MomShots

Last night I was so inspired I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed trying to will myself to sleep while my uncooperative brain kept running around like an over active 4 year old.

Earlier that evening I spent some time cruising the Internet. I was looking at galleries and portfolios of professional photographers. I was specifically looking at baby and maternity shots with some older children thrown in just for good measure.

You see, we are going to visit our family in Southern California for Thanksgiving and we have recently had a new member addition and another to be born in early 2009. I really want to try my hand at both photographing babies and pregos. I was looking at all these sites to get ideas of shots I could emulate and props I could use. I am hoping that I can produce something that looks halfway professional.

I’m planning on bringing both the D100 and the D40x. I decided on using the D100 with the 50mm lens because then I can use the auto focus feature. My eyes play tricks on me and when I think it is in focus it isn’t. Then I also plan on using the D40x with the kit 18-55mm lens so I can utilize the zooming features. Plus that lens will auto focus with that camera. I was thinking that I had better be using auto focus because I don’t want to have to reshoot the same shot over and over and over and over and over again while I’m trying to find my focus. Anyway… just some thoughts about that.

So the new baby is a girl, which is totally fun for me. I’m the mom of three boys so I don’t get a lot of sugar and spice photos. I get a lot more frogs and puppy dog tails kind of photos. That’s kind of where my mind is most often so it is really fun to think outside of my self-imposed box. So I’ve got a piece of pink textured faux fur, a hunk of black fleece and a cream colored sheep skin in my mental prop arsenal so far. I’ve also got a basket. So those are a few of the things I’m thinking about bringing with me… I am sure her mom (on the left) will want some pictures taken with this tutu wearing sock monkey (made by her sister on the right) as well…

Suggestions for props or sites to be inspired from are MOST welcome!

Well, back to our regularly scheduled Tip of the Week. We’ve got a great Tip for you today and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Tye really makes a good point, but I won’t spoil it for you. Read it for yourself and give it some thought.

I hope you have a great day. I’m having a lot of thoughts running through my head that I want to share with you but I think I’d better save those for another day. I’ll leave you with a Momshot I took of Gar last Friday. We went up to a ranger station and got a tag for a Christmas tree - this is a ticket that lets you go out into the National Forest and cut down your own tree. We went for a walk in the snow and I took a few shots of the kiddos.

I feel like today is Christmas.  Except it isn’t cold, I don’t have to cook a whole bunch and nobody else got presents…  Why?  If you didn’t guess why from the title of this post, it is because I got a new camera today.  Well, it’s not new new, but new enough and new to me.  We have a friend who bought my current dream camera (a Nikon D90) and generously sold his old Nikon D40x to us for a song.  While I am still saving my pennies for that future D90, I’m going to go hog wild using this great little D40x!  That’s right HOG wild.  Oink!  Oink!

Right now the battery is charging and I am watching carefully for the charge light to go off.  Who knows what might happen if I don’t watch it?  Who knows…  So I am watching carefully.  Actually, I’m not.  I’m sharing my exciting news with you.  Then the second I finish this post, I am going to immerse myself in the user manual and see what this little camera can do.  

It is little.  I feel like it is so little.  It’s just so cute.  I put my old lens on it and the old lens weighs more than the camera.  The new lens is going to be so much fun to play with too.  It is 18mm to 55mm so I get to experience a whole new layer of photography since my old lens is a fixed 60mm.  I get to play around with zooming.  Watch me zooooommmm!!!!

Ok, I think I’m getting a little silly here.  I am going to leave you with a photo I took of my neice, Cora.  It has nothing to do with this post except that it was taken with a camera…

So enjoy your day, my friends.  I am going to be quite click happy for the rest of the day!  I will get back to you soon to let you know my thoughts on all the cool new features I have access to on this new little camera.

I love the early mornings.  Mornings always make me feel like the day is full of wonder and anything can happen.  I start thinking about fun stuff to do with my kids, photos to take,  things to make, where to go…  the list goes on.  We have been making Halloween decorations and today we are going to make a ghost garland.  Autumn is in the air!

This really isn’t a Fall photo shoot, it is just one I did last week. Ben, my husband, needed some photos for a website he’s working on.  So he gave me an assignment - to put Gar shirtless and in overalls and take some photos of him doing things that could be done in the 1920’s - things that aren’t dated.  I got some pretty good shots, but I need to reshoot because now I have more information.  I shot most of my photos in portrait orientation and he needs them to be in landscape orientation.  It was really fun to just take photos of Gar.  He did so well at following my instructions.  It was really hard to get him to look at me and smile but he still did fantastic.  It was kind of a special time for us.  Just mom and Gar time.  He ended up being my special little buddy all day.  It was really fun!

I think this week, I am going to focus on getting some Autumn photos of my kids.  Bundle them up and take them for a walk up one of the stunning Wasatch Mountain canyons.  We’ll see what we can create.

What does this week have in store for you?  Any photo ops coming up?  Any fun things coming your way?  Have you taken any Autumn photos yet?  How did they turn out?  Where did you take them?  I want to know the whole scoop!

Hopefully.

I have had a couple of crazy weeks.  A few days after we got home from Moab, my parents came to visit.  We had a great time and got all domestic.  We canned a box of peaches and made soup base from about a million tomatoes.  We tried a new BBQ restaurant in my neighborhood (It was super yummy so if you are ever in the Springville, UT area and are hankerin’ for some meat, try Charlie Boy’s.  Pretty good Carolina BBQ)  and we spent a lot of time visiting.  

Part of the craziness I was feeling was because Ben, my husband, went to Santa Fe with my cousin’s husband, Ben McPherson.  Ben M. is an awesome painter and had a gallery exhibition at The Blue Rain Gallery.  My Ben went with him to help transport his paintings, offer moral support and (here I think is the real reason) so they could hang out.  You put those two in a room together and they don’t ever stop talking.  They are always working on some kind of project and are currently working on a really cool screenplay.  

The show was a success and they made it home safe and sound.  It’s nice to have my hubby home.  He’s my rock.  

We went for a Sunday drive yesterday afternoon.  We saw beautiful foliage putting on their Autumn colors.  We saw turbulent clouds, vivid blue skies and smiling faces.  We found a really cool little park in a planned community that seems have felt the recession and doesn’t look like the houses are being currently built.  There are some really good sledding hills in that area so we will be back when sledding season is on.  We call it the Secret Park.  My little guys loved it.

So I have been thinking about some Momshot stuff lately.  I haven’t really been posting much lately.  A lot has been going on in my life but I still need to take a minute and share my new photographic discoveries with you.  I have some ideas for posts and I suppose instead of just thinking about them I should just type them up!  I will make you a promise.  I will do better.

Oh, before I go, I wanted to mention something about the photos in this post.  The one in the top left is my favorite.  The reason is because Uly was trying out his new “Sponge” smile.  He said, “Mom, do you want to see my Sponge smile?”  Of course I said yes!.  He then proceeded to show me that cute smile and various renditions of it.  If you look closely and use copious amounts of imagination, you can see a resemblance between Uly and Spongebob Squarepants.  I love that he is experimenting with that kind of thing.  I think it is adorable and very fun!

I am finally getting my act together and have created a Technorati account.  I know, I’m slow…

Any Technorati love you’d like to show Momshots would be greatly appreciated.  Just click on the link in the upper right corner. Or here  Anyone can do it.  You don’t have to have a Technorati account.  

Just click.  

Easy.

Do it now (please).

We got home from our 3000 mile road trip yesterday.  It was a long time driving but really, being stuck in the car with my all time favorite people is one of my all time favorite things to do.  On our trip I took a ton of photos.  I took photos of things on the side of the road, mountains, volcanos, trees, signs, people.  It was really fun.  We stopped a few times and took photos of things we saw on the side of the road but mostly I had to snap my photos through the bug smeared windshield.  It was a blast!

Here are a few shots from the trip.

We pulled over outside of Palmdale, CA for an emergency pee break.  This Scoop - Thank Bob The Builder for the name - was on the side of the road and we let Garland and Ulysses climb all over it.  They had a blast.  Gar cried for about 15 minutes after we forced them back into the car to resume our cross country trek.

Magnus in his car seat.  He gets pretty tired of his seat but he’s a trooper.  If his brothers are sitting next to him he has much more fun.

Ben, Ulysses and Garland standing outside of the closed down post office and general store in Kelso, California.  This is one of the two remaining buildings in that little dead town.  Quite a bit worse than Radiator Springs.

Here is a little montage of inanimate objects we saw.  This is Mt. Shasta through my bug smeared windshield, a few Joshua trees, a tree in the Middle of Nowhere in California heavily laden with shoes, and a bit of Route 66 nostalgic glory. 

We have been on a whirlwind trip - a giant road trip loop.  We started in Utah and drove up to Bellingham, Washington and then drove down to Palm Springs, California.  Today we are going to complete the loop and make our way home to Springville.  

I have had many photo opportunities with new scenery and family members.  I am excited to get back on track with posting and playing with my Momshots.  I have been remiss in that I haven’t posted this week’s Tip of the Week.  Tye typed it up for me but I haven’t posted it yet.  I’m just going to say that I am on vacation and will post it next week.  It’s a good one about using spot color so that will be fun!

In the spirit of Momshots, I am posting a photo of my adorable sister in law.  She is 8 1/2 months pregnant and this photo shows her sisters’ hands on her baby belly.

Let me tell you something about myself…  I am a pretty artistic person.  Or at least I like to think of myself as such.  I have a wide range of interests and feel really comfortable behind the sewing machine, with jewelry findings on the table or with glue or paint on my hands and under my nails.  I may not be what you call “an accomplished artist” but I am pretty comfortable tackling most creative-type projects.  

Reading that you might think that I have many pieces of artwork around my home…  

I don’t.

Up until a few days ago, I only had this one piece of artwork on the walls of my home.  It is a photo by an extremely talented photographer named Sharon Grainger.  She took this photo of my then fiancé and now husband Ben and myself way back in 1997.  

It is the only thing hanging on our walls.  The only thing.  I’m seriously not kidding.  I wish I was.  But I am not…  There are many reasons for that, which I am sure could all be fully analyzed by a shrink.  I won’t really go into it.  It could take days.

I have mentioned in earlier posts that I have decided to get over that hang up and hang up (bad pun totally intended…) some more photos and artwork.  

I had some photos printed by Snapfish and I was really happy with the quality of the prints.  They also got them to me fairly quickly - that’s always a plus!  The only thing I was slightly unhappy with is that I chose to have a white border around each print.  I was thinking that it would look kind of cool.  Maybe it would have if I used different frames but the ones I chose (from Ikea) didn’t work quite like that.  Maybe all frames are like that.  I have limited experience with frames, as you can tell from my lack of artwork on my walls…

I painted the frames red and hung them in my boys’ bathroom.  I kind of went hay wire with the spray paint because it so much fun painting the frames.  I painted a wooden step stool red and also a basket that I keep the boys’ toothpaste and brushes in.  I decided I’m going to get a red bath mat and go with a red accessory theme in that room.  Basic but I like how it looks.

So here’s my final grouping.  It was kind of a hilarious situation; me trying to get a photo of this grouping.  The bathroom is so small and my lens is not a very wide angle so I had to try a few things before I could get them all in the frame.  One was taken while I stood in the hall and took a photo of the reflection in the mirror and the other was taken with me crouching down in the bathtub.  If you had been there you would have been laughing at me.  Come on, laugh anyway!  

So I’m basically stealing this post idea from Pioneer Woman.  If you haven’t checked her out yet, she’s great.  I read this recent post and got inspired to try my own hand at painting with the Photoshop Artistic effects.  I took a photo of this flower, a delphinium I believe, growing in my mom’s lush and beautiful garden in July of this year.  My mother is a woman of many, many talents and one of those many talents is to grow beautiful things - not just flowers.  

So I thought I’d try the watercolor effect.  I’ve always dreamed of being able to paint but I haven’t yet been able to train my hands to cooperate, so in the mean time, I’ll experiment with manipulating photos.  Besides, I think it might help me be a bit more familiar with Photoshop if I’m actually practicing things.

So here is the before:

Here is the after:

My original photo had some out of focus areas - I used a pretty large aperture (f/3.3) so the background is blurred but so is part of the flower.  I think the blurred areas actually help the watercolor to look better.  I think it would look really cool printed on knobby, thick watercolor paper and then attached to a greeting card.  In fact, I am toying with the idea of setting a goal to make a set of greeting cards.  I think that might be a really fun project.

So, back to photographing children…  You could totally do this with photos of your kids or anything that you would like to see like that.  Studios charge lots of money for prints that just have this simple effect on them.  Who needs those stinking studios, anyway?!?  OK, maybe we do, but not today!

I would love to see any photos that you have played with and added an artistic effect.  Post them to the Momshots Flickr Group.  It will be fun to see what you’ve done!

Happy Independence Day!  I hope everyone is having a safe and wonderful time with your families.  We are having a great time visiting family in Northwest Washington.  We went around the point, this morning, to some friends’ houses for a big pancake breakfast.  Now we are making coleslaw, deviled eggs, and other 4th of July yummies!  My parent’s house is party central on this day every year.  It’s is a wonderful time to remember our freedoms and ability to express our self in any way we want.

Happy Birthday, America.  We love you!