THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 28

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 28 - THE FUTURE. Weeb and I were having a little cuddle in my room tonight, reading and telling stories. She got all comfy and hid between a couple of pillows. I peeked into the pillows and found this little face. I love this face. My hope for the future is that this little face continues to smile and be sweet and curious and funny. And my hope for the future is that I get to see and enjoy this little face for a long, long time to come.

THANK YOU. My thanks to Willette Photography & More for hosting THE JOY OF LOVE. And my thanks to all the people who stopped by my blog and offered words of encouragement - I very much appreciate the support and the company. Finally, my thanks to my wonderful daughter and to my amazing husband who both put up with me and my little hobby this February, you both are my biggest joy.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 27

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 27 - WHAT THEY SAY. "Are you taking a picture of me, Mummy? Do I have snow in my hair, Mummy? Look at all the snow fall! It's all over the car! That's so funny! Snow on the car! Are we going home now? Can I watch Megamind when we get home? I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. Can I get out of the cart and walk now? I'm still hungry. What are you taking a picture of, Mummy?" What DOESN'T she say to me?

WEEB AND WONKO STRIKE BACK

Okay, Weeb and Wonko don't really strike back, but it seems I've used WEEB AND WONKO as a blog title before.

There is something about the lighting in the Burger King Kid Zone that works well with my camera.

So as we had breakfast there this morning (we are connoisseurs of fine breakfast cuisine), I annoyed them both with my photography attempts.

Wonko gave me this awesome little desk tripod that aided in taking a few sharp pictures. It's come in handy a few times. And it keeps me from having to drag our larger tripod everywhere we go.

It's bad enough that I constantly have a camera with me, since I'm usually stopping and muttering, "Hang on a second," while annoying whoever I am with by delaying whatever journey we may have been on.

And I'm still not sure why I like taking pictures so much. Though it's nice to know that I suck a little less at it than I did a couple of months ago.

Plus my kid is WAY cute, so I like to get a lot of pictures of her. The hubby ain't bad either. *grin*

SNOW FLAKES

As the previous post notes, we haven't had a lot of snow this winter but it's snowing today and it's COLD. Well, cold for us west coast whiners, anyways.

When we do get snow, we usually get wet snow, so this dry, cold snow was not the norm for us and offered a nice opportunity to get some snow flake shots. The first two shots were on the windshield of my car as we were heading out this morning. The second shot was taken seconds after the first and the difference as the flakes were beginning to melt was really neat to see.

These next photos where taken on the hood of my car when we were heading out, about half an hour after the previous photos were taken. I especially like the reflection of the flake on silver paint of my car. You'd almost think it was clean! How awesome are these, eh? 72ppi doesn't quite do them justice.

FEBRUARY SNOW

We haven't had much snow this winter, despite the warnings all the experts gave us just prior to snow tire buying season. We had a nice load of snow at the end of the November, nothing much in December or January, but today, near the end of February, it's cold and it's snowing!

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 26

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 26 - THE BROMANCE. I hate the term 'bromance'. I don't know why. I just do. Wonko doesn't have a lot of 'bros'. He has me and Weeb. Lucky Wonko! If I had to choose something he's in love with other than us, I'd pick his computer, but I rather suspect she's more of an 'other woman' than a 'bro'. So I pick his mustache. Wonko is determined to grow the longest, oddest mustache and beard in the universe. Rock the facial fuzz, babe! This is not the best picture of my hunny, but it's a pretty good shot of his facial fuzz and it's got Weeb in the background, so I like it.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 25

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 25 - WHEN YOU LOVE THEM THE MOST. I love them the most when they aren't drinking my Slurpee! Like yesterday, I had a hard time with this assignment. And I didn't take the picture here either. Wonko took it with our Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT. I think Weeb was around 2.5 years old at the time. I love Wonko most when he takes photos - he gets amazing shots! This has always been one of my favorites.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 24

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 24 - WHERE. Where did you first meet / fall in love / get married, etc. I had a hard time with this assignment and didn't take either of the photos. I fell in love with Wonko in stages. The time I recall most vividly was as we were driving to work in the morning and he was about a car length in front of me, in the next lane. I though, I love this guy. This is the view (I think) from the balcony of my apartment, after he'd moved in with me. He proposed to me on this balcony. This was taken with our first big purchase together, a Nikon digital camera. It was 1999 or 2000 (the year, not the price). And if this ISN'T a shot from our balcony, then it's how I chose to remember it. Not the best shot (especially reduced to a small size), but I really like the sunset against the trees, so it works for me.

As for when I first fell in love with Weeb, it was at our first ultrasound appointment. Yeah, corny, I know. But she was REAL at that point. I saw her little heartbeat flutter on the screen and I could hear it on the monitor. it was amazing. I was about 9.5 weeks pregnant at this point and I really didn't think that there would be anything there. You may not be able to see it, but her head is on the left and you can see one of her eyes. Her arms are pointing up and I think her feet haven't even started to form just yet. Love. Still blows me away. Life is awesome!

FROST IS STILL COOL

More frost on the car this morning. This time on the wind screen.

Jack Frost is awesome!

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 23

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 23 - YOUR FAVORITE FACEBOOK PHOTO OF THEM. She isn't technically on Facebook, but I post her photos from time to time and this is one of my current favorites.

FROST IS COOL

Sometimes the lighting and subject is just too perfect. This morning there was some truly awesome frost patterns on my car. There are four shots here. Yeah, probably three more than anyone cares about, but I think they're cool shots and could have happily posted twice as many.

SELF PORTRAIT W/TIMER

Wonko got me a little desk tripod that we tried out today. I also tried out the timer on my camera (Canon PowerShot SD1000). Not the best shot as I'm not wearing make up, my hair is a mess and Weeb is making an odd face, but it's a cute picture of us, all the same. I'm going to have to keep playing with the timer.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 22

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. I'm a bit bummed the blog isn't really up to date as I really enjoyed posting to the blog party, but for the one or two people who are looking, here's the next assignment.

Assignment 22 - HEAD SHOT / PORTRAIT. Are all models as unwilling and miserable as mine? Yeah, you can't tell from this photo. Maybe I should post some of the others. It would be funny, for sure. Poor kid gets sick of me trying to figure out the best places to put her and then try to figure out how to best set my camera.

I did something wrong and most of the shots, the right side of the photo is WAY brighter than the left, even though it was an overcast day. I don't think this is the best picture of Weeb, and as usual, I hate the background, but it's the best of what I took. I'll have to work on good spots to take photos because inside the cluttered house and anywhere within the confines of the townhouse complex is just not appealing. I think this turned out okay, but I'm going to keep trying to get a decent head shot of this cute kid.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 21

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Assignment 21 - HANDS. Weeb is pretty good on the lap top. I'm amazed at how well she uses the built in touch pad. I hate lap top touch pads. I love Weeb's little hands. I was going to warm up this shot and then figured, why bother, her hands really ARE that pale.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 20

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love.

Lesson 20 - WHEN THEY'RE HOME. The tea party continues. And gets bigger. Less of our living room floor is visible. It will have to be contained before bedtime tonight, but it will start all over again next Friday afternoon. The lighting wasn't too super fantastic with the first shot and my attempts at editing it only made it worse, so it's pretty close to SOOC - though not quite.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 19

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 19 - WHEN THEY'RE GONE. I don't always make Weeb pick up all her toys, particularly if it's the weekend and I know we're going to be indoors. She set up this tea party Friday afternoon. It was still there when she went to bed and still there in the morning. TECHNICALLY she was home when I snapped the picture, but she wasn't in the room, so it counts as 'gone', right?

THE MOUNTAINS

I tried to get a picture of the awesome mountains as I was on the way to work this morning. It didn't work out very well, but I did get a chance to test out my manual photography skills compared to the automatic setting on my camera. It annoyed me because I was obviously not getting something, but then I think I figured out what I was doing wrong, later in the day.

Then I just accepted the fact that I was trying to take a picture of mountains that are 45 kms away with a point and shoot camera.

I think (though I'm not positive) that this is Mount Seymour.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 18

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 18 - GOING OUT. Okay, this isn't quite what the assignment entailed, but I'm a rebel - a mad, point and shoot camera wielding rebel. I said, "Weeb, act like you're going out somewhere." So she said okay, grabbed her bag of jewelery (to double as my bag), put on my heeled shoes (which I NEVER wear) and clomped out the door. There. Going out. Yeah, the one isn't focused as much as I'd like, but the heels make it really funny to me. And the other picture, I just dig.

FROST AND HIGHLIGHTERS

Tried to get another frost shot on my car this morning. Not as clear as I'd like. Story of my point and shoot camera life. Still a cool shot though. Cool. Frost. HA! Wait, did I use the same dumb pun last time I posted a frost picture? Probably. Sorry.

While attempting to take a photo of some crazy weather involving ominous clouds, hail, rain and snow, I put my camera on my desk and noticed a cool shot. I switched from manual to macro and got this. I think it's cool. But then, I'm easily impressed. And I have an odd thing for highlighters. I didn't do anything to edit this photo other than cropping to 4x6 72ppi and adding my signature.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 17

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 17 - STAYING IN. Weeb and I were reading stories on my bed tonight when I got this idea. Again, it's not terribly professional, but it's a photo that I will look back on and I will definitely smile. I tried to avoid getting the closet door with the necklaces and craft ring hanging on it, but it was rather unavoidable in the short amount of 'stay still' time. It works well enough with the Yasher signature balancing it. Again, not professional, but I'm not really going for that. I like Weeb's toes in focus on my legs and my feet blurred in the background.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 16

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 16 - TOGETHER (SELF PORTRAIT). My attempts at this yesterday failed but when I was walking Weeb home from school today, after another failed attempt, we came up with this idea. By the third shot we thought to wave and it brought some character to the photo. I dig it. And since I'm not doing this to start my own business, but to improve my family photos, I think I rocked it! Together. Self portrait. Rockin' the awesome!

DEAR RECYCLING PICK UP GUYS, PT 2

Dear Recycling Pick Up Guys,

Remember last week when I awarded you with a boot to the head for tossing our recycling bag into the truck along with the rest of our recyclables? Yeah, sorry about that.

It was our neighbor. Not the ones who get up at 4 in the morning and wake us up with their screeching pipes then their hundred year old car, but the ones on the other side with the kids who go up and down stairs like a pack of pachyderms, leave chewed gum right where I put my foot down when I get out of my car, and occasionally have seriously vicious fights regardless of hour or attendance of stair stompy offspring.

Yesterday I came home and they had all their recycling and garbage out (most people don't do it until later in the evening) and guess what was in front of our door.

Dude. Seriously? You took THREE bags and didn't notice the bright yellow one with the huge strip of duct tape on it? Then you didn't notice the enormous hissy I threw as you WATCHED us look for our bag and heard me stomp into my house and slam the door? Seriously?

Boot to the head.

CHICKEN & RICE DIDN'T SUCK SOUP

You know that chicken noodle soup from the other night? Instead of adding the pasta tonight, I added some rice.

It was wicked good!

NO JOY TODAY

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 16 - TOGETHER (SELF PORTRAIT). No. Nope. It's just not going to happen today. I'm grumpy. It was dark when I woke up today (and it may have been all in my mind, but I'm pretty sure there was ominous music accompanying me everywhere I went). I have a nice, though limited point and shoot camera with a self timer that is much faster than I am and a daughter who I suspect actually vibrates when she tries to sit still.

Plus I am not a fan of pictures of myself.

However, Weeb and I went upstairs and painted toenails in a set up for some together toe self portrait shots. I was going to give it (brace yourself) my best shot.

We really did give it our best. Weeb even sat moderately still. She put up with my hundred and one instructions but it just was not working. My camera battery was dying. My back and ribs were aching so I was not as bendy as I needed to be for the shot I wanted. We just did not have enough light. Or time. Or patience.

So we'll try again, maybe tomorrow. Though the NEXT assignment is entitled STAYING IN. I have no genius plans for this yet. Staying in, to me, means watching movies and eating far too many potato chips. Not quite sure how to capture that, photographically. Yet.

I'll find the joy again. But I'll probably need a Slurpee first.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 15

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 15 - KISS. I had so many fabulous shots to use, but decided to pick just one - this one. The top one is cropped and made to look presentable to, say, Grandma. The second has got some big time level craziness going on, so naturally I like it best. The last is the original shot, untouched except for reducing to 72ppi.

CHICKEN NOODLE DIDN'T SUCK SOUP

I made some chicken noodle soup for my hunny today as he is rather under the weather. It didn't suck. I don't know that it helped, but it didn't suck.

I hate cooking and I work almost full time so not much gets made from scratch in our house. However I am trying to reduce the extra salt and extra preservatives, as much as possible. So my best route probably wasn't prepackaged chicken broth but whatever, it's as close to scratch as I am getting.

I put some chicken breasts in the slow cooker with the chicken broth (reduced sodium), some carrots and some onions (which I'd made poor Snot Face cut up the night before because I just can't cut onions, plus I figured it would help his nasal congestion). 8 hours on low later, I cut up the chicken, added some boiling water and made some pasta. I also threw a partially baked loaf of bread in the oven (yeah, yeah, prepackaged white bread, blah, blah, blah...).

It wasn't too bad. And we have a ton of soup leftover. It was a bit on the bland side, but I have a 5 year old who is not keen on too much 'flavor'.

Next time I'm going to cut the carrots smaller and find smaller pasta; little stars or alphabet pasta maybe. And I'm going to do more bread. And I'm going to crank up the heat on the soup before serving.

Not too bad.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 14

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 14 - WEDDING BAND / JEWELERY. I considered doing Wonko's wedding band or my wedding ring set for this assignment. I considered doing Weeb's medic alert bracelet. But when I think of love (and since it's Valentine's Day, how can I not?), I think of the family ring that Wonko and Weeb got me for Mother's Day, a few years ago. Hm... I think it was for Mother's day. Maybe it was for my birthday. Don't remember. Doesn't matter. But it's a pretty cool ring. I'm going to give it to Weeb one day, if she wants it. My birthstone is on the left, Wonko's is on the right and Weeb's is in the middle. We like it because it seems like we're hugging her. It got me through a lot of work days when I was missing my baby.

I still have problems with graininess. If I took more pictures in the actual daylight, it wouldn't be such an issue. I'll have to work on it. I got the color right though, so yea me!

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 12, PT 3

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 12 - THE EYES, PART 3. I love this topic. And I KNEW I had an awesome eye shot of Weeb. And I did! This is from June 2010. We were outside and this WAS taken with my Canon PowerShot SD 1000 point and shoot camera. Yes, I will stop with the eyes now. LOL

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 13

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 13 - ROUTINE. I am horridly impatient and haven't actually waited for this lesson to be posted yet, but since the Willette gave us the theme, I ran with it.

Poor Weeb. She's really sick of the Mammarazzi. So I told her to be silly and she happily complied. Seemed only fitting that I would make the photo of this twice daily routine as ridiculous as possible after my silly instruction.

Nothing like a little fun with levels. Click on the white dropper and select a point (white or white-ish), then do the same for the black. It's amazing the fun you can have!

I know I should be practicing more on making photos look better. But sometimes I really just can't help myself. *grin*

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY 2011

Wonko and I don't do too much for Valentine's Day. We love each other and we make sure the other knows it, all through the year, so celebrating on one day seems a bit silly.

We do, however, enjoy spoiling our daughter.

Weeb has been in love with the Mini Pops Kids commercials so we bought the recent the album (electronically) and put it on my old, red iPod Nano. We gave it to her this morning (as we are 'celebrating' Valentine's Day today instead of Monday) and once she figured out what it was, she was over the moon! She's been singing (and I use the term 'singing' VERY loosely) loads, today! It's one of the most awesome things, ever! I can't wait until she actually knows some more words! *snickering*

Weeb is the world's biggest fan of the movie Despicable Me. As we were grocery shopping this morning, she found a pink unicorn. Anyone who has seen the movie hundreds of times (and I know we're not the only ones out there) knows exactly what line I am about to type.

"It's so fluffy, I'm gonna *DIE*!"

Though now I've typed it, it seems kinda creepy, so let's just leave death out of this, please.

Happy Valentine's Day, all. May you be as lucky in love as we are!

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 12, PT 2

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 12 - THE EYES, PART 2. Let's try this again.

I knew I could get a better shot of Weeb's beautiful eyes. We were out having breakfast this morning and I had the advantage of huge windows and bright fluorescent lights to aid in my lighting. We're in a gloomy part of the world, at a gloomy time of year, so I like to take advantage of light when I can, despite the pleas of, "Oh not more pictures! Please no more pictures!" Telling them that I'm not going to stop the photographic onslaught until I have a shot I like usually keeps them still enough to get something that appeases me.

THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 12

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 12 - THE EYES. Weeb has great eyes. Again, Cannon PowerShot SD1000 point and shoot camera, limited options. But for late afternoon, indoors with little light, I did what I could. I used a tripod (which she kicked almost continuously), my camera's battery was dying (which prompted her to dilly dally and wiggle about as a result of my spazzy urge to hurry up and sit still), I was losing the natural light (and man, I hate high ISO with this camera - the noise is some kind of horrible!). I cannot wait for the weather to get nicer so I can photograph outside. Seems that outdoor photography and digital macro are quite good with this camera. I mean, it couldn't possibly be that the photographer needs to do a tad more learning. Right? Yeah, shush!

The lower photo is a much better shot of her face, but the photo came out really noisy in the edit and was too blurry, otherwise. Need to sharpen my sharpening skills. HA!

Wow, looking at these again online, they are REALLY grainy. I had an ISO of 400, too. I think it was just that they were a bit blurry (kid will not sit still!) and the sharpening has this effect. I need to learn some new techniques and possibly just try again with more light.

Edit to add: I'm adding this photo that I took the other day. Honestly, it captures the eyes much better and edited better than the two previously posted.