Month: February 2011

The good thing is: I’m really not stressing over the 365 project this time around. The bad things is: I’m “settling” for a picture of the day a lot more.

Like this shot of the boys. It was 6:25 am when I shot it, and I was just on my way out the door to go to work when I noticed they were cuddled up together on the love seat watching TV. Lucas and Simon are like oil and water more often than not, so I grabbed my camera and clicked off one shot. It was adorable when I looked in the LED, and I didn’t take another picture all day, safe in the knowledge that I had a worthy picture of the day.

Then at the very end of the day I pulled the memory card out of my camera and got a good look at the picture in Lightroom and realized it’s horribly noisy because I was shooting at 1600 ISO to compensate for the fact that the sun hadn’t come up yet, and Lucas is just in front of the plane of focus, and the highlights on his hair are completely blown out. Oh well. It still makes me happy when I look at it.

From a technical standpoint, this is a much better picture. It also makes me happy! This is Family Day, in the driveway.

More Family Day fun – Lucas thinks he’s a zamboni on his tricycle!

And Simon the future NHL star:

I kept hearing people rave about the iPhone camera app Hipstamatic, so I ponied up $1.99 to try it out. The lenses and effects are alright, similar to what I have in my other apps, but for this one you have to set your lens and film before you take the shot rather than in post-processing. And the viewfinder makes me a little crazy because it’s not like an SLR where you get an accurate picture, it’s like a point and shoot and they really exaggerate the effect. Meh, I’m not sure about this one. I tested it out on my old favourite, the Underwood typewriter.

Speaking of vintage and cameras, Lara and Angela have inspired me to take a few more self-portraits. Here’s vintage me with my Duaflex:

This was a TtV self-portrait, but I almost deleted it. I really didn’t like the original composition, but with TtV you’re very much bound by what’s inside the viewfinder frame (unless you’re much better with photoshop than I am!) I cropped out the viewfinder and the right half of the frame and ended up loving how this one came out with a bit of a vintage vibe and those crazy roses that are now two weeks old and holding! (Note to self: time to clean the dust off the viewfinder. I know some people like their TtV gritty, but I prefer it clean.)

And more vintage: this is one of the beauties from my camera collection. It’s a Kodak Brownie Starflex, and was manufactured some time between 1957 and 1964. I’d bought it for $20, hoping to use it for TtV, but I’m more partial to the Duaflex viewfinder. It’s still a lovely little camera, though! I ended up using this shot in the banner for my new photography site on a whim, and I think it works well with the typewriter font.

See, even my photography is fixated on photography this week. I am truly an obsessive creature.

This has been a really challenging week for my 365 project, mostly because I was embroiled with two sick kids, a sick caregiver, and a secret project that sucked up ALL my spare time (and more than a bit of my not-so-spare time as well!). More about the secret project later.

So here’s what caught my fancy this week!

Here’s your weekly dose of cuteness. He’s reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, one of our new favourite books.

We’ve spent a lot of time haunting the Manotick branch of the public library lately. Conveniently, we moved into a house just around the corner from the library just about the same time as my mother, otherwise known as my main paperback supplier, bought herself a Kindle — and my stream of free paperbacks dried up overnight. This is the centre of the kids’ section of the Manotick library, where Lucas is “reading” a book about potty training to Tristan. The funky frame is courtesy of the Camera+ app on my iPhone. (I don’t know what I love more, the giant colourful sunburst, Lucas reading to Tristan, or the fact that the page he is reading is covered in underwear!)

From warm and fuzzy to cold and wet — I took this one from the narrow bridge on Jockvale near Stonebridge, but no matter how much I played with it, I couldn’t quite make it what I wanted of it. It’s one of those “good enough, and I’ve got nothing else for today” shots, I suppose.

Speaking of good enough, this one is really a bit of a mulligan. I spent hours glued to my computer on Sunday working on that secret project I mentioned, and by the end of the day had nothing really to show for it — and no picture for the day, either. So I took this with my iPhone and called it “Time Sink” because that’s what the computer can be sometimes. Um, often.

On Valentine’s Day, although Beloved and I had agreed not to get each other any gifts, I came home from work to a dozen of the most beautiful fresh red roses I’ve ever seen. (Good thing I’d picked some chocolates up for him, too!) And I’ve been loving those roses all week!

First, Valentine TtV roses:

Then, roses with a hint of cross-processing:

Roses desaturated in black and white:

And finally (for this week, at least, as they’re still going strong!!) roses with a hint of sunshine:

I think they got better as the week progressed — that last one is definitely my favourite. 🙂

Oh, and did I mention my secret project? Yeah, it’s really not so secret since I outed myself last night on Twitter, and I’ve actually been screwing up my courage to tell you about it here all week.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the schoolyard fence waiting for the boys and got to talking with some of the moms and dads, and one mentioned going to Sears to get portraits done and how she wasn’t really thrilled with the results. I mentioned that I really like to take family pictures, and we got to chatting. She asked me for my website, and I gave her this URL. A couple of days later, she came back and asked me where the information about my photography business was, and I hemmed and hawed a bit and said, “Well, that’s pretty much it.”

It got me thinking, though. I’ve been toying with the idea of putting up a separate photography blog ever since I started my first 365 back in January of 2009, and even toyed with a few themes and galleries, but nothing ever worked for me. I tried building a gallery with Lightroom, but the results were underwhelming.

Last week, with the help of a few friends on Twitter, I finally found a workable (and free!) WordPress theme and installed it. I spent WAY too much time sorting through some of my favourite pictures, and came up with a result that is not quite perfect, but at least worth sharing at this point.

With butterflies in my tummy, and wondering what the hell I am thinking, I am thrilled and terrified to pull back the curtain and show you my latest cockamamie scheme, Mothership Photography.

Eek!

Gah, I am so. sick. of. winter. So sick of snow, cold, wind — and the forecast is calling for three dumps of snow in the next three days.

That’s what I had in mind when I took this picture — STOP winter NOW! (I like this because it’s selective colouring but without the post-processing. I didn’t do much to this image except to tweak the exposure a bit.)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, here’s some soft and fuzzy and fresh from a warm bath to warm you up!

One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing the post that’s rattling around in my head about how we’ve started going to church now. Not every week, but every couple of weeks at least. I like our new church and Father Dan, and I really like these gorgeous sacred candles. I hope it wasn’t disrespectful of me to snap this, but I couldn’t resist the colours.

I took this one with my iPhone one night as the sun was setting (thus the bit of orangey-pink in the bottom right corner). I tweaked the colour of the sky to that turquoise colour with an app called FX Photo Studio. I wish I had a better telephoto to bring that crescent moon a little closer!

Yesterday was the 100th day of school, and the kids were doing special projects. Simon had the number 42 and was gluing 42 mini-marshmallows to it while I made Douglas Adams jokes that sailed clear over their heads. (Tell me somebody gets that reference?) Anyway, I loved the almost straight-on side light and the shadows, so I caught this picture.

Rather unfortunately, while I was busy uploading this to the computer, the toddler tyrant precocious preschooler got into it and ate his gluey way from 42 down to 37 marshmallows before anybody noticed!

And speaking of the precocious preschooler, here’s a couple of shots from his birthday last Tuesday.

Damn cute, isn’t he?