Continual State of Becoming

Dylan was busy this morning adding to his first opus.

My laundry has been piling up. I think it has something to do with my neglecting it in favor of other things... playing at the park with the kids, taking pictures for this project, taking pictures for my photo class, running, reading... all of which are wa-a-a-ay better than laundry.  But today I went to get Aaron dressed and he was out of shirts.  Completely out.  So I knew I had to get back on track and tackle some real world tasks.  I decided that maybe if I plan a picture of my folded and ready to be put away laundry, I'd actually wash it and fold it.  I think I basically bribed myself to clean my family's clothes.  Well, it worked.  I don't know that I love the picture, but my clothes are folded and put away, so in my mind it was a total success.  Don't be surprised if I throw up some photos of purging toys, washing dishes, and scrubbing floors in the future... apparently I'll actually get that done if I know I need it for a photo. (I'm ...

My brother is letting me borrow his really nice wide angle lens.  I was really busy today though so I didn't get to try it out much, I just took a few quick snaps around the house to get an idea of what this thing is capable of.  I'm looking forward to playing with it some more this week. This is kind of more of a practice shot.  I wanted to see how much of the family room I could fit into the shot (compared with my 50mm lens, which doesn't get much).  It's night, so this is using the room's light fixture, and I just propped the camera (with it's monster lens) on our TV stand, so it's a little crooked, and took a few shots of me with the kids on the couch.  The kids are giving me "smushie kisses."  Not the best as far as pictures are concerned, but it was a great moment to be in.

So back to working on self portraits.  I'm really struggling with this.  I don't really like any of them so far.  But I keep trying.  I think the problem is that I don't really know what it is I'm trying to "get."  I don't have a vision for how this should work.  I just come up with an idea because I think it's different or worth trying out, take a few shots and hope one of them will be magical.  But usually they aren't.  Sad face.  I'm not sure at this point if I should keep trying, push through and hope I'll eventually realize what it is I'm trying to accomplish (and maybe how to accomplish it as well), or if I should give up, take a long break, wait for inspiration to strike me when I least expect it?  The connection between this lack of success and my own sense of self is not lost on me though.  I think that's why I feel the need to push on.  What I mean is that when I take a picture of other people, I'm happy with it, but ...

I was out early this morning working on an assignment for a photography class I'm taking and couldn't resist taking a few moments to shoot this thick fog.  I wish I could have pulled out a little more for this shot, but there were ugly neon orange fences on the other side of the trees and some yellow police style tape on the left fence, so that kind of guided me to frame this photo like this.  It looks kind of peaceful and lonely, which was how I was feeling, since I was out taking pictures for the first time since last fall by myself (without my kids running around).  It put me in a very different mind-set.  Much less frantic and rushed and hoping for a good quick shot, with one eye looking through the lens and the other keeping track of a curious toddler.  Much more deliberate, focused, and relaxed.  Almost meditative. It was a nice little break first thing in the morning.

Grass sparkles with early morning dew.

So I just tried to upload my daily photo and something WEIRD happened.  Here's what I got: what is going on with the color, especially that turquoise blue in the background, and the weird edges????? And here's the photo I actually uploaded.   This is the actual picture I took... I couldn't get the exposure right... too much one way and the sky blew out, too much the other and the detail in the shadows was lost... so I opted for the silhouette look. I guess blogger enhances photos and there's no way to turn it off in blogger.  Crap.  So in order to get the correct version I found a work around.  I uploaded this photo to my G+ account, which also auto enhanced it to get that same weird coloration.  Then I turned off the auto enhance, added it to my blogger photo album (which was automatically created when I opened my G+ account), and then came back here and got the photo through G+ instead of going to my computer's file.  I haven...

Driving home during rush hour last night after visiting with my mom.  This was my first attempt at nighttime photography (never realized how much the car rumbles while you are stopped).  It also made sitting at this majorly long red light for 4 cycles a little more bearable.

A little snack during an errand run.

I'm bending the rules again a little bit.  Although I didn't really make any rules for this project, so I'm not sure why it feels that way, but it does.  I didn't actually take this photo today.  I took it last week.  But I'm posting it tonight because it's a film image that I just received tonight.  I figure I"m allowed to share it now since there's no physical way to share it otherwise (it takes a loooooooooong time to get the film images back... well, long in comparison to sticking my memory card into a USB slot at the end of the day).  I'd like to include my film images since I am really working on that format as well.  I just received 3 rolls... 1 of B&W 400 Trimax, and 2 Fujichrome 100 Provia color slides.  I am so happy with these images.  I think a few didn't turn out due to unrecoverable exposure, but otherwise the bulk of my shots worked!  Which makes me so happy because I am only letting myself shoot in manual, and without...

Our beloved Eve.  Sometimes I feel bad for how much Aaron bothers her when she's just trying to sleep in a sunny spot of the house (which he had just done while I was trying to get a picture of her), but then I remember that Aaron also feeds her 90% of his food, so I figure it all evens out in the end.

I'm cheating here a little bit.  It's supposed to be one picture a day, but I'm doing three this time.  These are actually the pictures I took for my photography class assignment.  We were supposed to take a picture of the same object at 3 different times of day.  I picked this !!super!!exciting!! rock.  Mostly because I could carry it with me and take a picture when I needed to.  But also because of the shadows I got in the middle of the day. Morning light.  I took this as soon as the sun hit our yard (which was about 30 minutes after sunrise).  I love the yin-yang effect of the shadow and light on the top of the rock. Noon light.  Dylan found this rock for me on one of our walks through the neighborhood.  He liked it because it looked like a phone (? to a 5 year old's imagination, I guess).  But it wasn't until I took this picture, at this time of day, from this angle, that I was able to uncover the true identity of th...

Christmas came early for the kids.  Vovo and Grandpa got them a new toy to play with at their house.  Dylan and Aaron both love it!  I got a bunch of good pictures on them testing it out in the backyard, but I love that I got the family in the background here, along with a little bit of backlight on the boys.  I love backlight like crazy.

Aaron is such an independent little toddler.

Matt gives Dylan a chess lesson at the end of the day.  

 The first couple of days this month were warm enough to spend most of the day outside.  Aaron has no problem finding ways to occupy himself.  His choice at this moment was digging, throwing, and playing in some pot dirt.  I think he liked it even more than he likes playing in mulch. The idea was to move the dirt from one pot to the next, but he took it one step further by dumping the dirt from the second pot onto himself. Little bits of dirt in his hair. Look at all that fun!

Tonight we had one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, I was without my camera at the peak color (so instead I opted to just enjoy the moment), but I did manage to get a good sky shot shortly before the sun went down.  I love these clouds.

We spent this afternoon at Pumpkinville.  Somehow I ended up with one child who is very social and extroverted, and a second child who needs to be outside all the time (both are traits that I don't have).  Here is the latter child sharing crazy eyes with the lemurs.  I'm really thankful for fences and gates because if they didn't exist I'm pretty sure Aaron would have just climbed right in with all the animals.

So I'm obviously back into running.  I had to take a little break at that end of the summer because my left leg had pain pretty much everywhere.  I used the month of October to try and get close to back where I left off.  Except I haven't been running long distances.  Three miles at most.  Which at this point is all I can really handle anyway.  I still have a little lingering hip pain but overall I've been feeling much better, so I feel like I can really get back into it now. So here are some of my end of October stats. Longest distance:  3 miles, in about 35 minutes Mile time:  9:06, which is my new PR.  I can hardly believe it! Slow pace on treadmill:  4.5 mph Comfortable to maintain for a while pace:  5.2 mph (not quite back to the 5.5-5.7 pace, but I'll get there) Fast pace 7.5 for 2 minute "sprints" or 8 mph for 1.5 minute "sprints" Goals going forward: -Run a 5k in under 30 minutes -Run a race every month between...