Week 7: Day 46

Oh my goodness! If I have not had enough frustration with the Sprint network lately! What is up with them I have no idea. I have to try several times to send a text message because it fails. Half the times I attempt to dial out, I have to call several times just in order to get the call to go through. And when people call me, it has a tendency to not ring and go straight to voicemail. That makes it very frustrating. We have taken our phones to a store to see what is up, but we are going to have to either pay to have our phones fixed, or buy new ones (last resort). If I am going to pay, might as well get a new phone (especially when you have a credit).

Now, I like my phone. I have had it for 2 years and really do not want a new one. It is not the phone, it's the network I have problems with. I am not the only one that has problems, Brandon, Meghan, Jeff and Angelica have had problems as well. So frustrating!

So this is what I would like to do with the sprint network, and sometimes what I want to do with my phone because of the sprint network...

Week 7: Day 45

Out of ideas, of course. But we had one of Brandon's cousin's graduation to go to. So, I have an excuse.

I figured what harm will it do? We have a VeggieTales movie called Larry Boy and the Bad Apple, and the theme of this movie is temptation. How perfect that the cover has chocolate on it as well? So this is the picture for Wednesday.

Week 7: Day 44

Ah, the temptation, that call of chocolate, peanut butter, and ice cream! It is temptation to eat the whole carton! Don't worry, the last day I ate ice cream was a while ago. I did not eat to that point before taking the picture. But, that ice cream is so good! Brandon surprised me with it when he ran to the store to grab a few things we were out of. That was before my birthday! Yeah, we hardly ever eat sweets in this house. Poor Nikolai, but good for him.

Gotta love this yummy combination! Thank you to my husband for getting it for me! :)

Week 7: Temptation - Day 43

Ok, so I had no idea what to do for this weekly theme. Go to the grocery store and take a picture of the ice cream? Except I don't have the car. And then, Nikolai decides to do his poopies.

... Let's just say that he is no longer going to be in a size 1 any longer. But more background will be in The Berry Bunch later. Not necessary for this one. 

I was totally tempted to just cut off his onsie and trash it. Maybe that is what I should have done. Good thing today is bath day for Nikolai!

Week 6: Day 42

Ok, I used to like doing this. It doesn't make me angry but it's more depressing. I'm an adult and where is the fun in that? I have bills and that means that the money we get in goes right back out... Oh well, it's not like I can take it with me when I leave. Besides, I do really enjoy math. Perhaps I should have gone to school to be a mathematician. .. Nah...

Week 6: Day 41

So, I guess this has been a huge frustration for me. Feeding the baby... Well, it's more the whole "percentage ranking" chart... can we just do away with that as long as the baby is healthy?

Some may consider this gross. What I have to say to them... "Get over it, you drank it, your mom and dad most likely drank it. It's a part of life. If you have a problem with it, look the other way. We were all born lovers of the boob."

Week 6: Day 40

This is not so much anger, but I am not sure how I feel about it.

When I was doing my student teaching there was a little girl in the classroom next to the one I was in (1st grade) who had shingles. My thoughts, when I asked her what she was doing in the hallway (she was coming back from the Nurse and told be about the shingles) was to stay away from me.

Shingles follows chicken pox. You cannot have shingles before having chicken pox. It is very painful and follows the nerves along the body (specific ones and I cannot remember which ones). Well, as I was looking at the immunizations for my son, one of the shots they get (I do not remember what age) is a chicken pox vaccine. Now, whatever happened to just getting the chicken pox at an age when everyone else was getting it because moms collaborated? There is nothing wrong with me and I got the chicken pox in third grade.

With getting the vaccine at a young age, that makes us susceptible to shingles at a young age. That does not make sense to me. We give our children one vaccine, only to need to make another?

This was taken with my phone camera, so sorry that the quality is not that great...

Week 6: Day 39

Well, with a topic of anger... It is hard to find something to fit that. Anger is not something that occurs frequently in a house with a really cute little baby! Sure maybe frustration over little things, but not outright anger.

Brandon has been working on his Bronco and his latest venture with that is lifting the body off the frame so he can sandblast and paint the frame. This was a long, frustrating, and a little bit scary adventure. Lucky for Brandon, Alan came over to help. It is now supported on two long 4x4's, 2 drums and 2 saw horses, shimmied up to the height needed to clear the tires. Yeah, it is a little bit redneck but Brandon's working on it. It will be nice once it is finished. :)

As much as I don't want to include this picture, there was not much that went on today that I was able to use for this theme...



Week 6: Day 38

Hera, the poor thing. She must be angry with me. I found poop on the floor in the kitchen and in the living room this morning. As gross as that is, I figure that she is upset with me because once Nikolai came along, the poor kitty has taken a back seat. She hasn't gotten wet food since we found out I was pregnant, and I don't remember the last time we cleaned her litter box. Guess I should do that tomorrow. But at least she has been getting a little more attention these last couple days. And she has been getting closer to Nikolai again since he pulled out her hair...

Week 6: Day 37

I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. So more than the theme of anger, I wanted to play with the photoshop instead. Here is a picture I took of my last surviving rose from mother's day...

Week 6: Anger - Day 36

Well, I am not sure what to do for this theme and my initial response is to cut it out and trade it with another. But, then I think about it and really, we can't hide from it. Our bodies are made to feel anger. It's the truth. We don't have an amygdala that does nothing. It's more about what we do when we feel anger. Do we let it out, or push it back inside? It's about how we handle ourselves when the emotion decides to come forward. Me, I like to do things with my hands and my mind. Sewing is one of them, and right now my current sewing project is a quilt for my son.

Here is me preparing some fabric to make a friendship square...

Week 5: Day 35

Nikolai was attempting to sit himself up while on his daddy's lap. The angle was awkward, so it was making it difficult for Nikolai to pull himself into a sitting up position. Plus, holding on to his feet added to the difficulty level.

Week 5: Day 34

Nikolai was looking up at his Daddy while at Pizza Hut. It was so cute, I just had to take a picture of his face. But the handle of the carseat kept getting in the way and blurring out the picture. So I focused on the ring (those are just super awesome!) and this is what I got. I think it is pretty cute!



Week 5: Day 33

27 pictures later...  only 5 edited pictures....

At Brandon's suggestion, here is my attempt to capture the moon... I think I may have needed a better camera for that...

Week 5: Day 32

24 shots taken. I thought it would have been cool to get the moving blades of the ceiling fan, and not so much...

But, it did look cool. The lights just off camera gave it this gleaming glow. I think the blur of the fan blades help that too.

Week 5: Day 31

Nikolai's view of the ceiling. Needless to say, my original idea for this shot did not turn out and I got the ceiling. Not much more about that to say...

Week 5: Day 30

I don't know what was wrong with me today. I could not keep my hand steady and the regular flash was just too much! So I kept ending up with a huge blur. I had to unload my memory card 3 different times before I got a decent picture. Then it wasn't my shaking but the lighting because the sun had gone down. The original count was 48 (after several deletions before counting) then I managed to minimize that number to 38.

Then I thought I had dust on my lens, there were specks on everything and on every picture. But it turned out it wasn't in the same spot every shot (that took some time and pictures to figure out), just the marks on the wall. My subject, Brandon's guitar, collects dust very easily. I had Brandon dust it off the second round of pictures (it just looked bad the first round) and it still had dust on it!

So my final picture was the first photo, round 3. It was one of the few without my feet in it, and the angle is up above the guitar looking down. I colored it in sepia, I think it looks cool and so does Brandon. The dust and markings on the wall, I think, make it look a little oldish... Anyway, here it is...



Week 5: Up - Day 29

It is amazing the different ideas that can come with the theme 'up'! So many different ways to interpret it. And, I know I have already used my flowers but it's not that often that I have flowers to take pictures of in this house, so I am going with it while I still can!

I took 10 photos, rotated the flowers so I could get the pictures, without having to try to manuver around the kitchen island (it's a little cluttered at the moment). Out of the 10, I fixed up 4, trying to decide the different angles I wanted to go with. One of them isn't necessarily directly up, but more from an up/side view. 

I love flowers, they are so pretty and add such a nice color touch to the house. :)

Week 4: Looking Back

I think I did a pretty good job this week staying on track and getting it done on time. Yesterday doesn't count seen as how it was Mother's Day and my birthday. Day 27 was my playing with the camera instead of following the theme and I am so excited that I did that! I have some pretty cool photographs of my grandmother and of Nikolai using the same technique! Isn't this the purpose of doing this project, to improve my pictures? And I feel it is showing in my everyday, just to take, pictures.

I have been doing this for a month now, and I am having so much fun with it! I am looking forward to the following weeks (though really only looking at one week at a time).

This week's theme is up, and I have a couple ideas on what to do. The week following though is anger, and really I have no idea what I will be doing for that. I can't think of something to replace it with either. I am thinking maybe I should have replaced reflection with anger instead of replacing it with trees. Of course, maybe I could do trees this week following up, but I am not so sure yet...

Week 4: Day 28

Too bad I didn't start this a day later! Day 27 would have been the day I turned 27!

I didn't plan out these pictures. It was a busy Mother's Day and my birthday, so I just took pictures and decided I would use one.

I got flowers from my Dad, and was looking and smelling them (they looked pretty and smelled so good!) when I noticed one of the roses had two centers. You know how roses have a center and they seem to swirl out from there? Well, this one had two. It reminded me of my little boy, who has two hair swirls on the back of his little head. A special rose, like my little boy. So I had to take a picture of it. I took 3 pictures of the roses, each one zooming out a little bit. This is the one I seemed to like the best. The flower is the one on the bottom left.

Week 4: Day 27

This was a tough choice. I had taken a few pictures of my mom with Nikolai, but they did not turn out the way that I wanted them to. I felt rushed because (1) Nikolai was doing his 'I want mommy' cry and (2) it was getting late and I didn't want to keep my mom any later. I thought what a better type of picture for the 'mother' theme than my baby and my mom? But most of the pictures were hard to get because the rocker and Nikolai's crying. Not to mention Brandon doesn't like to hear Nikolai cry, so I pretty much felt bad if I didn't stop.

So I decided to play with the auto-focus on the camera and tried to blur out part of the picture and get it to focus on something else. One reason why DigitalPhotographySchool.com is so cool. I knew about the auto-focus and that the camera did that, but no real understanding how to play with it. Not that I have an understanding now, but at least I played with it...

My toss up is to use the crying Nikolai picture, or the play with auto-focus smiling Brandon picture...

I want to use the one with me playing with the auto-focus because the purpose of this project is to be improving my photography. Yet, the picture that I would use of Nikolai crying I think is a good picture... Anyway... Here is the one with my playing with the auto-focus...

Week 4: Day 26

Well, it was a Friday which meant dinner (yum) and a movie at a friend of the family's house. We watched Tangled. Super cute movie and a Disney movie I think I might own (I will be honest, I prefer dreamworks). Anywho... I again forgot to plan this one out. I have an excuse though, I was working on getting Nikolai's room fixed up and pictures taken for the Room Transformation post on my life blog. It was a post I had spent months working on, so I needed to get it finished.

After I put Nikolai to bed, I thought "shoot, I need to take my pic of the day". Then it occured to me, why not include the only types of reading I have done since Nikolai was born? Kids books and childcare type books have pretty much been the reading list lately. Though I have managed to fit in some time of "The Lovely Bones" a book I started before Nikolai was born. I took 3 shots of these books. I was thinking maybe I should have tried more angles, but it was late and I need to go to bed, we have a busy day tomorrow.

The books are taken on my old duvet cover that I got from my grandmother shortly after I graduated High School. We have been using it as tummy time because it protects little man's head from bonking too hard on the saltillo tile when he rolls over.

Week 4: Day 25

Today's photo was a hard choice. I took 7 of two rattles on a receiving blanket. One is a whale Brandon's sister made for Nikolai, the other is one that I bought at Babies-R-Us while doing shopping for our cousin's baby shower.

After I took a few shots, Nikolai reached out for his whale and it was so cute seeing him reaching out. It holds a lot more emotion for me than the other photos. I'm not sure if this photo holds that for someone on the outside looking at it, but it is the one that I have selected...

Week 4: Day 24

Ok, so this doesn't necessarily fit in to the whole mother theme but really more just being female.

One shot, that was all I took. I didn't want to take up the room when there were people waiting to hear their baby's heart beats. I used the 'region out of focus' option in PhotoScape to blur out and discolor the room aside from the bench/chair thing. That is where I want your focus...

Week 4: Day 23

One of my favorite joys of motherhood is the ability to admire my son's little fingers, toes , hands and feet. Luckily, he was sleeping on me after feeding this afternoon and I was able to move him just a little without disturbing his sleep! That makes me so excited, and I had my camera right by us. Sure it took a few shots of getting him without a blur, And a little play to figure out what I wanted. 

38 shots total. Before moving his little body: 22, After moving his little body: 16. 4 of the 16 included profile too, but it just didn't turn out the way I liked it (I can't change to focus on the hand). So 12 of the hand, attempting to not get a blur because I didn't want to use the flash...

My first few tries of hand shots was of him right after nursing, and one turned out really cute, but I wanted it from a different angle. For the life of me I could not duplicate it, the lighting was off and I couldn't see what I was shooting (being tied down by a sleeping boy). So I had the idea to move him, and try his hand against my sweatpants (that's right, 2 pm and I am still in pajamas). I am so excited that I managed to get this without a blur! Well, at least not a really bad blur!  I love it and am glad I tried for it! :)

Week 4: Mother - Day 22

Yup, mother's day is a week away. Thus, is the theme of this week.

Here is my son looking into our disgustingly dirty (because I have little time in the day to clean) fish tank. That is one thing algae build up is good for, reflections...

Week 3: Reflection Rumination

Well, as I look back on this week I am a little disappointed: (1) I did not try as hard as I wish I did. (2) I did not take the time I would have liked.

But, despite those reasonings I am satisfied with most of the photos from this week. The chair is pretty interesting, and I like shooting up too. I have found it different and fun, and I seem to resort to that angle when shooting pics. Maybe I should start to trying something different. I keep reminding myself, 1 subject - 10 shots. Try from at least 10 different angles, who knows what you are going to get... But it is hard to remember that when doing something last minute...

I know last minute stuff seems to be a constant for me... But hey, at least I am doing it!

Week 3: Day 21

I was sorely running out of quick ideas for this topic. I wanted a picture of Nikolai looking into the fish tanks, but spaced it when I had the opportunity. That has been me lately, a space cadet with a 4 month old. It is a wonder anything gets done and taken care of, and that bills get paid!

Anyway, my glass of 7-up was on the TV stand and I decided to see if I could take pictures of the bubbles. Without a flash, forget it, it was just blurry lines. With the flash, it was a bright light with some bubbly lines and the lines of the glass. Brandon suggested to put the baby monitor of Nikolai sleeping behind the glass and see how that turned out. So we did and took about 3 pictures, and the first one turned out the coolest. Distorted in all it's glory, but peaked with Nikolai's little head.

Since this isn't really a reflection and I still have the 22nd day to do, I am switching these two. This upcoming week's topic: mother...

Week 3: Day 20

Total pics taken: 9... After deleting ones: 5. That does not include the ones I had deleted off the camera from setting up the shot. Reflections are a little difficult to set up. I did enlist the help of Brandon with positioning of the laptop, and the direction of pointing the camera. It was late and we were both tired. It was another busy day. But then, when aren't days busy?

So, the laptop was on a folding table by the sofa. We had sat down for a minute to review awesome pictures Yvette took of Nikolai, and I realized after shutting down the computer that I needed to take a picture for this. SO why not take one of the reflection from the screen?

Week 3: Day 19

Another day passed and I totally spaced taking a picture. But Last minute ones sometimes turn out interesting. This is a day that I do not think that. 4 pictures taken from the mirror in the bathroom and I have no idea what one to pic because none of them have me captivated. :(

The thumbnails on the computer looked cool because the power-cord made the tile look slightly distorted. Unfortunately, when pulling up the photo, it does not look distorted. I tried to change the film effect of the photo to try and make it more interesting... Oh well...