Wedding Workshop and Tulips

I've been MIA for a while now, since Thursday. Things have been crazy and I had no time (or energy) to update my blog... Saturday and Sunday were spent at the Algonquin College Wedding Photography Workshop and then Monday was spent photographing the beautiful tulips.

The workshop was interesting. Each day we had the morning in the classroom, and the afternoon was spent shooting a bride and groom. They were just stand-ins to the real thing, but it was still fun to have a woman dressed up in a bride dress, and a man in a suit. There were 15 of us in the class, all taking it for various reasons, whether it was to open a business or because they were shooting a family member's wedding that summer. Unfortunately the weather really wasn't that great, so we were really limited in where we could shoot. We were at the Stitsville United church on Saturday and the Algonquin College green house on the Sunday. Overall the weekend was challenging and somewhat humbling, because it really showed us that to take photos under pressure in crappy conditions (ugly church on a rainy day!!) is really tough. I'm not totally turned off of shooting a wedding, I'd just rather mentor someone for a summer before plunging right into it on my own!

Sunday was Mother's day and unfortunately I wasn't home to be pampered and feted, but I did get the weekend "off" which was more than enough to ask for in my mind, so I had a fun mother's day in the end. Abby put together an art project at daycare which was cute and fun to see. She is really starting to grow up and to see her create things (with Phyllis' help) is fun!

Monday morning I had arranged to meet a woman from my photography class, to get up really early and meet down to Dow's Lake to photograph the tulips. They were so beautiful and in perfect bloom, it's so hard not to take a million photos! I did fill up a whole 8 Gb memory card with flower pictures, some good and some bad. Here are some samples (SOOC - too tired to edit! and I don't think they need it):





And then today after work I picked up the kids and took then down to Major's Hill Park to see what was happening at the Tulip Festival. Not much really and I must say pretty pathetic this year. But for a 3 year old, just to get to ride on a Merry-go-Round is exciting enough, so it was worth it!




Notice that I cut Gillian's hair... her bangs to be specific... she looks so different! Like a big girl!


Anyway, off to play... I'm so behind, I'm already a week off in our Scrapbooking Layout challenge!

Ode to the 24-70....

Beth and I have been sharing our camera wish lists with each other for some time now, and while they do have their differences, they are quite similar. We have been both coveting the 24-70 2.8L mm lens for a while and as of today, I am a proud owner of one. Beth may be jealous, but Beth should remind herself that she is way more smart, disciplined and responsible than me, and now she could just borrow it from me... :) And me on the other hand is not so smart, impatient and impulsive... but enough about that... I've only had it on my camera for a few hours and I already love it. It's focusing speed is SO fast. I really notice the speed of it, it's amazing. I've taken a few shots and here are a few samples...







It's a heavy lens, but nice and solid. I think it will be the one that I put on my camera and never take off!

Catching up on Project 365

I started the doing layouts for my project 365 back in Jan, and I've just only completed Feb! Oh well, I still plan on doing it here and there, and changing the look for each month. Here are the remaining pages for Feb. Due to the kids being sick and me being tired and sick, there are many black spots where I didn't take photos. Lost my drive in Feb. Good thing I got it back... well sort of, skipped today...




Night!

Layout Challenge for this week

I thought I would post our challenge for this week. In honour of my( and I think soon to be Beth's) one year anniversary blogging, use two photos exactly one year apart. Similar to my pics of Gillian from Saturday.

Layout and Friday Photo Challenge

Last week's Digital Layout challenge was to use a mask. Since I use masks in basically every layout I do, I decided to take a mask, colour it and used as it's own element. Here is my page, can you see the mask??

It's the faint yellow flourished square
tucked in behind the photos and paper!

The Friday Photo Challenge (which is slipping far from happening on Fridays!! ha!) was Food. Here are my two photos from that:

Flour

Milk

I decided to go with B&W for these shots, because really, flour and milk don't really have much colour contrast!

We had a good Sunday, although not terribly exciting - with swimming in the morning and shopping in the afternoon. The black flies have started, but they aren't totally unbearable. I imagine by next weekend, they will be getting there. So to take advantage of the nice, bug free weather we went outside after supper to throw rocks in our stream. Fun!




Back to work tomorrow. Not fun.

Take care!

One Year

I forgot to post on April 30th to celebrate my first full year of blogging!! Wow, I can't believe that it's been a whole year going strong (well some weeks stronger than others!). I know of a few of you out there that read this, but are there any others?? Probably not, since I don't do a very good job of tagging each entry or passing the word around! But that is ok, I only started this for myself and for fun and I'm still having fun! So rock on fellow bloggers!

I thought I would add in a couple photos taken exactly one year apart to celebrate:

Gillian, at 11 months

at 23 months

A walk in the woods

I love that it is spring, and that the bugs haven't come out yet! We can go for walks in the woods and not get eaten alive!!