Continual State of Becoming

Week 13: The Sick House I nearly didn't take any pictures this week because we were hit with the stomach virus.  But I managed to grab a couple (not so hot) shots of Dylan building Legos while Matt and I were too busy either being sick or taking care of a sick Aaron to play with him.  It's a big enough set to keep him working on it for a while.  Dylan, so far, is the only one who has stayed healthy, even the dog has been sick, UGH.  But there's still time.  In addition to his posted "Sick rules" (which he created and he are posted on the wall right behind him in the first shot.) we have also gone over "what to do if you need to throw up" emergency procedures.  Initially he said he should come find me, but I told him he should go find a bathroom first, and I'll come to him.  I've been puked on enough thank you very much.

Aaron discovered a dinosaur sticker book in Dylan's room.  He can't just wear one or two stickers on his hands, he has to wear them ALL.  I think by the time he was done he had overlapped a good dozen or so on each hand.  Sometimes when he really runs out of room he starts sticking them on my hands, or on our cheeks.  They eventually fall off, all over the house.  And then it's time to start again.

I just wanted to try some black and white conversions on older pictures.  It's kept me up way later than I intended and I have that googly eye feeling after staring at the computer for too long, so there's a good chance I'm not seeing very well and tomorrow when I look at these with fresh eyes I'll hate them and take this post down.  But for now, I'm pretty happy.  Update:  I didn't look at these again until days later, because immediately after publishing this post Aaron started throwing up in his crib.  So after dealing with him (and eventually myself as well, yay!) having a stomach bug this weekend, I've decided that these pictures are beautiful, especially in comparison to what I have spent most of my time looking at the past few days.  Ah, perspective.

Lensbaby, ISO 500, 1/100s

I have reached the end of what is possible, and now it is beyond what I can stand.  the temptation is to say “this much is enough,” but I will not give in.  I am fighting… fighting the pain, fighting the doubt.  And I will not give in.  I will conquer it.  And I will conquer it alone. -George Sheehan

with Lens Baby, ISO 640, f/?, 1/100ss Week 12: Morning Coffee Since I'm the only one in the house who drinks coffee, I use a french press for my daily coffee.  It's something I look forward to every morning when the kids wake me up way earlier than I really want to be woken up. I'm currently borrowing my dad's Lens Baby.  I'm determined to do something cool with it, but so far I haven't been able to figure out what that is yet.  So I'll keep working on it.

So I've been working on photography a lot lately (obviously), but I realized that I have stopped taking pictures of the kids.  Which is a shame, because that was part of my motivation for starting.  I think I haven't really been doing much with them lately because 1- they aren't interested in being photographed all the time, and 2- I was judging the less than ideal (lighting etc) conditions that most of our life occurs in too harshly.  In an effort to stop caring about perfection and begin caring about doing things I want to do I've decided to restart my Dylan at ... and Aaron at .... posts.  Obviously they aren't 5 and 1 anymore. My dad invited us over for pizza this past Sunday.  Growing up he used to make pizza from scratch every Sunday night for dinner.  I think he had something to do with a bet he made with my mom involving a surgery she had and how many staples she wound up with afterwards.  However it came about, it resulted in lots of good pi...

I want to emphasize the fact that increase disappointment does not mean going backwards in the work.  There is no such thing as going backward in anything.  There is increased and decreased awareness, that is all, and increased awareness means increased disappointments. -Agnes Martin

28mm, ISO 500, f/2.5, 1/200ss 28mm, ISO 800, f/5.0, 1/125ss Week 11: Vegetable Still Life The low key kale image is one that I REALLY like.  This came out pretty much exactly how I wanted it to.  Nice and dark, with the focus and attention on the curly ruffles.  But that's because I seem to do better with single items without a background.   The second image is an example of trying to push past my shortcomings.  My brother challenged me to do a still life with 9 different kitchen related objects, one of them had to be the mortar and pestle and something had to be cut (the tomatoes).  I have some images with all 9 items (some dry spaghetti and an olive oil bottle were the other 2 objects), but it always looked weird.  I just couldn't figure out a good composition for them, so I took a couple away and tried more of an overhead shot (mostly because that eliminates the background, which I've already established is one of my weaknesses). ...

55mm, ISO 250, f/5.6, 1/200ss, with polarizing filter 300mm, ISO 250, f/5.6, 1/125ss with polarizing filter Week 10: A walk through the snow. I decided to use my big, but not fancy, 55-300 zoom lens this day.  These were my two favorite pictures and just happen to show the extremes of the focal length (which I didn't even realize until I looked up the metadata to include in the captions).  I think I under use this lens because it's one of my kit lenses and therefore "lesser."  However, more often than not, especially outside, I wind up with some pretty decent pictures.  Plus, it has a ZOOM.  My other lenses (a 50 and a 28) do not zoom.  I think I need to start using this lens more often.  A couple other quick comments... 1- landscapes are hard, as much as I struggle with composition, it is never so obvious to me as it is when I try and do a landscape.  And 2- I really like how these black and white conversions turned out.  I fe...

Last year was my year of running.  After running during the summer of 2009 to help (successfully) lose stubborn baby weight, I decided to do the same in 2013 when I had another round of stubborn baby weight that wouldn't come off.  Mostly due to the fact that I wasn't very active, unless eating is considered active.  So in March I slowly started running again.  With a crazy goal of running the Leesburg 20k that August.  It didn't happen.  It was too much too soon, especially for a non-athletic person like myself, and I ended up with a hip that hurt so bad I barely wanted to move.  So I backed off for a while, sat out the 20k (didn't even manage to run the 5k they offer the same day).  And in October of 2013 I started running again.  One mile at a time.  With no goal other than to put on my shoes and go.  In December I crazily threw my name into the Cherry Blossom 10 mile lottery, thinking I'd get skipped over the first year I entere...

My blogging New Years tradition ...   1. What did you do in 2014 that you'd never done before? Okay, these are almost all going to be running related... Ran my first half marathon, ran a mile in under 8:30, ran a 5k in under 30 mins.  And I had my first lobster roll. 2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I kept them as best as I could.  And even the ones that I "broke" still had an overall positive impact on me, which is all I can really ask for.  Yes, I am making resolutions for this year.  Apparently a lot, I think I need to scale back so I don't get in over my head.  Basically these are the big ones:  1- complete my Project 52, 2- continue to run 50 miles a month, 3- stop stressing out about having a super clean house.  Then there are lots of little sub goals like: run a mile in under 8 minutes, run a sub 1 hour 10k, do another half marathon, save up for a full frame camera (I've got my hea...

28mm, ISO 1250, f/6.3, 1/125ss Week 9: White flower no. 1 I think I've decided to try for a personal project of photographing different white flowers this year. Here's my first. I'm hoping to learn about lighting, composition, foreground and background, all that good stuff.

50mm, ISO 100, f/16, 10 sec ss. Week 8: Candy Cane I took this a few days before Christmas.  My brother had just given me a nice piece of black velvet to use for a backdrop and I wanted to test it out.  It is so much easier than the not-quite- black and too textured towel I had been using, which then needed a lot of help in photoshop to make actually black.  The candy cane was a tough subject because I kept getting blown highlights where ever the light hit it so I tried to make a tent with the velvet and let in as little and as diffused day light as possible (hence the long exposure).  And then I used photoshop to convert this to b&w with an infrared filter to get the reds nice and dark.  Overall it was a fun experiment, but for now I'm going to stay away from shiny, reflective objects.

28m, ISO 400, f.4.5, 1/160 Week 7:  Hot chocolate break at Shoes, Cup and Cork in downtown Leesburg. For some reason I still feel really really self conscious when I take my camera out on the street or in public in general. Even though it wasn't very crowded and I was only taking a picture of my son, I tried to be as quick as possible before anyone noticed me. One of my 2015 goals: Be a bold artist.

The beginning of a new photography project.  I know I never finished my 365 last year, but I still learned a lot from it, and I think I came out of it with some images I love, that would have never happened if I hadn't been forced to take those pictures.  So I want to try again.  However, I realize that I just dont have the time it takes to do a 365, so instead I'm going to attempt a 52 project... one photo a week for a year.  I'm hoping to come up with one really great photo a week, though I'm sure some of them will be less that wonderful.  But I think having something to force me to take pictures on a regular basis is good for me in many ways.  Plus I will start using my blog again!  yay! And the truth is that I started my Project 52 several weeks ago.  I wanted to get a little ways in before I really made any kind of official declaration, and now that I'm ready, here we go. 66mm, ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/80. Week 1: Playing in the Autumn...

We were fortunate enough to take a second major family vacation this year.  This time in the opposite direction of our New Hampshire beach trip... down to Orlando.  We've done a lot of driving this year, but fortunately the kids do well on road trips. Late night road trip milkshakes. We made it to Disney!  And had to do Fantasia mini-golf. The first amusement park we went to, by request of a leg-fanatic 6 year old. Spanish moss.  It doesnt grow around here, which made it seem all the more magical to me. Dylan builds a super brick to contribute to the park-wide flag building. Crazy rainbows on the drive back to the hotel. Disney!  Though the Magic Kingdom wasn't quite as magical as we'd hoped due to all the people, but we made it to the castle. Aaron photo bomb. A father and his sons. Hollywood Studios.  Much less crowded, lots more fun! Aaron just got into cars about a wee...