Looking through my photostream several times, I finally realized what was missing: me!

Being the designated photographer puts me behind the camera a whole lot more than in front of it. So I decided, for Kat’s next lesson, to turn the camera around. I also needed to update my social media pictures and I had been dying to try out tethered shooting now that I’ve finally upgraded to Lightroom 3 (just in time for LR4).

There were several technical difficulities I had to figure out (like Lightroom not shooting “live”) but in the end I managed to get some semblance of a studio going and managed to get a few decent headshots. Boring, but decent. Then my preschooler came home, saw the setup, and immediately wanted to take pictures. So I let him. He directed me and I let him snap away with the wireless remote.

The results? A lot more fun. Less worry about the right angle of the head, the right angle of the flash, the stupid background, the shadows, am I even in focus (my eyes are so screwy these days I can’t tell??!!).

In the pre-Tommy setup, I was being careful and studious. And then, when Tommy took over the directing, it was fun. More play — less work. And the pictures were better too. Not necessarily appropriate for what I needed, but more lively. More real. The trick would be to translate that sense of fun into the more serious and routine shots.

And in the end, I got the best picture of all — one that truly captures an emotion. I’m smiling from ear to ear over that shot. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

I’m so far behind Kat’s lessons for the second part of her Finding Your Eye course — so this post is my attempt to catch up before Lesson 4 comes out tomorrow.

Rules (Sunday):

Don’t really feel like I have any rules or “musts” or “shoulds” when it comes to photography. I certainly have habits that I try not to succumb too (when I think about it). For example, I shoot a lot in portrait. Yes, I mostly take photos of my kids, but it almost seems second nature to bring the camera up to my eye sideways! And even when I don’t, I find myself switching to it, as though I prefer the tall frame for my compositions. Prefer, or am just more comfortable with? At any rate I do try to remember to shoot both portrait and landscape frames.

Artistic Inspiration (Wednesday):
I wasn’t able to get to a museum or art gallery this weekend. Too many other events going on to allow me the luxury of several hours without little ones. We do have plans to go to the National Gallery of Art this weekend (they have a photography exhibit I want to see). At any rate, I did go to Mass and our church is very much a place of artistic inspiration.

The stained class is traditional and very beautiful but it’s the stations of the cross that I really find inspirational. They are done in a naturalistic way, but slightly stylized. The figures are slightly elongated and very graceful. Espcially the hands. At the 12th station before Jesus dies, he tells John, “Behold your mother,” John’s hands subtly but distinctly point directly at Mary, standing opposite of him. At the final station, kneeling next to Jesus’s tomb, Mary’s hand are held in a way that emphasizes their emptiness. I love the composition of the each image — the artist used a strong diagonal composition throughout and there is a lot of tension within each frame as well.

I’ve never been able capture the images to my liking. The light is poor and I never have my tripod with me and I just feel a little funny taking pictures inside the church. Especially if anyone is in there praying. The camera feels like such an intrusion.

In my work: (Sunday)

Lately in my own work, I have tried very deliberately to compose along the diagonal (or at least recognize it as I’m framing the shot). I’ve had very amounts of success. One trick that really helps me is the cropping tool overlay in Lightroom. In the develop module, once you have selected the crop tool, you can cycle through various crop overlay screens by pressing the letter O. I find the golden spiral and the diagonal overlays very useful in deciding what is the most powerful crop of the image. No matter how much I think I’ve gotten the shot framed, I almost always find a better picture through cropping in Lightroom.

Kat’s Photo-Heart connection seems like a wonderful way to go back and look more closely at your photos from the previous month. This is the first one of the year and it was an easy pick for me.

I’ve got so much catching up to do and cleaning up to do but I had to be sure to post this today. I love this picture. Probably, mostly, because it’s my little guy (any picture of a mother’s child will make her heart sing) but I also really love the black and white, the high contrast and the tiny baby, lying there, so vulnerable.

So I’m a little late to the one word party but better late than never. At least I hope so — because I’m late, a lot. Anyway, I really like the prompts in Ali Edward’s class so I thought I would share them here.

I choose Silence because it’s the opposite of my life. My life is busy, hectic, noisy and sometimes chaotic. That’s not going to change anytime soon — until the last kid is out the door. But if I focus on the silent spaces during the day and evening then maybe I will be able to hear. Hear not just myself and my thoughts but the call to be and the voice of the one calling me.

With this word I would like to invite, calmness, space, expansiveness, growth, hearing, and knowing. My goal is be a whole lot more Mary and a whole lot less Martha.

How will I do this? Well, this week I’m just trying to drive in silence — turn the radio off, put the phone down, and just hear the quite (at least once the little kids fall asleep). Baby steps.

It’s also pretty easy to spend some silent time just looking at our new baby. Even the little kids are just fascinated by Daniel and spend time just silently absorbing his newness. I used several layers of Kim Klassen’s Embrace for the Texture Tuesday link up this week. It’s a nice texture and complimented the warm and ethereal mood I was trying to evoke.

Wow! What a month this has been. : )

Daniel made his entrance to the world a few days ahead of his scheduled induction. Which was a real blessing because I was dreading labor (those pitocin induced contractions are killer!). It was actually a very easy labor and delivery and by 2:40 am it was all over and I had an 8 pound 11 oz baby boy in my arms sweetly nursing and lovely warm blankets wrapped around my legs.

After one week to recover it was time to get ready for Christmas. Following on the heels of Christmas, I had the 14 and 8 year olds birthdays (just family parties — friend parties to follow in a few weeks) and then New Year’s. On our final day of vacation, I find myself looking forward to a return to routine, a little more quiet around the house, and a less-rich diet– even though I’ve got enough ham and turkey leftover to feed us for a week or two…

After much thought and consideration, I did pick a word for the year. Big surprise but my word is silence. I have a post in draft on that topic — maybe I’ll get it up tonight.

I’ve also been working (or attempting to work) on another photography project. Actually, I should say my partner, Cheryl, has been working on it, while I recovered from the birth and tried to get my act together between everything else. It’s called Faith-filled Photographers and our goal is to offer prompts and tutorials every week that focus on how our Christian faith inspires our creativity and our photography. Check us out here! Cheryl has done a great job really setting the groundwork for the posts.

Okay — now to attempt a Texture Tuesday shot. I’ve got lots of baby pictures that I can use!

Ten days until the baby is born. The good thing about being induced is that you get to know exactly when you will go into labor. The bad thing about being induced is that you get to know exactly when you will go into labor. Until then I’ve really slowed down — getting some small things ready to go — washing baby clothes and trying to find a place to put them.

Enjoying just being able to sit when and while I can.

Starting to miss the 365 project — ready to pick up the camera again. Reading a great book — The Art of Photography.

Photo is softly textured with Kim’s “Not too Shabby.” Happy Texture Tuesday, everyone!

Ah, November has finally arrived! After enjoying some sunny and mild weather, today was cold and cloudy and definitely Fall-like. I was craving gingerbread and of course a woman who is nine months pregnant gets to indulge in any craving. I’ve earned it! ; )

This recipe is a slight adaption from this one — mainly because I’m not a big fan of nutmeg but I’m a HUGE fan of cloves and so I just substitute one for the other. I like this recipe because it makes a regular size cake pan — not a square 9 x 9. That would last all of five seconds in our home…

Today Kim wants us to use her beautiful new texture, Phoebe in our TT entries. No problem there! This is one gorgeous texture! So pretty in fact, that I decided I wanted the texture to really be the main focus of my photo.

To that end, I desaturated and added motion blur to the original photo of my four year old sliding in the leaves. Then I added two layers of that photo on color burn on top of the Phoebe layer. I finished off with some curves and levels adjustments to lighten and brighten the result since color burn is really a darkening effect.

Here’s the layers palette (click to see full size):

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Texture Tuesday everyone! : )

Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t HAVE to take my camera out and find something to photograph. At first it felt weird, almost rebellious, and then I took a certain satisfaction in it. “Look at that beautiful pink sky,” I thought to myself looking through the living room window at sunset, “and I can stand here and enjoy it! No need to panic over getting the camera set before losing the light!” ; )

So now that I’ve finished, I wanted to take one post and self-indulgently reflect on the past year.

The Good:

Was it worth it? The time and the aggravation? Oh yes, a thousand times yes! The lessons learned were immense and varied. Technically I think I’m a much better photographer after taking over 5000 pictures this year. Yeah, that’s a lot. But as Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “Your first 10,000 photos are your worst.”

I also learned a lot about not letting perfection be the enemy of the good. Life continues on and life at times gets busy and demanding and other responsibilities can be very jealous of time spent on things that seem superfluous. But in the end diligence, patience and compromise got me through.

The Bad:

The compromises were hard. And they got harder. As I felt myself improving, I had a harder and harder time posting the shots that I really thought weren’t that good. Plenty of sessions ended in frustration as I felt pressured by time and the project to just pick a shot and post it.

The Ugly:

There are plenty of photos in my stream that I would love to go back and re-do. Nothing stands out, in my mind, as much as the grilled cheese shot. My excuse is that it was the first week into the project, and I really had no focus or direction. Yeah, fine, but a shot of a cut up grilled cheese sandwich on the baby’s high chair tray? Really? I thought the contrasting orange and blue colors would carry the shot. Well they don’t and that shot haunts me! ; )

So what now? I don’t know. I really would like to focus on portraits of my kids — my library of pictures of them has suffered a little bit as I focused more on pictures that I would be able to post publicly.

Right now, though, I am really enjoying the feeling of looking at something beautiful and NOT feeling pressured to run and grab a camera. : )

As I mentioned on my flickr stream, I really love this time of year. The colors, the clear skies, the bright sun — the trees are fairly glowing with the warmest, most lovely colors.

One of the things on my “one day when I have nothing else to do” list is a re-design of this blog. While I like the pink and pastels, my heart is really in the warmer earthy tones of autumn. With that in mind, I took a lot of inspiration for a color palette from another of my fall 365 pictures. What do you think? It would certainly be a change of pace from what I have now!! ; )