’m least fond of this one of the Laurier Avenue Bridge over the Rideau Canal. It’s okay, but I love this bridge and I didn’t manage to capture what I wanted to capture — the beauty of those iron supports, the grace of the structure. That’s why I put it in b&w, to emphasize the form. I think I might have liked it better if I could have taken it square on, but that would have meant taking a swim to the middle of the Canal, and I’m not *that* obsessed. Yet.

I have always loved the quality of the light in September. The sun is lower in the sky, so the light is more indirect and often dappled through the trees. It’s a golden, flattering light. And of course, the early changing leaves are spectacular in their brilliant colours. But even beyond that, there’s an incredible amount of beauty in the autumn that I never noticed before.

These grow in my back yard. I’m not sure what its called, but it turns the most gorgeous shades of purple, red and yellow as the season fades.

I’m pretty sure this is the last of the coneflower pictures for this season. Even mostly dead, though, they’re still pretty! (Suddenly, I’m having a Monty Python moment over here. “I’m not dead yet. Feeling much better, actually…”)

This sunflower still has lots of life left in her! Do you see how the colour is a little less than natural in this one, sort of a blue tone to it? I set the white balance to “fluorescent” in the RAW editor by accident, and loved how it looked. From there I desaturated it just a bit. I really like the effect. Of course, a happy yellow sunflower against a red maple background and a blue sky doesn’t necessarily *need* my mucking about with it, but I think it makes it look just a little bit different… not necessarily a bad thing?

On the other hand, I did nothing to enhance the colour on this sunrise. I swear, it really was this colour! (Well, I had to adjust the colour once I uploaded it to Flickr, because I’m having a weird problem with Flickr desaturating my photos this week, so I had to tweak it to get it back up to the level of vibrancy it had straight out of the camera. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m shooting this week RAW and Flickr can’t handle the colours or what, but it’s really annoying!)

This is another shot of the same sunrise. I love the pink striations and that hint of crescent moon!

Sometimes, taking the colour out of a colourful thing gives it a new kind of beauty. These mums were a vivid yellow, but I processed them in black and white. They look almost like they’re glowing, don’t they?

And sometimes, there just isn’t much colour to capture. I like the earthy tones of this garlic. (Annie from PhD In Parenting sent me a tweet one day after lunch, asking me if I’d been photographic garlic in the Market. I was! I wish she’d’ve spoken up, I’d’ve liked to meet her!)

I think this one is one of my favourite pictures this week. Something about the texture of the bricks, the peeling paint, that pop of purple against the red bricks… I love it! (And I had to adjust the colour again after I uploaded it to Flickr — I really wish I knew what was causing that!)

The same morning glory, closer to the ground. I desaturated this one for effect. It works, no?

Note to self: always, always, ALWAYS carry your camera with you. You never know when you’ll need it. This is the roof of the grocery store!

I’ve driven past this house on Fallowfield dozens of times, but it took my breath away when I glanced at it with the morning light streaming down on it. Doesn’t that porch seem like a magical kind of place? It stirs my imagination every time I look at it. There’s an entire novel that wants to be written about the magical things that happened around this porch, with the glowing light on one side and the wizened, dying shrub on the other.

And speaking of magical places, check out this curio shop. I swear I’ve covered every block in the Byward Market, looking for photo opportunities, but I’ve never noticed this shop on York Street before. I could spend hours just poking about, looking at stuff and taking pictures/ I was chatting with the curator, and she said she’d be happy to keep an eye open for antique cameras for my through-the-viewfinder project for me. I love how this shot turned out — if you look closely, you can see her reflected in the mirror on the table.

Last, but certainly not least… we were at the park with friends on the weekend. Six boys with a run of the playground, and this is where I found Tristan. This is not a set up. He climbed the tree, as he is wont to do, and then sent Simon to fetch his book for him. A little quirky, occasionally overcome by antisocial tendencies, a lover of books — that’s my boy!

As of today, 240 days down and only 125 days to go. Next Wednesday, I’m two-thirds of the way done…

Before I start with the pictures this week, I’d like to take a moment to say a huge thank you to all of you for your encouragement during my project 365 trip and especially on the launch of the Etsy shop this week. I was genuinely touched by your responsiveness, by your kind words, by the fact that you really do seem to like the photos I’ve taken. (I know, I’m having a Sally Field – “You like my pictures! You really like them!” – moment here… bear with me.)

Doing the 365 out loud on the Internet has been extremely validating, and interesting too. I’m fascinated by your responses to the images, which ones you like and which ones seem to slip by unremarked upon. Seeing the images filtered through your perspective has helped me learn in ways I didn’t expect. I don’t know that I would have had the stamina (or the pure bullish stubbornness) to complete the project if it weren’t for your feedback and interest. You really do inspire me! (cue the swelling orchestra…)

Okay, enough with the schmaltz and on with the pictures. Last Friday, I walked into my office, put my fresh coffee down on the desk, hung my camera and my purse on the coathook and was just about to sit down when I glanced out the window — and saw five giant hot air balloons floating by. I grabbed my camera (and scandalously, completely forgot about my coffee) and headed up to the seventh floor picture window where I had a gorgeous view of the morning launch of the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival, and the balloons floating over the Byward Market.

I loved the conjunction of the sun, the urban landscape and the balloons in this one.

It was a spectacularly photographable long weekend in Ottawa, as evidenced by my posts about the sunset at Britannia Beach and our Mud Lake adventure. In case you missed them, here’s my favourite picture of the sunset. I love the gradient, how the red hot sunlight light fades seamlessly into cold indigo darkness. (I was tempted to photoshop in a tiny, twinkling star right at the top, but I figured it was presumptuous to think I could improve on Mother Nature!)

And I love how this picture tells a rather timeless story of boys and adventure. (I went back to shooting in RAW this week — and for the first time, I can see the difference between RAW and JPEG files, especially in this one for some reason.)

I had the idea for this one in my head for a long time. The light in Lucas’s room during naptime is so nice and soft, and of course, baby toes are a favourite subject of mine. When he’d been asleep for about an hour on Saturday afternoon, I crept into his room and dared to snap a few shots because I loved the way the blankets were perfectly framing his foot. I love this one so much, it’s my new desktop image at work!

Because the blinds were drawn, I had to shoot at my D40’s highest ISO setting, which is part of the reason it has that soft, grainy quality. (If you can’t get more light and you can’t use flash and you don’t have a tripod or a motionless subject, boost your ISO!) It also has a light touch of one of the Pioneer Woman’s photoshop actions, just to enhance the softness. I am seriously addicted to those actions!

As much as I wanted the toes to be soft, I wanted this one to be super crisp and tack sharp. I missed just a bit on this shot, which is too bad because I like the concept. I was going to call it “Dare to be different!” (But I still liked it enough to make it my alternate shot of the day!)

Instead, I went with this one as the shot of the day. The composition isn’t as cheeky, but the focus is tack-sharp. It’s a tad dark, now that I look at it again — I think the brightness is cranked a little too high on the laptop where I do my photo editing. (My mom used to call these September grapes, so that’s what I call them. I think they’re really called Concord grapes. There is nothing like them! They’re one of the few foods that are still truly seasonal — you only get them for these first few weeks in September, and then you have to wait all year.)

(Do you like my sophisticated photo studio backdrop? It’s the top of my stove, right in between the two back burners!)

Like the grapes and the tomato, this shot was an attempt at storytelling that didn’t quite work out as I’d planned — but wasn’t enough of a miss to discard entirely. This was the first day since Lucas got mobile that we went to the park and I could take some time to just sit on the rocks and watch them play, instead of hovering over Lucas or rescuing him from peril. That’s what I was trying to express, that a perfect day at the park equals a bit of a break for mom and but fun for the kids. A near miss, but I still like it!

These shots of Simon and Lucas were just better images, even without the — or maybe because of the lack of? — scripting.

And this was another “scripted” image. I’d found the leaf and a few others like it in Major’s Hill Park, and wandered around for a while looking for interesting backdrops for them. I tried photographing them on some bricks (those were nice) and some cobblestones, and had just decided I’d had enough and was wandering into the Market for a coffee on my way back to work when I walked past the fountain at the intersection of York and Sussex. The square was full of people eating lunches on park benches, but that didn’t stop me from hopping up on the concrete lip of the fountain and throwing my leaves in, because I thought the colours in them would work really well with the bright sunlit water and the texture in the fountain.

Because I am so grateful for your attention, your feedback, and your support (and your patience!) I’ve decided to give away not one but FIVE free prints from the Etsy shop. See this post for details, but you have to leave your comment before midnight tonight, Friday September 11.

Who loves you baby? I do!

This week was the closest I ever came to missing a day. Somehow, all of Saturday slipped by without me taking a single picture. Then we had company for dinner, and still the camera sat neglected on the shelf. The guests left, we tidied up and I realized that I even though it was well past my bed time, I still had to pull something together for the photo of the day. Luckily, we had this lying around taking up space in the living room.

Let sleeping dogs lie — unless you are desperate for a photo subject and it’s dark and you’re otherwise flat out of inspiration and really just want to get it over with and go to bed yourself.

These little guys were in a shop in the Byward Market. Kind of sums up how I’ve been feeling this week!

(Hey, I just realized that they made it into Explore for a little while there. Kewl!)

This week, I’ve been playing with a new technique I read about way back in the beginning of my 365 project. It’s called TtV, or Through the Viewfinder. You take a picture through the viewfinder of another camera. In this case, I used my little FujiFinepix point and shoot, because it has a terrific macro setting that lets me get within one centimeter of my subject, and held it right up above the viewfinder of my ancient Brownie Hawkeye that my uncle gave me when I was a kid. Then I cropped the image right to the edge of the viewfinder. This is my first try:

It was surprisingly difficult to get everything aligned, which is why there’s a bit of a tilt to the composition. Ordinarily, I’d correct that in photoshop — but because I’m working within the frame of the viewfinder, I can’t correct it. The dark patches are the dust and scratches in the glass of the old Hawkeye.

Here’s another one I tried later in the week with Lucas. There’s a bit of a glare, which is why most people who do any amount of TtV work build contraptions with tubes attaching their digital camera to their viewfinder camera, blocking out all the extraneous light.

The Hawkeye isn’t the ideal camera for TtV, either. I’ve been scouring the flea markets and garage sales for an old Kodak Duaflex IV or a Starflex — let me know if you have one you’d like to part with!! I’m quite addicted to this now, and would like to try a lot more TtV stuff in the future. If you want to be blown away by the possibilities (or maybe it’s just me!) take a peek at the TtV Flickr group.

Of course, I filled some gaps with more conventional pictures this week, too. I took this picture just so I could title it “Show me your melons!”

And then there was this one, of one of the grand old maple trees in our neighbourhood, just starting to show the first blush of fall colour. (Oh, the colours! Think of the photo possibilities of all that fall colour! It’s *almost* enough to make up for the end of all those gorgeous summer flowers.)

And it’s always nice to capture a lovely sunrise, if for no other reason than the picture of the day is in the can by a quarter to seven in the morning! I like this one (snapped from the window of the bus on my way to work!) because of the funky flare shape, the bit of reflection on the silhouette of the railway crossing, and the hint of mist you can see on the fields to the right of the frame.

Of course, I couldn’t let the first day of school go by without commemorating the occasion!

And, speaking of milestones, the end of August means another monthly mosaic. August certainly was a colourful month!

1. 223:365 Back to school, 2. 222:365 TTV Fruitbowl, 3. 221:365 Let sleeping dogs lie, 4. 220:365 Colourful monsters, 5. 219:365 Fake TTV daisy, 6. 218:365 Hair-raising slide!, 7. 217:365 Garden spider and (*cringe*) egg sac, 8. 216:365 Granny and Lucas, 9. 215:365 Lion cub, 10. 214:365 Pug, 11. 213:365 The Black Tomato window, 12. 212:365 Damn hydro lines, 13. 211:365 Contraption, 14. 210:365 Peas, 15. 209:365 Cotton candy ice cream, 16. 208:365 I’ve lost my marbles!, 17. 207:365 The apple thief, 18. 206:365 Summertime in B&W, 19. 205:365 Beer bokeh, 20. 204:365 Doughnut, 21. 204:365 Not quite ripe, 22. 203:365 Connaught Building, 23. 202:365 The lost art of Sunday afternoon, 24. 201:365 Tristan in B&W, 25. 200:365 Colours, 26. 199:365 Weathervane, 27. 198:365 Toddler rage, 28. 197:365 Vintage rose, 29. 196:365 Buskerfest revisited, 30. 195:365 Jurassic Sean, 31. 194:365 Birthday beach bliss

This was one of those weeks that interesting subjects practically hurled themselves at my feet, begging to be photographed. (thank goodness!) I think I could have taken enough pictures to last well into November, if only I could save them up and use one each day.

Sadly, in November we won’t have any of these beauties standing regally in the sunshine, waiting to be admired:

(I loved how the sunflowers turned out so much that I turned it into a blog banner on the spot. Sunflowers used to be a motif of mine, back in the day, and I’ve always had a soft spot for them.)

These beauties grow to a height of six or seven feet in my mother’s garden. The black border and square format mimic a photographic technique that intrigues me called “through the viewfinder” or TTV. In real TTV, you take a picture through the viewfinder of another, usually antique, camera. I haven’t found the right camera for actually TTV yet, but I faked this one in Photoshop. (Yet another way you can use post-processing to add a little zip to an otherwise humdrum photo, IMHO.)

I ran into an old friend on the weekend who happens to be a professional photographer. We both had our cameras with us (of course!) but his was a D80 with an intriguing-looking lens on it. His kind offer of “go ahead and play with my camera, if you like” was barely out of his mouth when I had it in my hands, and it wasn’t long before I figured out his 28-105 mm lens nicely fit on my D40 as well. It doesn’t auto-focus on my camera (I’m running into more and more limitations with my entry-level dSLR these days) but it still takes a fine macro picture. Covet, covet, covet!!!

We’ve now concluded the “Nature is beautiful” portion of today’s presentation, and will procede with our “Ewwww, what was nature thinking?!” theme.

Take this spider, for instance. Please. (My apologies to Julie and any other arachnophobes out there. If it makes you feel any better, I can hardly look at the screen myself, and I’m not even particularly squeamish about spiders!) We found her on our back deck this week, she’s about the length of my thumb, and yes, that’s her *shudder* egg sac she’s sitting on. Filled with *shudder* up to a thousand itty bitty baby *shudder* spiders. She’s a ‘black and yellow agriope’, if you wanted to know, and she looks even more freaky large and up close, if you dare!

(Shortly after this photo was taken, Beloved scooped her and her egg sac up in a jar and we relocated them to the field across from our house. I simply would not have been able to sleep without nightmares of thousands of tiny spiders streaming in through every crack and crevice in the house! Did I mention *shudder*?)

And continuing with the “ugly is beautiful” theme, meet Winnie. She’s a pug, easily the snortiest, drooliest, gruntiest excuse for a dog I have ever met. Of course, I adored her on sight! She belongs to a friend of ours, and spent one night of her three-day vacation at the Humane Society after slipping out the door unnoticed. Luckily, she was reunited with her family the next morning.

(The boys were also enchanted with Winnie. The day after we met her, we took the boys to the SuperEx, and when Tristan won one of those water-squirt games — at a full table, nonetheless! — he chose a Pug Webkinz as his prize.)

Speaking of SuperEx, here’s another trio of adorable creatures. How many kids get to feed a lion cub her breakfast? She’s about seven months old — and apparently, she was starving! The boys held her for at least 10 minutes, and I think I’ve got about 35 versions of this picture in my camera. Thank goodness I brought the telephoto lens for a nice close-up!

Of all the photos from Papa Lou’s Excellent Hot Air Balloon Adventure, I finally chose this one as my favourite. I like the perspective that Granny and Lucas add to the giant balloon (I took this lying on my back!) and the way my Mom’s white jacket and pants compliment the red-green-blues of the balloon, the grass and the sky.

I particularly liked this one as well. I like the triangle created by the balloon, the watchers and my shadow — how cute is her body language, waving to the balloon? — and the way all the shadows point toward the balloon. (The triangle was intentional, the shadows are just a lucky fluke!)

This is my favourite photo this week. It’s not the best exposure, and even the composition is a little off — but, you have to move quickly when you’re taking a picture of Lucas in action! IMHO, though, the standing-up hair is priceless, as is the expression on Tristan’s face as he comes down the slide behind Lucas.

Years down the line, these are the pictures that will matter. Sometimes, the best pictures make up for in joy what they lack in artistry.

This week, I spent a lot of time wishing I was less stringent with my own damn project rules. I took dozens of great pictures on two days this week, and spent the other five in a mild state of panic trying to find the shot of the day. NEXT time, it’s going to be seven shots in seven days, or something equally forgiving.

The good news is, I now have the entire family trained not only to indulge me and be patient while I haul my camera around like a life support system, but to actually find excellent photo opportunities for me. My favourite shot this week is a great example of that. I was busy snapping pictures of stacked paperbacks at the flea market when Beloved pointed out this basket of marbles shining in the midday sun. This one was my 10th picture to make it to Flickr’s fickle “Explore“.

I don’t have a segue for this one — I just love it, though. I converted it to b&w because in the harsh, bright sunlight I found the colours were too vivid and actually distracted from the interaction between Lucas and Beloved. Lukey stands out from the trees better in b&w, and you can better see they’re looking right at each other. (This was taken at the little wading pool off Pinecrest in Linda Park — a highly endorsed spot for a bit of cooling off on a sweltering summer morning!)

You’ve seen this one already, too. In addition to its ridiculously high cute-factor score, I like this one because of the contrasting orange and blue. I had to crop it hard on the right side because the light from the patio door was distracting, and I wish the highlight on the table wasn’t so blown out, but it still works!

Did I mention it was hot this week? Really, stinkin’ hot. After losing all of July and most of August to the summer that never was, I certainly won’t complain about a little heat wave, but we spent a lot of time this week looking for ways to stay cool. Simon thought this cotton-candy ice cream cone did the trick! (See note above about desperate scrambling for a picture at the end of the day!)

Apparently I had a subconscious theme of “kids eating stuff” going on this week. I’d originally taken this picture and posted it on Flickr in this version, but I’d asked for opinions as to whether I should crop to remove the bit of bib in the corner or leave it in.

My friendly Flickr peeps recommended a square crop, which I never think to do. This is the final result. What do you think?

Even though Beloved and I have both gone back to work after a fun summer, we managed to take a mid-week Wednesday off and cram in one last family excursion, this time to Valleyview Little Animal Farm. (Blog post to follow!) Like the flea market, it was a wealth of photo opportunities and if I’m ever stuck for subjects I may just fork over the $6.50 to get in and take some more photographs in their most excellent antique farm equipment museum. I can’t remember exactly what this contraption is, but I think it makes for a fascinating photograph with all that chipped paint and mysterious mechanical bits.

This was my alternate pic-of-the-day from Valleyview. I was down on my hunkers taking a picture of this guy when he hissed with enough rancour to scare me back about four feet with a single jump, even though there was a wire fence between us. Geese are mean birds – no wonder people eat them! (Don’t you love his blue eye, though? He’s looking at you!)

Yesterday morning before the clouds set in for good, I was lucky enough to catch this gorgeous sunrise on my way to work. When I was reviewing my shots last night, I almost discarded this one because of the power lines (in fact, the picture is called “Damn hydro lines!”) but the more I look at it, the more I think that they might even add to the composition.

This is the same sunrise, taken just a couple of minutes earlier.

Both photographs are straight out of the camera — no post processing except to add my watermark, and I cropped the second one to pull the sun out of dead centre. (Note to self: stop centering your subjects in the middle of the frame!!!) The difference is that in the first photograph, I exposed for the sky and in the second one I zoomed in a bit more and exposed for the sun. In the first, the camera let in more light, so you see the blues and the clouds. In the second, because I exposed for the bright sun, the camera tried to compensate by dimming the exposure, letting in less light and bringing up the reds in the spectrum. Neat, eh?

This wasn’t the most exciting week from a photographic perspective. The 365 project is like that — day in and day out, some days are just going to be better than others!

As I mentioned a while back, I got an SB-600 flash for my birthday, but haven’t had much of a chance to play with it. I’d asked a couple of different salespeople whether there was some way to get the flash off the camera, and kept being told there were no options for the D40, I’d have to upgrade to the D90. (Sigh) Then last Saturday, with a couple of Henry’s birthday gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, I stopped in to buy a replacement memory card and asked one last time, and the guy said, ‘Sure, you want one of these!” and pulled out a cable. Yippee!!!

I feel like I’m learning photography all over again with the flash, but it’s fun to play with! I think maybe the flash is a little too harsh here, and I should have diffused it more, but I love the way it brings out his beautiful eyes.

Flash photography and b&w are both a bit of a mystery to me yet, but I’m learning to experiment more outside my comfort zone. This is the alternate shot of the day, and I dialed back opacity of the b&w layer in photoshop, so you can see just a hint of colour bleeding in.

This picture goes with my underlying theme of the week: the chaos of three kids. (Can you tell I’m fresh off three weeks in the house with EVERYONE?) Even though this is my favourite way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon, I honestly can’t remember the last time I sat down like this.

This is the Connaught Building, a gorgeous old building that has housed Customs operations since the days when they’d bring their entire horse-drawn wagon through giant doors and right into the first floor of the building. It also happens to be my current office building and I’ve been trying to find a way to do it justice since I started my 365 project. I think the screen of purple flowers gives it just the right romantic feel, doesn’t it? The building should be a little bit more out of focus, I think, but I had the wrong lens on the camera for that.

I’ve been stalking this tomato in the garden for quite some time. No signs of ripeness yet, but I’m trying to be patient! I used a wide-open aperture and backlighting to make the little hairs on the stems stand out like that.

Speaking of green and wide-open apertures… I actually already have a nice bokeh shot of the morning dew glistening on the grass from earlier this spring, but Lucas and I went on a long walk on morning not long after sunrise and I couldn’t resist the sun gleaming like gemstones on the dewy grass. All those circles in the top part of the frame are just out-of-focus dew drops. Kewl, eh?

And more fun with focus on this one! Actually, this was almost an out-take. I noticed the Coronas in the ice bucket and liked the repeating pattern and the way the light was hitting everything, but I didn’t realize I had my aperture wide open. When I first looked at the image when I was sorting things at the end of the day, I almost discarded this one, then realized that the out-of-focus beer kind of tells its own story!

This is my favourite shot of the week. Again, it was an intentional play with focus. I love the details in the powder on his fingers, the perfect crescent-shaped bite, and how his lips are smacking in the background!

Baby’s first doughnut. It’s all capturing about the milestones!