Photography class week 4

Well, last week was one of the hardest and longest I've had in a long time between being really sick myself as well as nursing other family members through, plus a science fair, decorating my husband's office and six thousand other things. Actually, I'm still recovering and now two more members of the family are sick!

Anyway, for this week I honestly didn't have time to shoot until today and I ran into the same problem I often do, which is that I have great ideas but lack the technical know-how to pull off the ideas. I chose to tell a story in one image with my daughter Sarah. She is our princess with four brothers, so my idea was to have her dressed up in her ballet leotard etc. and looking super girly, surrounded by the boys' basketballs, etc. on the basket ball court. Well, the wind picked up so much that she was freezing in her leotard and the balls were blowing everywhere. It was also too cold to execute my second idea, which was to have her in a ballet pose on the trampoline with my boys sprawled out around her. Finally, I gave up the outdoors and came inside. I had her sitting in her pink room, while I shot her playing with her Barbies. I tried to add some conflict by having two of her brothers on the bed with her playing with their robots, but I just couldn't seem to get the right angle to catch that "telling" shot. So what I ended up with was just my little girl in her pink room. I did get some good shots of her though, and I feel like I'm starting to be able to apply some of the principles I've learned so far in the class, in reducing, different perspectives etc.

For my self-portrait, I had my husband take some photos of me. I'm such a novice myself though, that I didn't really know what to tell him. I've never been very photogenic. I have a hard time relaxing when I know some one is taking my picture! But we did have fun, and I'm starting to learn about shadows, although I'm still not sure how to avoid them!

Part 2 of Week 2 photography

Ok, so I'm still not completely getting how to post my photos....is there a theme here? Yes! Technology and I have still not managed to form a healthy relationship! The photos posted before should be in reverse order, and then I wasn't sure about including the last one (top photo). I will try and get it right this time...

Photography class Week 2

Well, let me just say that this week has been a little more challenging for me. Since I am still struggling with learning the technical aspects of my camera as well as taking photos, I struggled with focusing on the right spot as well as photographing in different lighting (how do I photograph someone with a window behind them?). That said, I still loved the excuse it gave me to capture some special everyday moments I would not normally have thought of capturing. I especially enjoyed taking pictures from many different perspectives. It really made for some creative body positions on my part, not to mention some great angles in the photos! :) Also, the training of my children to just go about what they are doing while I take pictures is starting to catch on!

For this week, I chose to photograph my oldest son's violin practice. This is his first year taking violin, and I wanted to capture the conflict of a ten year-old boy, muddy shoes and all, handling and enjoying a delicate musical instrument. At first, I struggled to find a very interesting shot, and actually spread the shoot to two different days. But the more I experimented, the more interesting it became. It was challenging shooting in our very small music room, and I felt like I had to move just about everything out of the room, but I was trying to reduce as much as possible. The first shots are of him initially opening his violin case and lovingly handling it (without any prompting from me!), and practicing. The last three reduction shots are more detail shots of the instrument. I kind of felt like the two parts of the assignment melted into each other since shooting different perspectives always give you some more general and some more detailed shots, so I wasn't exactly sure which photos to put in which category. But I tried to really reduce on the last category, so hopefully that will work.

Back again - this time with photography homework!

Well now, I know it has been, well, let's just not talk about how long it has been. I have the same excuse as always - another baby! But I will get to that in my next post, because it deserves a space all it's own. For this post, I want to focus on something I am really excited about right now. I have signed on to take a photography class online, and I am thrilled to post my first assignment. Now, keep in mind, I have never taken a photography class or even had a decent camera until now. Actually, these pictures are the first ones I have taken with my new, beautiful camera that I got for Christmas from my way-too-generous husband. I am truly new at this but I love the class I am taking from an amazing teacher and photographer, Brooke Snow, who is teaching us how to tell a story through photography. I find this idea so inspiring because with five children, four of them being 6 and under, my days are filled with dramatic highs and lows and each member of my family is a novel in him/herself.

For this first assignment, I decided to focus on Jeff, our third child. He is right in the middle of our family and often has to wait for his mom to attend to the older or younger children before he gets his turn. So I thought, why not start with him this time? And I have to say, the two of us had a blast taking these photos together. One challenge I ran into was that since all my children are all so used to looking at the camera and grimacing "cheese", it was difficult for me to sneak up and get a candid shot and genuine joy, rather than him trying to pose. I guess this is something we'll have to work on. Any ideas any one? Also, I know that as I get more familiar with how to operate the camera, I will get better at knowing what settings to use. For next time, I will minimize even more as well. I notice now that the quilt that he is laying on is too distracting. But anyway, here were my thoughts and goals for this shoot: Jeff is such an adorable mixture of sweetness, smarts and pure mischief and pranks. That is the conflict I was trying to capture. He is really beginning to love reading, and wears glasses that give him a studious look, and yet he is so active, doing handstands and breakdancing that I can barely get him to stay still long enough to click a photo. Mischief and Sweetness are Jeff's trademarks, so I tried to capture those in these photos.

Happy Halloween!

Our first Halloween in our new home: I am now learning wisdom as I become a more seasoned Halloween mom, that at least two out of our four children are bound to change their minds at the last minute about their costumes. Ben ended up deciding to wear his badly torn ghost costume from last year instead of the brand new Anakin Skywalker costume he insisted on a few weeks ago. Jeff also changed from Spiderman to Venom. Sarah was true to Rapunzel, although I now know why the storybooks always show her with a long braid. The wig became a huge knot in about ten minutes. And Jacob was the cutest vampire ever!

So I had fun finally putting some music on our blog and I had to put 'Fireflies' on first because the kids LOVE this song so much - -well, that and 'Hey, Soul Sister' (doesn't every child love this song? I think it must be the ukelele!). Anyway, since this is our family blog with mostly pictures of the children, and we've been listening to this song somewhat constantly since our move, it seemed only natural! This picture is from June. We finally have a real back yard for the kids to play in and they were so excited for their first run through the sprinklers after a long winter.

New Location, New post (finally)

So, for all of you who know us, we are not always the most consistent at things like blogs, but I was looking at all of these seriously outdated pictures and entries and realized it's time to update. So here goes... We moved! We bought a new house! We have gone a whole year without getting pregnant. Yes, some very important milestones have occurred as our so aptly named "Woodland Adventure" continues...