Pink

Beth and I are starting a layout of the week in a challenge type format. The goal is really to get us inspired to scrap more by making it a simple challenge. This week was to use pink... easy for me as I have 2 girls who love pink!!

Here is what I came up with:

I think I covered the pink aspect!! Maybe a little too much...?

Last week's update this week

In my last post I said I was going to go backwards from last Tuesday... well I didn't make it more than one day. I was pretty tired for the rest of the week and was falling asleep around 8 pm each night - Fun! So I'll just go over the highlights. Starting with the most important one:

We had our second ultrasound for Baby#3 and all was good. The tech. said that the baby was very healthy from all the measurements and that nothing was out of the ordinary, which is always a relief! Part way through the ultrasound, Eric asked the all important question of "Have you seen a penis yet??" to which the tech. replied... "Ugh... no not yet... I think it's going to be like your other two..." So she zoomed it and pointed out all the girl parts, to which Eric replied "are you sure that's not a penis and balls?" and the tech replies - "It's not." So that is that, we are having another girl!! What craziness is 3 girls going to bring us, I can't even imagine! Abby and Gillian are so fun, it can only get more fun! Here are a couple ultrasound pics (not the greatest but you get the point):


The morning of March 23rd, I did Shawna's second maternity shoot. She was much bigger so it was much better for getting the shots right. I liked the shots from the first session, but felt they would be even better when she grew near the end. Here are some samples from that session:

(edit: This one changed to some funky colour when I posted...
got to figure out what's up with that??!!)

I was happy how it turned out. As always - lessons learned...
1. Don't crop in so tight all the time, I need to make room for cropping in PS;
2. Turn subject into the light! duh!
3. Iron backdrop! Or get seamless paper;
4. Need 24-70 lens... I think I've mentioned that one already.

Now I need to find a next willing subject for a shoot - Anyone game??

First Child Shoot

I'm going to work backwards from Tuesday to the weekend with my posts. I've been offline with a fried modem, and now that I'm back I want to first share some photos from a couple shoots I did this week.

I went over to my friend Joanne's place on Tuesday to take some photos of her kids. Her son is around Abby's age (3 weeks older) and her daughter is 16 months. I must admit I was nervous as this was the very first session I was doing with kids, other than my own of course. It could have gone in any direction, what I feared most was them looking at me and running away screaming...BUT it was the complete opposite - they were PERFECT!! Joanne did a great job preparing her son (take home lesson #1 which I'll summarize at the end) so when I showed up he knew my name and was all to keen to pose for me - I was so happy!! He was a charmer. Joanne's daughter was also fantastic, being a little sick and 16 months old, she was the perfect little model, I really couldn't have asked for better my first time out! Here are some of the highlights (and a sneak peek for Joanne! These were my favourites -- BTW they are only slightly touched up - if I was to print I'd work on them a little more..):








I figure I spent about an hour shooting, in total I took about 165 photos and got about 15 "wall-worthy" shots (pics that I consider quality enough for displaying on the wall). I was hoping for more, and I know where I could have improved. But overall I was super happy with how it all turned out!

My take home points for this shoot:

1. It's so great to have the parent prepare the kids, then they are a little less nervous about the whole thing;
2. I was shooting at ISO 100 with my 50 mm, in retrospect I really should have been shooting at at least 200 plus. I would have had more in focus (I was had a few that could have been great shots except I was running too slow...) ;
3. It was the perfect length of time; By the end the kids were still happy and we didn't have any meltdowns - awesome!
4. Need to get a 24-70 mm 2.8, but the 50 mm 1. 4 worked perfectly!

Joanne - I'll e-mail you with a link to the entire slide show when I get a chance and tell me what you think and be honest!! :) I had fun-- thanks so much for the opportunity!

Scrapped tonight

After putting the kids to bed. I sat down with the goal to do a page, and here it is:

Now I'm beat and have to sleep... but not before I sneak in another chocolate eclair ... hehehehe.

...so tired...can't stay up....

I've been missing from bloggyland for the week because I've been so very tired! I can't stay up past 9 and the kids go to bed at 8 pm now so there's no time to do anything computer wise! I've been sleeping like a LOG, which is rare these days because of either me having to go to the toilet all night long, or the kids waking us up. And usually when I wake up around 4 am, my brain starts going and I can't get back to sleep. Although I haven't blogged all week, I have managed to take a photo each day for the past 6 days. It's so much easier now that the sun is out later and it's starting to warm up, I'm not reduced to always taking the same kind of photo - dark and gray! I get to take photos of apples now (which I thought fitting for St. Pattie's day!):

Apple and fork in natural light

Anyway, I've been trying to complete my freeze action portion of my photography class assignment and I think I finally succeeded tonight. You see, I've been trying for 3 nights with Abby as my model to get the combo of shutter speed and aperture right. (I mean trying as in 5-10 min while dinner cooks, so not a lot of time invested really) I've been shooting strickly in manual (except when the big flash is on top... have to figure that one out) to learn it and it's been a real challenge to get it right. Practice will make perfect!

First night - blurry and cut her hair off, but not bad

Not bad either, the action is captured here
But still blurry.

This was my favourite and
best one of the first day trying.

Day 2 - Abby decided to "dance" for me...
Still blurry, but cute.

Finally tonight, captured one that froze the action
and wasn't blurry!

The reason I tried this was that as Abby stood in the kitchen I noticed the back lighting on her, so I wanted to capture that really, but the dancing and jumping started, so that became my new objective... I'll post more because there are some funny ones of her dancing.

Off to bed now!

ETA: You just have to check out this site: The Big Picture - now THAT is freeze action!!! (love the photography on this site, just stunning!)

Abby and the Mouse

Abby will be 4 in August, and this weekend she figured out how to use my computer mouse. Perhaps this is really "late" in age to figure this out, but considering I rarely (aka never) let her touch my computer stuff, it's not bad!! Last time I tried, I think she went running off with it giggling! It was kind of fun to see her discover the computer, and actually play a game. Anyone have any pre-school computer game suggestions out there? I had her on CBC Kids which was perfect for her.

What a fabulous weekend we had here, the sun was shining, our sap started running, and the snow had a perfect crust on it for the kids to walk on, so we spent a lot of time outside. We played here Saturday morning with the neighbours kids, and in the afternoon we went down to Eric's parents place to see if we could skate on the river. With the recent warm weather, lack of fresh snowfall and cold nights, the river was in pretty good shape for skating, something that only happens once a year. Unfortunately it had warmed up too much, so it was a little slushy and too soft for skating. So we decided to take a walk down the railway tracks.







Sunday morning we had a nice breakfast with our friends from around the corner. We made a great pancake breakfast then the kids played for a long time while we hung out. In my opinion, this little boy and Abby play the best of anyone we know, they just get along so well, it's fun and relaxing! For the afternoon, it was so warm again, that we had to go outside, so back to the railway tracks we went. We again wanted to skate, because when we were eating breakfast we could see all sorts of people skating below! But again, it was too warm and slushy! It it gets cold this week we'll have to try and get out one morning as it's a rare opportunity to skate over the whole river!

Gillian, Abby and her friend Quinn
(They got dressed, and I told them it was time
for the "Royal Princess Photograph" BOY did they
ever fall for that one!! Quinn is going to hate me when
he is 18!!! :) )

And finally, one last tickle before bedtime!


Happy Monday everyone!

Concentration and Projects, and Friday Photo Challenge

I can't concentrate anymore. I think it's because I'm pregnant, have two young kids, work full time, and still have all the chores to do in between all of that during the week. When you take pregnancy out of the picture, then it becomes much easier, because I have energy, I sleep better and I exercise more. It's amazing what taking those three things away from you can do to your ability to concentrate. And really it's not only the concentration, it's the memory (mine is shot), my creativity drains out of me (notice no scrapping and fewer photos these days...) and mood deteriorates significantly (I'll save that dicey subject for another post!). It doesn't help that I read a million blogs (well not that many but enough) and surf the scrapbook pages at Designer Digitals. So that takes up a lot of precious time also. But when I do find a page or something I really like at DD, like this POSTER I think - So cool, I want to do this, it's so simple!! Yet requires concentration!! So last night I saw this. Opened Photoshop, created a new 16 X 20 300 dpi document..... and, then that was that... I realized it was 8:45 pm, I was totally exhausted from the week, so I resigned myself to watching a few shows we had taped, then went to bed at 10 pm. So another project for the project list! I won't even bother update you on project 365. I think I'll rename it project 25 (as in 25 days, hahahah!)

Last weeks Friday Photo Challenge (which I realized just now that I didn't post on my blog!!) was a composition one, focusing on symmetry or repetition. Here are my two for the challenge:




Oh... here comes Gillian, looks like computer time is over! Can't wait to see your photos! Have a good weekend.

Fun Beautiful Weekend

The weather was beautiful this weekend, no one was sick, so life was good! We spent a lot of time outside, which was fun. Eric tapped the trees for this year's maple syrup run, so I'm looking forward to that. Took a couple walks in the woods and it was beautiful! Speaking of which, Jen and my challenge this week was "beautiful". I didn't take my camera on my walks, so I didn't get any shots during that, but I did get these during the week:

I love our view it's always beautiful to me!

Needless to say - Abby - Beautiful!

And of course Gillian. Love this photo
(can you tell? I've posted it twice!)
definitely going to print this one for the wall!

This was taken today, while playing outside

This one I took yesterday, which playing on the cushions.
Her teeth are slowly coming it, but regardless, she is stunning!

Friday night we had a nice dinner with my parents. Hopefully we didn't tire Mum out too much. She is doing remarkable well for having a knee replacement less than two weeks ago. Hopefully the recovery goes smoothly!

And here are a couple other things I did this weekend. A little photoshopping with old slides:

And came across this:

Me: in 1975, colouring

Which reminded me of this:

Gillian March 2009.
She LOVES to colour!!

I guess that's enough photos for today! Happy Monday!

Another day at home, with Gillian this time.

This is how the morning went. I got up, ready for work, left with coffee in hand, drove to work, turned my computer on. Then Eric called to say Gillian had thrown up. So I put my coat back on, grabbed my purse, left with coffee still in hand, and drove home. She was basically fine for the rest of the day, but I wanted to be sure. Eric had too much work to do, so I went home, as I have no work to do right now.

So here is what you do with a day off with Gillian:

play on the couch

yell at Bender to sit, in "baby talk"
(notice her right finger)

Climb on the fireplace

climb up and sit on the table

Play Mr. Potato Head

Sit around and look beautiful

Random Gillian Notes from Today:

She is a busy girl, but a lot of fun. She fell asleep in my bed for the first time, which was really cute. And loved to cuddle. She can say a few words, that really only we can understand. She loves to colour. She is VERY determined, and likes to do what she wants to do. She is very agile, when running, climbing outside and chasing the dog (for a 21 mo old anyway).