My Photo Diaries

This is my latest project.  As we were getting the news that we were now certified to foster/adopt we were also asked to take in a couple of children temporarily.  Even though we were not planning on doing foster care we decided to help out.  It amazes me at how motherly instincts kick in right away when you have children in your care.  They are precious little ones with a hard road behind and ahead of them.  It’s been a lifetime desire of mine to help out children that live in hard situations.  I remember being real little and seeing the commercial on TV with the little African children in need of your help for only $30 a month and always wanting to help.  I wanted to join the Peace Corp when I was in High School.  And that WAS my goal as long as I never got married.  I got my degree in Social Work because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of children who have been abused or neglected.  I know this desire stems from my own history and going through the system at CPS.  The desire is still there despite these career paths not working out.  This is finally my way of fulfilling that desire to help children that I identify with and simply give them hope and a safe place.  Hope is what I carry with me.  Even though fostering was not in my plan I know I will never regret this opportunity to be someone’s bridge.

I decided to make this post this weeks You Capture-FUN because it fits perfectly.

I met this little girl a few weeks ago. She walked into my house with these adorable pig tails and all kinds of curls.   She had the cutest attitude and just adorable I say. I don’t know if you’re like me but when I see something or someone that really captivates me all I can think about is taking a picture. I asked her mom if she minded and really I just got on the floor and took her picture. She was a little shy and gave me all kinds of faces but I managed to capture her just the way I saw her.

Thanks a million to my little sister for being my guinea.  It’s so awesome when there is someone willing to let me take pictures of them.  Really, it is because I am so awkward and I’m always like “let’s do that again.”  My husband set up a low cost backdrop stand for me of which I will write a post about soon.  My little brother and sister are spending the night tonight and I showed them my cool backdrop.  They were all impressed and of course I said, “lets try it!”  It was fun.  I have some interesting ones of both of them but I only post processed these for now.  I had to do a little processing because she had some mad under eyeliner that made her look like she got punched.  I don’t have lighting yet so keep in mind that I was using natural outdoor light.  I did my best.  While we were on the floor shooting there were these two dogs that ran right by my garage at full speed.  They scared the living daylights out of us because we thought they were running straight into the garage.  Turns out they were on a mission for something and they didn’t even notice us until their way back and with my husband on guard waiting for them.

Oh and as much as I’d like to take credit for this picture, it was my 10yr old little brother that took it.  I was showing him how to use my camera and well all I can say is that I was impressed.  I think he caught her eyes the best.  I’m referring to the one below.

Ok, so I wouldn’t call it a photo shoot but I went to the park with my brother and my husband with the intention of taking pictures.  For practice sake of course.  I sort of made a big deal about it and told my brother to do his homework as soon as he got home so that we could go and catch some good light.  Well, he got some weird fun project for homework of which I assumed was just a filler for the day after TEKS testing.  Is it TEKS or TAKS still?  I’m still a little confused about that.  Well, anyway I convinced him to save it until after we got back so that we could catch that light.  I know, I’m such a good sister.

So, I made this big deal out of it and we got there and walked around and it turned out that I forgot to grab my SD card from the computer before I left.  Yeah, big bummer.  Luckily I saved the day by remembering that I had my point and shoot in my purse in the car and it had a card.  It was only 2GB’s but hey it was something.  And yes I did run out of memory pretty quick.  And besides that I had to erase all the pictures I had on that card so that I could reformat it in order to use it with my DSLR.  I chose not to even look at what was on there.  That way I would never miss them.  I just hope that I don’t remember what was on there one day.

I’m trying to get to know this new lens and after the first couple of pictures I take I say “whoah!”  Overexposure.  Yeah, this lens is going to take some getting used and some serious learning.  I pretty much thought that I ruined all of the pictures because of this issue.  Just when I thought I was getting the hang of exposure, I pick up something new to frazzle me all over the place.  Regardless of my pitfall of lack of proper exposure knowledge I still feel that I managed to get some decent pictures.  Have mercy for I am still learning.  I told my brother and my husband to pretend like they were father and son and made them get extra close for this one.  They took the hit for the team.  Here they are.

Click to check out the pics of others.

This weeks You Capture topic is Hopeful.  Tell me this is not hopeful.  He takes his ball with him everywhere that I am.  Most of the time I find it right in my pathway strategically set up so that I will take the bait.

So, I finally got the new lens.  The lens that is one below my ultimate.  It’s the 50mm f1.4.  Since we don’t have any local photography stores and Best Buy only carries a very limited stock of lenses, I had to order it online.  I wasn’t expecting to get this lens so soon.  I thought it would be years away for me.  However, my awesome husband one day asked me about my dreams.  I had asked him the same question a few days earlier and he was returning the interest.  Nice guy he is.  I cut to the chase and said that I want to be an awesome photographer one day and then I proceeded to tell him what kind of photographer and the types of lenses I would want to help me get there.  Anyway, cutting to the chase he asked me all about the lenses and he said the reason why I am asking you is because I am going to buy you this lens right now.  What?  Right now?  Are you kidding me?  That was my reaction.  Now, this isn’t the main dream lens but as a beginner I feel this is a good intro lens.  And besides it’s the one that Jasmine Star recommends and one of the ones she started out with.  The awesome one is the 50mm f1.2 which is about $1500.  Yeah, I would have to do a few gigs before that could happen.  So he ordered this lens for me right then and there.  Wow, what could I say.  But I’ll tell you this has been one of the hardest weeks for my test of patience having to wait for it to be delivered to my house.  During my extracurricular time all I could do was think about it and when is it gonna come in?  I looked up other peoples pictures where they used this lens.  I also found a lot of comments where it was said that this lens may not be good for a camera such as mine.  It’s mostly used on the higher end cameras.  Well, anyway, I got this lens in the mail today and all I can say is that I think we are going to be great friends.

I obviously tested this baby out right away with my homegrown subjects, meaning my husband and my dog.  I wasn’t feeling too good today so I had to stay in but I did manage to take over 200 pictures of that dog of mine.  And I really do believe he was posing for me.  His eyes moved in every direction that I moved the camera.  He was awesome.  But yes out of over 200 pictures maybe only one or two were good enough for me to say, “eh, it’s ok.”  Seriously, there was something not up to par in just about every picture.  I also took my chances and changed my settings to shoot in raw also.  I chose the raw+jpeg option just in case.  I still can’t figure out how to open the raw pics in Photoshop but that is my next project.  I’m always learning.  It’s a process.  Here is one that I felt was worthy of sharing.

I got these pink roses for $4 at Albertsons.  All the flowers were cheap the week after Valentine’s Day and still so beautiful.  Sometimes I think the flowers are so pretty that I hate that they are going to die after a few days.  If I could just find a way to capture their essence so that I could enjoy them forever.  I don’t have a macro lens but I managed to capture a few nice shots of the flowers that I love so much.  I hope you like them as much as I do.

I absolutely love my dog.  He makes me smile everyday.  I feel like I have another person in the house when he is around.  One day we had some company over and while the adults were talking in one room my dog was chillin’ with the kiddos in the other room.  The kids had fallen asleep and he just propped himself up there on the couch with them and stayed with them.  The reason why this is so cute to me is that my dog loves the action and the action was goin’ on where the adults were.  Obviously not where the kids were.  He of course had one eye on us.  The room where they were was very dark and because I didn’t want to disturb them by turning the light on, the pictures are very dark.  But you can still see what I’m talking about.

This weeks You Capture subject is work.  I quickly took out my camera while I was getting lunch ready and took a few shots.  I did burn the food a little because I could not coordinate this right.  Anyway, I stay at home and don’t have a job that pays me but I do a lot of work.  My primary work is take care of the house and cook.  My husband does help me but when it comes to cooking he’ll just take me out if I need his help.

If I make the bed first thing in the morning, it usually means the rest of the day is gonna go smoothly because I have a good attitude about it.

I also do a lot of volunteer and the latest is manage the bookstore at our church.  I get to look through all of these fabulous catalogs and pick out merchandise.

Click to see more.

I found this blog called “I Should Be Folding Laundry,” and they are doing this thing called You Capture.  The blogger posts up a weekly photo challenge for those who want to participate.  It’s a great way to get those interested in photography to take pictures.  It’s a great incentive for me since I am just getting started so I thought I would join them.  This weeks challenge is Faces.  I’ve chosen a few pictures that I’ve already taken so that I can get this started and include myself into their Mr. Linky thing.  I’m still tryin’ to figure it out but I think I get it.  These are some of the random photos I have that I feel fit the category of faces.   I’m not sure if there was a limit to how many pictures to post but I’m sure it’s usually just one picture.  If you want to join in just click on the You Capture image and it will take you to her page.