Grandparents visit

My in-laws came for a visit today and brought their snowmobile. We live right on the edge of a network of snowmobiling trails so they thought they would come and check it out. The pictures I have today are just snapshots of my little ones going for a ride around our house! Ella, 4 years and Madeleine 3 years.

Miss Fancy Pants

Ella is on winter break this week. So I've been trying to come up with different ways to entertain her all day. The last couple of days she's rediscovered her dress up clothes. I think today she had about 6 different outfits on and at one point had a tutu on underneath her snow pants! I know that at some point in her life all she will want to wear is jeans so I guess having her declare it to be "a dress day" for the last 500 days in a row is OK!

Busy Little Boys

More shots from a session this weekend. These guys are so cute and I had so much fun. 20 months and 7 month old boys. Oh my gosh, this little guy ran around the entire time. I have never really seen a 20 month old boy in action I guess! I was able to capture just a few but had to be pretty creative to capture him sitting for a nano second!

Sweet Pea T.

This image is of Tyler, from a newborn session I had today. What a cutie pie! He is 5 weeks old. His favorite thing to do is snuggle in his momma's arms or stare into his Daddy's eyes.

I love.....

I love baby eyelashes

I love the way all of his hair comes forward

I love the way his cheeks are impossibly soft when you kiss them

I love his creamy skin

I love his 8 little teeth and the little gaps inbetween

My little boy, he is so cherished.

Working on new website

I only took two pictures today and neither of them are worth posting. So, I'll post what I've been working on today. It's far from complete but I'm happy with the way it's coming along...my new website. It's not new, new - just a different layout with some flowers to jazz it up. Have a look. I'll post the new one when it's complete, hopefully only days away!

Baby Blues

Can you believe these eyes? Ella is becoming so willing to be photographed lately, I love it! She definately got these eyes from her Daddy!

Trying to play catch up

OK. I'm back. We were away for the weekend to enjoy the massive amounts of snow. Vermont got hit with a large Valentines snow storm, perhaps 3 feet of snow. My pictures today are not very inspring, just wanted to post so I don't fall too far behind. The pictures are to demonstrate how much snow we got and of course I had to throw in one of the dog! She loves the snow so much and is in seventh heaven. The snow is almost up to the top rung of the ladder! No kidding! Paul had to get on the roof so the snow didn't tear off our gutters. I was scared he would slip but the girls thought it was lots of fun. The other one is of our swing set. Ella wanted a picture of it. She thought it was great that the snow was over the seat. I just liked the shadows!

Playing in the studio

We got masses of snow, I don't even know how much. Best guess is about 2.5 feet. We are home again today. Not that we are "stuck" per say, but just because the roads are so bad why risk it? The kids aren't really interested in going outside. I can't really blame them since the "real feel" thermometer clocked in at -29 in Burlington this morning. Thank goodness we have two wood stoves and it's about 78 degrees inside! We played in the studio today. It is REALLY hard to get three kids 4 years old and under to stay in one spot and look at you at the same time. Griffin only hung out for the first few shots then had a melt down so I put him to bed. The girls always love hanging out in the studio since it's the only chance they get to play with the studio toys. This time I wanted to try some new tricks. I can never get Madeleine to look straight in the camera so today I said "do you see the monkey in the camera?" Ha, it worked! I also told the girls to see if the camera winks at them...you can see the shot were Ella is winking back at the camera - too cute! I tried blowing bubbles but I couldn't blow them far enough out and they kept running towards me. I'll have to work on that one. They are getting better at the photo thing, today I got this full session and all I had to do was bribe them with hot cocoa!

Too Much Snow to Sled!

Well the storm got here and wow, what a doozie! The snow flakes are super tiny and light. When you go outside you can hear pfffff in the air as the snowflakes hit the trees and the snow on the ground. It is very beautiful. Our house is set back off the road so it seems like a complete winter wonderland. There are no foot prints, until we make them. No car tracks until we dig our car out. Very nice. But there are drawbacks too. How do we keep up with all the snow falling onto our driveway? Paul was out there this afternoon and it was falling faster that he could blow it away! We'll see what we're in for tomorrow morning. I took the children down to the mailbox to get the Netflix in the mail before the mailperson came (a high priority!) It took us about 30 mins. just to do that...however our driveway is very long and steep - an adventure unto itself. The picture of Griffin in the sled is of all the snow that piled up on him during our mail box run. He was such a good sport.

My Little Man

This morning after I dropped the girls off at school, Griffin and myself had a little fun time in the studio. Boy is he hard to photograph! He is so fast. He wants to be everywhere except where I need him to be! Photographing babies/toddlers is definately not a one person job! I did manage to capture a few.

The frozen North

Today I had the opportunity to go downtown Burlington to take take some pictures. There was not a lot of activity so I just took my camera down to the lake front. This is lake Champlain looking from the Vermont border westward to the Adirondaks in New York.

Photography 101

I've been posting since January 3rd or so and everyday tring to work on something or another. I recently got a new camera, so although I knew how to operate my old camera, figuring out this new one is like knowing how to drive a car in automatic then switching to a standard transmission. I highly recommend the standard transmission (car and camera!). I know how to shoot in manual mode but often prefer aperature priority with fast children so I don't have to fiddle so much. But lately my AV hasn't been cutting it. I think with the backlighting in my house a lot of my images come up dark. Manual seems to be the way to go. I find myself switching to manual more often right off the bat. The goal of mine is always to have less post processing. That being said. After finishing "Understanding Exposure" - great book, by the way, I really starting to get a grip on correct exposures. My next goal is focus. Auto-focus - ha! I've tried different methods to get the crisp, clear images that seem so alusive but now think that I'm finally on to something. My camera has 9 focus points so I decreased them to just one (the center one) and would use back button focus on that one point - point it on the eyes, focus, then recompose. You'd think the eyes would be in focus, right. Wrong. Very frustrating. Today I learned that Canon does not recommend recomposing your images but chosing a focus point that works for the particular image. This seems quite daunting since I'm already chosing iso, ss, f-stop and now a specific focus point to aim right between the eyes...all while chasing down fast toddlers!
Well, today I placed my kids in a chair so they wouldn't move too fast and practised on the selective focus points. I think it worked! My depth of field on the first image was a little shallow and I only got focus on one eye, but hey it's just practise. Also, all of these were taken with iso 640 (that's why it's a little grainy)If you actually made it to the bottom of this post, I apologize for rambling...but just wanted to let you know what I have been working on.

Puppy Love

The poor dog. She puts up with so much! I coaxed her to be in the middle of my valentines fun photo shoot. She was not happy but put up with us anyways.

Love

I didn't really miss taking a picture yesterday (I took lots!) I was just too busy to post them. Here is a cute one of Ella. We were having some fun yesterday with some Valentine Day garb. Ella was very proud because she knew every letter in the word LOVE. Not bad for a newly turned 4 year old!

Sunset circles

I guess I'm on a sunset theme. Isaw our window glass glinting in the sunlight, it was so pretty. All week I've seen other 365ers take pictures of circles for the theme of the week. Finally I found some circles...although the theme has probably changed for this week, better late than never!

Sunset Shadow

I always love the light in the early evening, who doesn't right? We get a pretty good view of the sunset through out window and the light shines through the main room in our house. This evening I caught a glimpse of a shadow cast by my lampshade and went to show my daughter who loves shadows. She stood in the middle of the room to cast her own shadow and I snapped a picture of it. I was pleasantly surprised afterwards to see that the light was cast right over her face.

Grandfather and Grandson

I got my copy of Proffessional Photographer magazine in the mail at the end of last week. I just LOVE that magazine and devour it cover to cover. One of the stories was about how a photographer captured images of the different generations together. She loved to photograph great grandparents with the third generation and everyone inbetween. How great is that? I know that years ago people hardly ever got photographs with their grandparents let alone their great-grandparents. I was inspired by this article to take this picture. It is Griffin (one year old) with his Grandpa Dave. I'm not crazy about the tilt but can't figure out how to fix it and little Griffins face is too bright from the big sunny french doors. But I still like it. I'll try again next time we see them.

Ode to a dog

Bronwyn was our first baby. We got her when she was only six weeks old from a farm in eastern Colorado. She was the only female and the smallest of nine pups. She has always been the best dog. She is loyal, obediant, fun loving, gentle although she does have some quirks. She is afraid of hoses, ladders, brooms, vacuums and tape measures. She runs from beer but loves strawberries. She is the best frisbee catcher we know but doesn't give a hoot about tennis balls. She goes everywhere with us - and we go lots of places. Before kids we would take her on all kinds of adventures, snowshoeing and moutain biking being some of her favorite activies. Now that we have three small children she is still very loved but does not get the attention she deserves. She is very content to lie under the high chair waiting for the never ending delicious morsels that get tossed over. She rests her head on our knee when she wants to go out and gives a polite bark when she's ready to come in. She endures so much from our family...eye poking, tail pulling, horse rides, you name it and it's been done. Yet she continues to be the most gently lovely dog you could ever ask for. I'm sad that we don't devote as much time to her as we used to but she knows that we love her very much. This story board was a lot of fun to make, if you click on the image you will get a better look at her. This is Bronwyn having the most fun, she loves the snow and could play for hours in it.

The Driveway

Most people are intimidated by our driveway but we kind of like it. Our driveway is about 500 yards long, quite steep and has an embankment on one side. In the summertime you drive under a canopy of green trees until you reach the plateau on top which is our house and property. In the winter though, it's a different story. We typically don't have trouble considering we have good snow tires but on a day like today I just couldn't make it up. We had been having very cold weather, sub-zero weather so the snow was very tacky. Today it warmed up a little then re-froze making the snow into a layer of ice. So...I parked at the bottom. I had my camera in hand and took a picture of Ella and Madeleine pulling Griffin (in his carseat) up the driveway. I can't believe they actually helped me instead of demanding to get into the sled themselves.