My 52 Week Project : Week 13 {catch lights}

This week’s theme was catch lights.  Catch lights are basically “lights” in the subject’s eyes that kind of make the eyes “twinkle”.  I’m no expert on the subject, but I learned a bit about catch lights when I took Lynne Rigby’s Shooting 101 class from Clickin Moms a couple months ago.  A great way to achieve catch lights in your subject when you’re shooting inside is to have them face a window and you stand in between your subject and the window and have your back to the window.  Then the light from the window reflects in their eyes and you get that dreamy look.

These are two photos (I know, can you believe I’m submitting TWO photos ON TIME!!) of my daughter from this past week.  She is so hard to photograph because she’s always on the move...and she immediately runs when I get the camera out!  Fun stuff, I tell ya!  ;)  The first photo was achieved in the morning when the light is amazing coming in my dining room - there is a sliding glass door behind her and a large window behind me.  And, hey, she’s strapped into her highchair eating her breakfast...so she can’t run away from me!  ;)  The second photo is of her standing rightnexttome, which was a little difficult because she was so close and I was shooting with my 50mm lens.  I was sitting in a chair and she was playing with the lamp on the table next to the chair.  The catch lights in the second photo are from a combination of the huge picture window in our living room and from the lamp she was turning on.  I was surprised that the lighting worked out as well as it did in the second picture with having the two light sources.  A happy surprise!  ;)

Hoping everyone has a wonderful next week!

My 52 Week Project : Week 12 {white}

This Spring is going to be interesting for us as we get to know our new yard.  We moved into this house in October of last year, so we don’t really know what kind of plants and flowers we have in the yard yet.  Since Spring arrived early this year, we’ve seen some flowers starting to sprout up here and there already and are excited at what we’re seeing.  I think we might have tulips coming up, but I’m not that great with flowers.  Yes, I know what a tulip looks like, but so far the plants just have leaves, no budding of flowers yet!  I’m sure we’ll find out within the next week or so just what they are!  

This morning, when I was pondering what to capture for my theme this week - being the last day of the week and all, I looked out to our back yard and saw WHITE!!  At first glance I thought it was either daffodils or hyacinths.  I couldn’t really see the shape from inside.  So, after I put my daughter down for a nap, I grabbed my camera and headed outside to see if I was right on one of my guesses.  When I got out there,  I found that they were, in fact, daffodils.  Ha!  I was right!  ;)  The thing that threw my eyes off while I was inside, thinking they could be hyacinths, was this patch of ground cover just behind the daffodils - that I hadn’t seen until today either.  I have no idea what they’re called, but they sure are cute!  Since the daffodils weren’t really in good shape, I’m glad these guys were there, too, so I could snap a couple pictures of them - ya know, just in time to complete this week’s theme!  ‘Cause I’m a procrastinator...but you already knew that!  ;)

My 52 Week Project : Week 11 {motion}

Week eleven’s theme was motion...and it was really hard!  Hence the reason I’m REALLY late with my submission!  I tried just slowing my shutter speed down while shooting different subjects, but I wasn’t getting the effect I was looking for and I was getting really frustrated.  I thought about trying panning, but I couldn’t think of a good subject to try it on - I don’t think my daughter would be able to follow directions well enough at this age.

It was well past the submission “deadline” when I remembered reading about implying motion while zooming in Bryan Peterson’s book Understanding Exposure.  I thought it sounded like fun and I didn’t even have to have a moving subject.  All you have to do to imply motion while zooming with your camera is slow your shutter speed down long enough so that you can zoom your lens before it takes the picture.  Once you have your shutter speed slow enough (you may need to do a little trial and error with your settings) and you’ve got your exposure set correctly, then hit the shutter and quickly zoom your lens - either in or out, whichever is the opposite of how you started.  It’s not that difficult once you do it a couple times.  

The subject matter in my photo isn’t amazing, but I like the effect.  Now that I’ve tried this new technique, I think I will look for more interesting subjects to try it on and see what I can come up with!

Project Simplify 2012 : Week 1 {organizing kids' stuff}

Told ya I'd be back this week!  I just didn't think it would be this soon!  Thank God for toddler naps and ambition on my part!  :)

This year I have decided that I really need to, as I like to say, “get my crap together!”  I like to say that I’m an organized person and that I like things “just so”, but when it comes down to it, I WANT to be an organized person.  It is one of my heart’s strongest desires!  I love organized spaces and even drool over them when I see them on blogs, Pinterest, in magazines, etc.  I want that for my life so badly, but have never been able to obtain it.  Well, I have been following Simple Mom on facebook for a while now, I even have her book Organized Simplicity (although I haven’t read the whole thing yet, ha!), and I love her ideas, though haven’t implemented any of them yet.  Until now.  She has started a series, Project Simplify, and I am bound and determined to follow it.  The first week focuses on organizing kids’ stuff.  Since we only have one young child, you’d think we wouldn’t have that much kid stuff.  Wrong!  I don’t think Rylan even has as many toys as a lot of children and she STILL has way too much stuff!  And the clothes!  We have bags and bags full of clothes she’s already outgrown - and she’s only 18 months old!  I don’t know where we’re going to store all of this stuff as she keeps outgrowing toys and clothes, but I guess I’ll get to that eventually.  Also, I was under the impression that her room was relatively clean and under control - including her closet.  Now that I’ve been looking at the before and after pics, though, I know I was wrong!

Here are some before pictures of what we were dealing with...

And here are the afters.  Not perfect, by any means, but much, much better.  I feel like I can breathe when I try to get something out of her closet now! 

As you can see, we moved her toy box from her room and replaced it with her table.  The toys kept getting dragged into the living room anyway, so we put the toy box in there.  That way it's easier to clean up at night!  I still wanted her to be able to play in her room, so we put the table in there where she can color, read, or play with puzzles.  

Travis and I went through her closet together.  We put all the blankets in a bag and put them in storage in the basement.  I love the blankets and appreciate them since most of them were shower gifts, but a girl needs just so many blankets!  They were taking up valuable room and needed to move.  We also moved some of the junk on the floor to the basement and some of it went in her dresser - which you can see part of in some of the pics.  I've had an issue with that dresser because I really love the look of it and the storage it provides, but I hate that Rylan can (and does) get into it and take everything out!  It drives me nuts!  So I just put a few things in there for now.  Things that are easy to put back should they be taken out by a certain toddler's little hands!  :)

One big problem, which I suppose is a good problem to have, is that we have a TON of books for her.  Travis and I, for whatever reason, loved our own books growing up so much that we saved almost all of them!  So, Rylan has her own library right here in the house!  We still have a ton of books packed away, but we had to stop somewhere.  So, the books that are for older kids are packed away, the “in between” books (that I don’t want her ripping pages out of) are now in her closet, and the board books are on her shelves.  She obviously can’t reach them yet, but she asks for her books ALL THE TIME, so I’d rather not have to think about which ones she can and can’t play with by herself, unsupervised.  I like that the books that are displayed are the ones I don’t mind her being rough with and the more delicate books - for a little bit older children - are in her closet.  We can still read them to her, but I don’t really want her to have access to them just yet.  I think once we turn her room into a “big girl” room, we will rethink the book situation.  I want to display them like they are in the photos below someday.  That way she can reach them and grab whichever ones she wants. 

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I haven’t looked into what this week’s project/room is, but I’m already excited about it.  I really want to have less of my stuff hanging around the house.  And I think in the process, I will hopefully learn to let go of some things and learn to live with less.

My 52 Week Project : Week 10 {round}

Here is my submission for “round”.  Rylan and I have been eating blueberries by the handful lately!  We both LOVE them!  :)

Short and sweet again this week.  Sorry, but I have lots of other things on my mind.  I think this warmer weather gives me spring fever and makes me want to get a hundred projects done all at once!  :)  Hopefully I’ll be sharing a few more with you this week and/or next!

Have a wonderful week!  :)

My 52 Week Project : Week 9 {leading lines}

So, I’m late with week’s submission.  Surprise, surprise.  I didn’t have the best week and I’m just not feeling up to this right now, so I’ll keep it short and sweet.  

Here is my submission for leading lines.

Hope you all have a great rest of this week.  I have an idea for week 10’s theme and really hope I can deliver!  ;)