Halloween (finally!)

    

 There is a real problem with studying photography and being a perfectionist. It makes you think that every photo you take has to be perfect, especially as the holidays come around. After all, I began this whole photography thing as a way to have better photos to scrap. Despite my best intentions, by the time the kids were dressed up in their costumes on Halloween night, I had lost the light. I'm not terribly comfortable with the flash yet (especially as my camera broke and I've been using a loaner one from school that is older than mine and I can't control it as completely as I can mine). So I improvised and made them dress up for me again this weekend so I could get good pics...of course what any good mom would do, right?







 
Bailey was not decided about what she wanted to be for Halloween until we were at the costume store and saw this costume. Then I told her about the artist behind the piece that this costume was inspired by and she really loved it. Of course, it took the cake when I found this wolf's head in a basket. I could never get her to wear the hood, but I think she made a pretty cute Red anyway.


Cole had a really hard time finding what he was going to dress up as this year. He really wanted to be a ninja, but the costumes were all too small. He's at that size where the boy costumes are too small and the teenage costumes are too big. He kept saying, well, maybe I'll be Luigi until he finally tried on the costume and he was hooked. If we had more time, we were going to make him a brick for over his head, but time escaped us this year. Maybe next year!


By contrast, Lindsay has known what she was going to dress up as for a whole year. The nice part for me is that she could use Cole's Harry costume from last year, we just found her some cute Gryffindor knee highs and a cute little skirt and she was in business. We tried really hard to get her hair to be "poofy" (her word to describe it) like Hermione's, but she has hair just like her mama: stick straight and unwilling to style. I thought she was a cute little Hermione anyway.




For the first time, Jason and I both dressed up for the ward Trunk or Treat this year too (of course, being behind the camera, there is not actually any proof of this, but I swear I did!). When Jason and I were shopping for costumes, I had an idea of what I wanted to be, and I was really hoping to get J to dress up as a couple with me, but that didn't work out. Then he was going to be Mario for Cole but they didn't have a costume in his size by the time we went out looking for us. I did think it was pretty clever, though, when he decided to dress up as Jason. I really loved how goofy he was at the trunk or treat too (although he would end up scaring the little kids a little until he took off his mask to show them it was really Brother Mauss--of course, they don't know that he's even scarier than Jason!). It's always fun to see people you only see dressed up in church clothes actually dressed in costumes and there were some pretty funny ones. Although we were so rushed this year that we didn't really have time to enjoy it, I love Halloween. Of course, the weather wasn't really cooperating leading up to it, but finally on Halloween it cooled down a little and gave us a little taste of fall. Having lived in Arizona for 5 years, this has definitely become my favorite time of year!

Second photo shoot

 Soccer this year is seriously crazy for two reasons. First is because I decided not to put the kids in the City of Surprise soccer program because I felt like they weren't really learning how to play the game. Instead I signed them up for AYSO which is 30 minutes away for practices and games. Second is because my kids were put on teams that practice opposite nights (of course!). (On a side note, the kids practice at my college, so add in another couple trips to and from the same location for school and you'll see where my sanity has been for soccer season). Lucky for me we were able to find someone on each team we could carpool with or I would be even more insane than I already am. The family that Lindsay plays with has a daughter that plays as well, so when we carpool, I get to have the older sister as well. She's a real cutie, and when she first found out I'm taking photography, she and her mom made sure to tell me that Emily loves having her picture taken. So when it came time to work on the rule of thirds, I thought she would make a perfect model, so I set up a time to borrow Emily for a little photo shoot. Apparently she was so excited when she found out that she screamed, so I know she'll be good for more photo shoots in the future.

When I got there to pick her up, Emily was all dolled up and ready to go. I had spent the morning walking around where we live trying to find a good location and I found this great place really close to my house.

Emily was a great model, did everything I asked her to and was patient as I tried to get what I needed for my assignment. I'll definitely be using her in the future since it was a cinch taking her photo. I'm pretty pleased with the results, so I hope her parents like the photos when I give them to the family on Saturday.

 

Of course some of my favorite shots came when she wasn't exactly expecting it. It shocked her the first time when I snapped pictures of her swatting flies, so I just let her know that anything was fair game. So as we got to the end of the shoot, she was getting a little hot and started pulling her hair off her neck. I thought it was cute so I asked her to do it again, and this is what I got from her:

 

Definitely one of my favorite shots from the day. I had so much fun with her, I can't wait to work with her again!

 

Another assignment post

I think all I've posted about lately has been photography, but it sure feels like that's all I've done (well, other than driving my kids everywhere, but that's not really fun to hear about). The assignment we had this week was to learn how to control the depth of field in the photograph, so we needed 30 short depth of field photos and 30 long depth of field photos. My long depth of field photos were really terrible, so I'm not going to post any of them here, but I was pretty pleased with some of my short depth of field. This is my friend's little girl, and it definitely helps to come out with nice photos when you start with such a beautiful subject. She had me laughing too because she was a total diva. First I was going to shoot her inside, but there wasn't enough light. I suggested we go outside thinking we'd go in her backyard, and she insists that we need to go to the park across from her house. After we'd been at the park for a little while, I asked her if she could stand somewhere for me, she says, "No, Jessica, I need to get some water!". After the water, I convinced her to go in her backyard, and I suggested we try to take some near the pool, she refused to go in the pool gate ("No, I'm not allowed!"). She's such a funny little girl and I love her dearly, so it was a lot of fun to work with her. I asked her if she'd let me take pictures of her again and she said yes, so I hope to have some more fun with her soon.

New toys and time to play

Another quickie, but I'm so excited that I got a new toy today.

I even got the time to play with it a little and took some pictures of the page I worked on yesterday and Bailey's invitation for her birthday party.

I totally moved furniture around today just to be make my own little studio so my pictures would come out better. Can I just say how much I love photography? And the best part, I think, is that they're only going to get better. :D

A quick card

This was for my card club this last month. I haven't found the time to be crafty lately other than to rush making my daughter's birthday invitations, so I thought I would post this one. I absolutely love the colors in this card and desperately need to buy more of this paper before it goes away! And I've been having a great time using my markers now that I sort of know how to use them so my images are popping a little more. I just need more time to practice now!

More photos

I'm behind on sharing my photographs for class, so here's one more assignment before I start taking the pictures for the next assignment.

This assignment, we were supposed to practice using the three motion techniques (stop action, blur, and panning) in a creative way. I really struggled with this assignment, not the techniques so much (well, definitely panning, but if you've ever done it, you know how hard it is to master!) but the creative aspect of it. I drove all over taking photos of different things without coming up with something that I really liked. Finally I decided to just have fun with my kids, and sure enough, that's all I needed to do.

I got down into the pool and had them run and jump over me into the pool while shooting the entire time. I think I ended up with over a hundred pictures, most of which aren't great, but this group turned out pretty good.

I really liked this one, I just wish I hadn't got the sun flare right in his face. I tried having the kids jump the other direction away from the sun, but the house in the background just took a lot away from the pictures. But I really love how the sun lit up the water beneath him and his splash down into the water. 

This is the one I presented in class. I love how it looks like he's stepping on the frame of the picture or that he looks like he's walking in the air. Hopefully I learned my lesson from this experience, and instead of driving all over trying to get different things, maybe I should focus my lens on my favorite subjects and work on getting better pictures of them. That is why I started taking this class, after all, so that I had better photos to scrap (now if only I could find the time to scrap!).

Bad blogger

So I'm a bad blogger...and this post isn't really going to cure that because it will mostly be pictures. But, I wanted to catch up a little on my progress in my photography class. I'm having so much fun learning all about photography, hopefully it shows in my photos. 

For this assignment, we were supposed to find our subject we wanted to photograph and then break it down into five smaller close up shots instead of just one overall photo. I immediately thought of a few ideas of what I could do with my son while he was playing with his toys, so Cole was my (sometimes un)willing subject.

This started out as a different photo. I focused on his feet because he does this really weird thing with his toes and I wanted him to do that in the photo, but I couldn't get the shot I wanted with him messing with his feet. I really liked how it turned out though because this is the position he is in a lot of times while he's playing with his toys.

This kid's hair is always sticking up all over the place, so I had to get one of the cowlick.

When I first got Cole into Star Wars at age 4, he was too young for the larger, more breakable action figures, but I found these little guys and we started his collection. He now has hundreds of them and he's never wanted the larger action figures. Even at ten, he still plays with these one. You can see the wear on Luke, how much Cole plays with this toy.

This one is my favorite and the reason I started photographing Cole at all. This boy is always carrying Legos around in his pockets and I knew I wanted to do something that showed that, and I was super pleased with how this photo came out.