Category Archives: Everyday Life

Deck the Halls

December 15, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

This finally happened…

My poor husband, testing all of the lights. And finding that less than half of our lights worked.

They got to open their first presents of the season. Inside was their Christmas pajamas and a “movie ticket”. The back of the movie ticket explained that each ticket was good for one night of staying up late, for all 3 of them, a bowl of popcorn, and a Christmas movie of the ticket holder’s choice. Not valid on school nights. My mom had also sent them a Veggie Tales Christmas movie, so this was the perfect time to open that, too.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Mamarazzi

December 13, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

Me: “Gus, look, you’re in the camera. Gus is in the camera.”
Gus: “Gus in camera.”
Me: “Yes, Gus is in the camera.
Gus: “My camera!”

And a sign that I’ve had the camera out too much…

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

3 Little Monkeys and One Old Schoolhouse

December 13, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

I have a new toy. An external flash. I was going to wait until I mastered my camera more, but I felt like I was missing out on capturing a lot of fun moments with the very short days. So, I bought a cheap flash and I’m seeing what I can do with it.

My kids, Lena, especially, love to go play and jump on my bed right now. Our bed is huge, and it can be one of the only outlets for burning off some energy.

So, they jumped and I got to play with my flash. I am learning to “bounce” it, meaning have the light hit the ceiling, wall, or reflector to have the light diffuse back more gently. It’s a lot of trial and error at this point.

But, I love what I captured, because it reflects how much fun they were having.

Do you think she was enjoying herself?

Reed joined in on the fun…

And, I played a game where I got all 3 of them to jump together.

Yup, we had fun.

I also had the opportunity to take a friend out with me on another star photography adventure.

My friend made a comment about this looking like an older photograph. I really liked that idea, for a historic location, so I had fun with the post processing. On the left is the original, only lightened a bit and a plane trail removed. On the right is the edited version, made black and white, grain added, and the tone curve adjusted.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Evening Entertainment

December 11, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

When we went camping back in September, I took Reed and Lena out with me to do some long exposure night photography. It wasn’t quite dark enough for the stars, so we did some long exposures with the flashlight, where they could try to draw in the air. They had a blast.

I thought it would be fun to try that again. I had never done it inside, until last night when I realized there was really no reason why you couldn’t do it inside in a decent sized room with all the lights out. So, I set up my tripod and gave them a flashlight. I was making dinner while they did it, so I had to come in every 30 seconds to press the shutter. I actually could have given them the camera remote, as well, but I wanted to keep an eye on them, since the camera could be knocked over if they got too close and too wild.

The first ones in each set, with their name on them, are all of the images merged together.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

500 Star Fails

December 11, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

This is my 500th (public) blog post. I feel like that requires a bit of celebration! And a dedicated post… which isn’t going to happen. Maybe I’ll celebrate my 503rd blog post instead.

My flashlight handwriting is AMAZING, thankyouverymuch.

Here’s Lena’s outfit from today. I need to get her to start an OOTD blog. That’s Outfit Of the Day, for those of you who don’t speak internet.

The dress and pants were from my mom, but I love that she dug out matching socks and wore her red sparkly shoes.

(Insert text about our day here. Copy/paste usual Tuesday.)

After Aaron got him, I insisted on going to the grocery store and taking the dogs out. Things that need to happen.

Things that actually needed to happen:

That was one of my test shots, but I love how it turned out. Can you connect the dots to find Orion? Taurus? Can you find the Pleiades? The Orion Nebula? The random plane trail? Sirius? Actually, I’m not sure if Sirius is in this one, so if anyone knows if that’s Sirius peeking out from the trees, that would be awesome. I actually know nothing about astronomy– thank you, Google.

The real reason I wanted to go out was to try out star trails. If you don’t know what star trails are, get ready to be amazed… and then go google it. I knew this would be more of a star fail, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? I tried this with combining different shots in Lightroom.

The other method is to take one long exposure. I quickly tried this when I got home and I think I will try this again first. It’s just random branches, and you can tell I bumped the camera when I pressed the shutter, but you get the idea.