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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Staring out the window
I saw my son Griffin and my kitten Belle staring out the window together. I knew that I'd probably blow the shot since I'm terrible at this kind of lighting but I'll post it anyways because I think it's kind of cute and it's the only one I took! If anyone has any advice on backlighting, pleae feel free to fill me in. I metered on the cat with eval metering. Oh, by the way, Griffin is feeling MUCH better today - he even smiled!
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I've been tagged!
1. My pinkie fingers turn in at the ends and look really bizarre.
2. One of my favorite foods is Marmite which is basically yeast extract. It smells toxic and tastes really salty but I love it, so does my son!
3. When I was pregnant with my first born I dreamt that I was lying in the gutter having purple puppies while my co-workers walked by!
4. I really like the sound of crinkly paper, like the kind they make for the inside of baby toys! I think I remember it from when I was young.
5. I have a wicked good memory for things from when I was very young (3 and 4) but have a very bad memory for anything recent.
6. Hats and gloves make me feel claustrophobic...a bad thing in Northern Vermont.
I still need to tag 5 more people. I've already tagged Maggie and Christie.
2. One of my favorite foods is Marmite which is basically yeast extract. It smells toxic and tastes really salty but I love it, so does my son!
3. When I was pregnant with my first born I dreamt that I was lying in the gutter having purple puppies while my co-workers walked by!
4. I really like the sound of crinkly paper, like the kind they make for the inside of baby toys! I think I remember it from when I was young.
5. I have a wicked good memory for things from when I was very young (3 and 4) but have a very bad memory for anything recent.
6. Hats and gloves make me feel claustrophobic...a bad thing in Northern Vermont.
I still need to tag 5 more people. I've already tagged Maggie and Christie.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
19.8 pounds
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Monday, January 29, 2007
My Madeleine
Everyone who has children has one...a child that refuses to look at the camera! Madeleine is mine. She either looks up or away or smiles nicely for the camera but looks down, it's almost like she can't help herself. Today she was looking especially cute after her dance class. Her hair was not in dreadlocks, she had her black leotard on with footless dance tights. I really wanted to capture her in some nice natural light. So, I asked her. "No mommy" she said. "Please, you look SO cute today and your hair is so stylish" I said. "NO" she replied. "I will let you have your binky (pacifier) if you let me take a good picture of you". I can't believe I bribed her with my bigest pet peeve (how low will photographer moms stoop?). Her whole face lit up and she actually let me take a whole series of her with her angel bear. At one point she said enough and I told her that I was only taking pictures of angel bear. She thought that was OK. Afterwards I gave her her binky and she settled onto the couch. After I got done uploading the pictures I went over to her to see what she was up to and she was snuggled up on the couch fast asleep! Needless to say, I grabbed my camera again and went photo crazy, it was great! I've never been able to get so many pictures of her! I'll spare you and only show you a few!
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Sunday, January 28, 2007
Baby Sadie, a Christmas miracle.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
The Bouncy Castle
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In the summertime I am afraid to admit, Paul and I had an impulse buy. We bought a bouncy castle! Can you believe it? The rational behind it was: if we get a bouncy castle they will want to be outside all the time to play with it. Well, it was a hit for about 15 minutes until someone got their nose smashed or foot stepped on. We did pull it out about every other week to have a go at it, but it has always been hit or miss. Since the weather has turned colder we decided that since the children don't have as much of a chance to be outside, we'll put the castle inside! It is quite a novelty, a huge castle in the house! Luckily we have cathedral ceilings so it doesn't feel too completely claustraphobic inside. This is a picture of Madeleine enjoying the ball pit, you have to love all the static in her hair! We have a huge bay window to the south that is giving her the sun on her face. It's kind of nice to take pictures of something other than the snow.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Skiing in the backyard
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Tutu girl
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This is Kylie, I had a photo shoot with her in November for her 1st birthday. This shot is one of my favorites so I thought I'd share. I'm thinking about making this into a canvas for my studio one of these days.
I took pictures today but am experiencing technical difficulties getting them downloaded. So I'll leave you with Baby Kylie.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Wallpaper
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Monday, January 22, 2007
The Coffe Shop Scene
...has changed a lot from when I was a coffee sipping, couch resting teen. My sister and I used to whittle the hours away in our local crunchy coffee shop named Penny Lane in Boulder, Colorado when we younger. We would order refill after refill of the house coffee for 25 cents while sitting with whomever walked through the door. My coffee shop experience is quite different now. I have graduated to lattes, I usually am wiping melted chocolate off of someones face while wiping up spilled milk on the table then picking up gobs of crumbs from under the table! We found a great little coffee shop in Bethem, Maine where we are staying. It is suited up with all kinds of gourmet natural foods, knitted hats and scarves made locally and the prerequisite sound of foaming milk. The kids had a great time eating oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies while spilling water all over themselves! I loved the light in there (full north facing picture windows) they made for some interesting catchlights.
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Sunday, January 21, 2007
The White Mountains, NH
For any of you weather channel fanatics out there...last night Mt. Washington in NH was featured as the coldest place in the United States, -90 degrees with 120 miles per hour wind. Well...it's just a hop, skip and a jump from where we are staying (brrrr!). Today we took a very scenic drive right by the presidential range on our way to the LL Bean outlet a must when you're in this part of the country! While 2/3 babies were sleeping and the other playing nicely in the car, we were able to make a few side trips off the main road where I could hop out to get some nature shots. All of the mountain pictures are of Mt. Washington or it's nearby peaks. The other images are of a beautiful moutain stream which I captured from a wooden suspension bridge and of course I had to take some pictures of the masses of birch trees groves along the roadside. It was amazing scenery and great practice for getting the right exposures.
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Saturday, January 20, 2007
Posting from Maine
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Friday, January 19, 2007
More winter scenes
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Clean up crew!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Is it the North Pole or Vermont?
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We had so much fun today. It was a whopping 3.5 degrees today, the coldest day of the year so far. I actually talked my two girls into going outside for some fresh air, fully expecting to be back inside within 10 minutes. Low and behold, they had fun! It has been snowing recently with a 2 hour period of ice/rain a couple of days ago. This made for fabulous (only if you're playing with kids and not driving) layer of ice hiding in the snow. It's unbelievable how much fun they had breaking through the ice and pulling it up in huge chunks. We threw the dog ice frisbees which magically broke apart as soon as the dog got her mouth around it. We also built a big ice castle for the ice princess! Madleine got busy piling the ice up for Daddy on the driveway so he could snow blow it away. Ella spent about an hour digging in our sand box for missing sand toys; then when found - dug for treasure. What great imaginations - I love it! After an hour and 15 minutes and some very red cheeks we headed inside for some steamy hot coco.
Here is a picture of Madeleine in awe of the huge piece of ice that she distracted from the snow. She is very pleased with herself!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Griffin turns one today!
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Monday, January 15, 2007
summer collage
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Madeleine is three
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It's hard to believe that my Madeleine is three. Actually her birthday in on New Years Eve and we had a family celebration at that time but today she had two little friends come over. We set up the bouncy castle inside the house, which was way overstimulating for the adults but the children seemed to like it! I hope to post more pictures of her soon but she is my little photo phobic child...everyone seems to have one! She rarely looks at the camera, she is willing to stand still but always has her eyes looking down. It is a rare capture to have her looking at me.
Friday, January 12, 2007
My little girl growing up
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Today I wanted to capture something pretty specific, something that shows how quickly the children are growing...I decided to take pictures of Ella while she was willing. I remember when she was born, when she had a crop of spikey hair on her head. Now, at 4 years old it is all the way down her back! She won't let me cut it. She was busy prancing around to classical music in her ballet outfit carrying a bouquet of plastic flowers. She informed me she was the dancing bride!
This was was taken with iso 1600 f1.4 with my 50mm. I am trying to work on my low light shots.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Baby Carl
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This is not my baby, but isn't he the cutest ever? There were a lot of firsts today... this is my first shoot with my new camera, the first day I tried custom white balance and the first time I shot in RAW. I was pretty nervous which is silly considering this is one of my closest friends babies but still I wasn't sure if I'd get anything right. Besides the fact that I was so focused on technical stuff and couldn't think creatively at all, I think it turned out OK.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Snow Eater
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Finally we got a little snow! Do all children love to eat snow or just mine? Ella is perfectly content crouching down grabbing handfulls of snow and stuffing in her mouth. She has done this since she was a baby and at 4, it looks like she's not outgrowing it anytime soon. Here is a picture of her with a mouthful of the cold fluffy stuff!
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Poker Hill School
Dance day
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Monday is dance day. It is a great start to the week as both the girls enjoy it very much. All I wanted to do was get a good picture of my little dancers. Turned out that the lighting was terrible, and the little dancers weren't very cooperative! I got a few but none that really did much for me so at the end of the night...I found our dog Bronwyn hiding in the closet. Yes, you can really see how messy it is. But believe it or not, she did it! She pulled down all my sweaters to make a bed for herself! So no dancers, maybe next week but you do get to meet my sweet dog.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
The Ruby Shoes
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and took 165 pictures! How do I narrow it down
to just one. Well, the whole purpose of the day
today was to try and capture something little
that we would all one day fail to remember.
This is what I came up with THE RUBY SHOES.
It all began 2 years ago when Ella received a pair
of ruby shoes to wear with a Snow White dress
up costume. They quickly became a favorite but
only to be worn during dress up time inside. Our
little Madeleine coveted them so much but didn't
have a pair until Ella grew out of hers. Of course
we had to replace Ella's with new ones!
On Madeleine's first day of pre-school she was
like any other little child...clingy, scared of what she didn't know, overwhelmed by the noise and
of other children and adults that she didn't know. She was sad. This made me sad. On the
second day of school she asked me if she could wear the ruby shoes. I hesitated, then remembering her sadness, I said yes of course she could. When she got to school we walked intogether holding hands, I could feel her grip on my hand tighten as we got to the classroom. Then a few children wandered over, then a few more. All of them were gaping at the shoes! The boys stooped down to touch them, the girls said "I love your shoes!" The girls then grabbed her hand and said "come play with us". After that day she was always greated with enthusiasm and joy. Needless to say she wore the shoes everyday for a couple of months.
Learning to pump
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our ski passes for this winter! We are outside today on the swingset. This is Madeleine with an "ah ha" look when she learns to pump her legs for the first time. She didn't totally get it but she's getting there. Both Ella and myself were yelling "point...bend...point....bend!!!" She was so eager to learn, it was a great moment.
My little guy waiting for his birthday
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I moved the dining room table out of the way so I could work on photographing in natural light with the oak wood floors. Here is Griffin enjoying his sisters balloon. If you look hard enough in the background you can see that our dog, Bronwyn waits patiently under the high chair for any scaps that may be thrown her way. She doesn't care that dinner is still at least two hours away!
Talk about depth of focus!
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in Vermont. It's actually kind of freaky. Two
years ago our pipes burst in the middle of the
night, it's was 20 degrees below 0. Today it
was about 56 degrees. We are taking full
advantage of the situation however strange it
may be. This is Ella playing outside in the
sunshine.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Miss Madeleine
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This has been a great year so far...but since it's only January 6th I still have a long way to go. I am trying to figure out this blog thing. I've never done it before but every says it's so easy so I thought I'd give it a try. Well, three hours later I still don't have anything posted. I swear, things just don't come easily to me. I'm hoping this post will work since it's the last one I do before I give up.
So I'm motivated. 1 picture a day for the whole year. Not that I have trouble taking pictures and not that I need anything extra to do but I thought it would be fun. A journal of sorts to track the year, see what everyone is doing, see what inspires me at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to see a progression in my photography - that's the hope anyway.
For our anniversary my husband gave me a new camera. Wow, it's fabulous. I'm trying to figure out how to use it and hopefully Image 365 will give me the opportunity to try something new, something out of my comfort zone.
Here is my first image of the year. Taken in Southern Vermont. We made a special trip to photograph a barn that I had been admiring, turns out I couldn't get a good shot of the barn since there was an ugly fence in the way but these horses caught my eye as they came into the sunlight.
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