last one, i promise {for now}

Our back yard. What will I do when there is no more snow on the ground?

Kiddo and I are at my parents' house today.  Kiddo loves it here.  Toys that he hasn't played with in weeks.  Undivided attention from Mom Mom.  Grandpa shows him cool stuff about the GPS and keyless ignition on his new car.  Grandpa and Kiddo share chocolate cupcake TastyKakes for snack.  They take him out for lunch and buy him M&M pancakes and chocolate milk.  What more could a kid want?

someone stop me

I'm addicted to this low light photography thing this weekend - and now I've sucked Kiddo into it as my assistant...

i stayed up too late last night

But boy, was it worth it.

I had so much FUN.  These exposures were all 2.5 seconds, I was really surprised that you could already see the blurs where the stars had moved (well, okay, technically the earth moved, but you know what I mean).  Now I want to set up a really long exposure and see if I can get longer star tracks.

(Philly is in that direction - hence all the light).

insomnia and long exposures

Kiddo had a bad bought of insomnia last night - he went to bed at 8:00 but didn't fall asleep until after 11:00 (we had a snow day this morning.  You'd think he would have slept in, right?  Wrong).  While I waited for him to drift off, I blogged, watched the snow fall out the window, listened to the snowplows hard at work, and had fun playing with the camera.  I've never tried long exposures, so last night I rested the camera on the window sill, turned up the ISO and slowed the shutter speed waaaaay down.  The results were a little surprising.

This was taken at 11:00, or thereabouts.  The picture is nothing special - just the view out our front window - but can you believe how much light the camera found???  5 second exposure.  No headlights, no streetlights.  No full moon.  And what is surprising to me is that it picked up color - the blue shutters, red bricks on the porch, brown leaves clinging to the trees. Isn't that cool?!?!?!

Here's what it looked like this morning (blurry, because I switched to manual focus last night and forgot to switch back to auto - the auto wouldn't work in the dark.  Go figure).

Now I'm ready to try again - this is going to be fun!  I really need to get outside and shoot in the air instead of through dirty windows.  If only it were warmer out there...

bits and pieces {ice, fetch, and geography lessons}

Randomness #1:  I decided to try my first Project 365 this year.

I lasted all of 8 days.  Oops.  Maybe a Project 52 instead?

Randomness #2:  I also decided to start Ashley's perpetual calendar.  So far so good with that one.

Randomness #3:  And yes, we are chopping holes in the ice on the pond so that the fish can breathe.  Four inches of ice.

We have never had ice that thick.  And it's been there for weeks.  And our fish are dying, because we were negligent and didn't get the leaves out of the pond before it froze.  So they're down there decomposing and suffocating our poor fish.  Sniff.  Sniff.  Chopping the ice every day isn't good for them either - the shock waves do something funky to them - but we figured they were going to die anyway if we didn't, so we might as well try.  Pond care lesson learned.  No leaves next year.

Randomness #4:  Wanna see my poor photographer trick?  In the mornings we have harsh sunlight coming through our dining room windows.  This pic isn't too bad, but it can sometimes be blinding (I tried to find a "blinding" pic, but they are always so bad, I delete them right away). 

Enter my high-tech gadget...

Tape a plastic grocery bag in the window, and you get lots of nice, soft light.  Easy peasy!

Randomness #5:  My sister-in-law has a cat that plays fetch.

If you throw it, she'll run after a crumpled piece of paper, bat it around and chase it a few times, and then fetch it back so you can do it again!  And again.  And again.

Randomness #6:  Kiddo and I were busy last weekend working on a project.  I saw this post about making bathtub murals the other day.  Eventually, our mural morphed into a map.  Geography while you shower, anyone?

I copied an outline map and blew it up on a copier.  I cut out the states and traced them on the foam before cutting them out again.  Kiddo was in charge of labeling with the state name and capital.  And sometimes major cities.  Now he wants a world map...

Randomness #7:  Time to crawl in bed.  Hope you have a great week!

I got one!

After cheating the other day, I got an honest-to-goodness falling leaf picture!  Check it out - you are sure to be impressed.

You are so jealous.  I can tell.

I cannot drive by this little old church in the fall and not stop to take a picture.  It compels me so.

I have dozens of nearly identical pictures on my hard drive.  And yet I still stop the car and pull out the camera.

Hydrangeas are almost as bad.

I used to hate hydrangeas.  Now I can't for the life of me figure out why I ever felt that way.  We have 10 or 11 plants scattered around our yard, I could easily go buy more every spring.  Oh, how I love them so.

Random leaf stuck in one of our many shrubs.  Unlike our hydrangeas, this shrub may not be around much longer.  It is a leaf magnet through the fall and winter.  It starts catching leaves in October, and they pile up in its branches and underneath it all through the winter and into May.  Cleaning it out is a pain, literally.  Do you see those thorns????  Ouch.  We have no love for this little beast.

This is our church cemetery.  Isn't it lovely?  And the farm in the background?  Hubby grew up there.  It has been in his dad's family for forever. 

I have read some good blog posts today.  I like this one, about living in the now, and the meaning and significance of the small things that we do.  I also like this one.  It is a beautifully written post about adoption, poverty, and God's heart for orphans and family.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  We are off tomorrow to spend the day with a passel of junior high kids.  Should be fun!

falling leaves

Do you ever stand under a tree in the fall, camera in hand, trying to snap a picture of a falling leaf?  It's crazy-hard.

You might get some pretty awesome bokeh, though.  

But eventually, you get tired of running around chasing leaves, so you wander off and take pics of leaves that are still attached. 

You practice your sunflare/haze skills.

You go back and try the falling leaves again.

Obviously, this isn't going to work.  So you start to get sneaky.

You ignore the neighbors and folks driving by who are giving you funny looks.  You pretend it's perfectly normal behavior to be standing in the front yard, holding up leaves and then dropping them with one hand, while using the other to hold the camera and shoot pics.  And then you do it again, and again, and again. 

Eventually, you start to get the hang of it.

 

And, if you don't tell anyone about how you cheated, they'll think you have mad falling-leaf-capturing skillz. 

Have I mentioned that I love fall?

sometimes i get a little snap happy

Happiness is walking around the yard in the morning while the little guy is at school, getting dewy grass clippings stuck to my flip flops, snapping pictures...