MomShots

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!
 

So lately I have been thinking (don’t I seem to start all of my posts with this phrase???)…  I have been thinking about the benefits of a SLR versus the benefits of a point and shoot.  All my life I have been afraid of SLR cameras.  This is a true statement.  Is there a name for that kind of fear?  SLRaphobic?

When I was in my late teens/early 20’s I had a film SLR.  I used it while I traveled through Europe.  Once my backpack was “broken into” and they stole my favorite black sweater but they left the SLR.  Secretly, I was a little sad about that.

I came home from my trip and seriously had about 1 picture that looked halfway in focus.  It was a huge photographic bust.  I longed for my black sweater.

At that time in my life, a point and shoot was exactly the kind of camera I needed.  I needed something that I could just “point” and “shoot”.  I didn’t want to have to think about how my camera worked.  I didn’t even really care what the images looked like.  In reality, I don’t think I really ever developed more than two rolls of film because I just didn’t care.  I enjoyed the act of photographing much more than the finished result.

Part of me is sad about this because the first 4 or so years of my married life are pretty much unphotographically (not a word, I know.) documented.  Then I was introduced to the relatively new technology of a digital camera - still a point and shoot.  But awesome.  An HP Photosmart early edition.  It rocked in all its dinosaurish technological glory.  Finally, I was able to see my photos when I uploaded them to my computer.  I still wasn’t doing anything with them but at least I could see what the photos I took looked like!

After the HP Photosmart came a Nikon Coolpix, edition number unknown, however I think it was 3400 or something like that.  After that came my current Nikon Coolpix 5600.  The thing that I loved about these Nikons was that they had all these cool program modes.  My HP didn’t.  It was too early in history for that.

I never fully took advantage of my program modes but I sure had fun taking lots of pictures.  I loved that there were program mode possibilities.  It made me feel like I could be a good photographer if I just worked on it a little.  I guess I didn’t really ever work on it very much…

My step into the digital SLR (DSLR) world didn’t actually happen until early this year.  Like I said, I was SLRaphobic.  I mention in a previous post about my 2007 Halloween frustration because I didn’t have access to my point and shoot and the Nikon D100 was too scary.  I tried to use the D100 but my photos were too dark and I didn’t have any idea how to make them lighter.

My next experience with that DSLR was at Christmas time.  I dressed my three boys up as three little kings and tried to take a photo to use on a Christmas card.  I overcame my fear and produced an image that was OK for my complete lack of knowledge.  I slowly have been learning more and more about how to use that camera.

I still have my point and shoot - Nikon Coolpix 5600, but officially I call it Uly’s Camera.  The last time I tried to use it I realized it really is broken and isn’t worth the frustration.  It’s way more fun to watch my 4 year old take pictures with it.  I love seeing his results.  He’s an artistic little fellow!

So I guess the point that I want to make in this meandering post is that I am really enjoying using a DSLR.  I am officially unafraid!  Do I get a medal or anything?  I enjoy it way more than I ever did, my point and shoots.  I love the control that I have over the exposure and focus.  I guess truly am a control freak!  I just love being able to tell my camera what I want and have it create that.  I’m not beholden to a preset mode, if I don’t want to be.

Now before you died in the wool point and shoot users turn your back on me, I want to say that I have seen some amazing images that came from a point and shoot.  Also, the newer cameras have some pretty cool technology.  I am just really enjoying this DSLR adventure.  I am having so much more fun using this camera than I ever did with any of our previous cameras.  I am also getting many more results that I like. 

Hello and Welcome to Momshots.com!

I’m super excited that you are here. This is a site dedicated to the photographing of our wonderful children. Here we will explore ways to take better pictures of the most precious things we have – our kids.

My kids move so quickly and won’t sit still that after an afternoon of taking pictures of them, there are no photos in focus. Not to mention that they get dirty in an instant! They walk out of the house in clean clothes and combed hair; I blink and suddenly they are covered head to toe in mud and somehow got some sticky substance smeared across their cheeks. I’m sure these problems are not isolated to my little corner of the world.

Do you have the same problems?

Let’s learn how to solve these problems!

Let’s learn how to take better pictures. Let’s explore ways to take great photographs of our children!

Together, let’s learn some techniques to better capture the magic of childhood and be able to show our children what a wonderful and beautiful time of life they are experiencing. Let’s discuss ways to save some of those not perfect, but not so bad shots. Let’s learn some new ways of looking at our subjects and let’s share some of our favorite pictures and discuss why they are our favorites.

I welcome your comments. I welcome your knowledge and your questions. I am excited to take this journey and learn ways to enhance my Momshots. I hope you join me on this adventure!

Let’s get started!