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Family photos--most days

I am mostly keeping up with my photo-a-day challenge for 2013.  A photo-a-day of a family member. I think I have missed 2 days this year. Needless to say they're mostly of the kids. Mostly of Oscar. But here are a few of my favorites from April.

Kid has a total shoe obsession. No idea where that came from!

little temper tantrum in his new outfit.

I'm willing to ignore the giant camera strap for that cute photo of the kids in Biscuit's book nook.

A rare one I am actually in and I love it. The expression on Oscar's face! Priceless.

Daddy's new watch.

That blue shadow! I didn't notice it until I uploaded the photos.

Anyway, I'm having fun taking snapshots but thinking that at some point I'll try to focus on a few portraits. Melissa of All Buttoned Up posted about a photography book that looks interesting. And clearly I need to do a better job photographing Mr. H. He's cute too!

 

Garden photo shoot

On Sunday Biscuit decided she was going to pull out the "farmer tools" she got from Santa and work really hard in the garden. She was going to have to be served lunch outside because she was going to be working all day. Even if it rained. (note: she lasted until about noon and had lunch inside and I eventually put the tools away at dark :)

I'm trying to take a photo-a-day of a family member. That mostly means the kids. They're around. They're cute. I like them.

And I'm trying to work on taking better/more interesting photos of people so while the kids were "gardening" I was photographing. The photos below are straight out of the camera--no cropping, color fixing or editing on the computer. For better or worse :)

I started off trying to get down low where I was.

But the irrigation in the foreground was annoying and Biscuit's hair was always covering her face from this angle.

So I tried another angle and shot from above.

Got all backs and more hair. Boring. Tried the down low shot from a different angle.

Hello, neighbor's new addition that is dominating this photo. So I got up really close and messed with cropping/framing.

I like this one! Check out the big kid's weird shovel grip.

This one has better light but her face is cut weird. And Oscar doesn't look as good.

And then I got this one. I'd crop out the irrigation in a print but I love just the feet and tools. It totally looks staged but it wasn't.

So far this family-member-photo project is fun. But now I'm back at work so will see the kids less and we'll see how it goes.

365 portraits?

I'm mulling doing another thing-a-day project this year. In 2011 I did a photo a day. I only forgot twice all year although several days the photos were really bad. It was a fun exercise.

This year I'm considering a photo-a-day with a theme. Family-member-a-day. With a broad definition of family. Even if I don't stick with it I'm already enjoying working a bit on photographing people.

I have a feeling the challenge will be that some days we'll spend time with family that lives far away and I'll have several photos whereas other days I'll be at work and could maybe do a self portrait but will basically have crap.

So I think I'll be looser on myself this time. Aim for every day but really choose the best images from within a week or so to represent each day.

And by "best" I don't necessarily mean technically, best (although that would be nice) I mean representing our life best.

Like even an overexposed shot that shows the ridiculous game of "throw the practice golf ball" that overtook the living room yesterday. It was wild and crazy ;)

Or the fuzzy image that shows exactly how far Oscar can throw his socks from his crib. And how he empties out his blankets when he isn't sleeping (he pooped instead).

I want to work on different perspectives.

On capturing interests (chickens!) and expressions.

This may look freaky but he's trying to raise his eyebrows. Oh. My. Gosh. the laughter this has led to at the dining room table. He is hysterical rolling his eyes back to raise his brows (unsuccessfully).

Capturing context so we can see where  and how we live.

I do need to branch out from baby photos but he's so damn cute it's hard. Something to strive for.

Camera

My camera broke. It's been semi-broken for a while and a month ago it just gave up. I loved that camera (a Canon G10). Now I'm reduced to my iPhone. I love my iPhone but I still miss my "real" camera. Still, for portability, the iPhone wins and some moments are captured that would have been missed.

Kids walking, holding hands.

Oscar offering his beloved baba to a cat we met

Bucket carrying (to prepare for apple picking at Apple Hill on Monday)

The actual apple picker

Auto mechanics

Another view

Ok, so maybe the iPhone isn't so bad (or maybe the kids are just too dang cute?) Looking through these, it seems I need to do better about taking photos of the big kid.

Week in the Life 2012

Gosh time is flying by! A few weeks ago I carried my camera around and tried to document a week of our life. It was a super busy week (as evidenced by the very few pictures of Mr. H--I barely saw him all week.)

On Monday I finally finished up the scrapbook.

My goal for this project is just to get it done. Simple. Cheap. Done.

I print photos at Costco, shove them in the little plastic things I found at the thrift store in 2010 and am still using, journal what I can remember, glue in receipts and detritus and close the book on another year.

I don't purchase any supplies other than the photos and the $1 for the woodgrain binder I always find at the thrift store. I use cardstock I have around and mostly do my journaling directly on the photo.

This year I wanted to do one new thing. Each day I took a photo of the sky (we were supposed to have varied weather that week including sun and storms). My original vision was to journal about the day directly over the sky but when the photos were printed I liked how they looked without being covered in pen so I used the sky pages to mark each new day.

I like how the bit of land/tree/building at the bottom is a little reminder of where I was that day.

The week included the huge 100th Birthday Event for the Girl Scouts in our region. Very cool thing to be a part of! And how awesome is that photo (bottom right of left hand page) of Biscuit rockin' out to Dynomite? Really awesome!

And that's it. 2012 done. This is about the only way I scrapbook anymore but I figure something is better than nothing and an annual glimpse will be fun for the kids to look back on someday.

If you like this project, check out Ali Edwards' blog. She's the gal that started it all. But try not to be intimidated by how awesome her stuff looks. After all, she's a professional :)

WITL

Last week was a total blur. We were uncharacteristically busy with something every night of the week plus Saturday. Phew!

It just so happened it was also Ali's Week in the Life (WITL) project week. Timing wasn't great but it never is, right? So I decided to just go for it.

Last time I did this Oscar turned one month old in the middle of the week. Now look at him.

Our floor is totally hygenic. Promise ;)

Last year I didn't get a single picture of myself so I tried harder this year with pretty poor results :)

And once again I tried a "come as you are" family snapshot. Funny stuff.

My goal was to print the photos and start the album the day after the project ended (that would have been yesterday) but, as it does, life intervened. I've almost got the photos uploaded and hopefully I'll get the album done this week before I forget everything like how Biscuit described to her class going to my work for Take Our Daughters to Work Day.

Blah, blah, blah and then we went to a reception

Kid in class: What's a reception?

Biscuit: It's when you have to be on your very best behavior and you can't whine. But I usually whine.

True story, she spent an entire day at work. Mostly doing actual work. But we did a sideline tour of the campus wildlife museum which was very cool. Bluebirds on a stick anyone?

Juxtaposition

Every day of 2011 (minus two) I took a snapshot.

And the first week of 2012 I spent all my online time uploading/organizing/captioning/cropping and getting all 363 images into a photobook.

It was a hassle. It was more money than I wanted to spend. But I think it was worth it.

The above layout is probably my favorite. I didn't notice the similar images in sequential days until I was uploading to the book. Hilarious justaposition, right?

2011 was a really awesome year. But I'm just as excited about 2012.

And, no, I'm not doing a snapshot-a-day this year. Fell off that wagon around January 3.

Year long projects

Whoa (or as Biscuit would say, who ah). It's tough getting back in the school/work/daycare routine after two weeks of sleeping in. Biscuit has been reading Judy Moody books nonstop (when you put books on your Santa list in our family, odds are you'll get what you ask for. Or, in her case, six of what you ask for). She was reading aloud to me and I discovered she was pronouncing "whoa" phonetically. It is "who ah" if you sound it out. And gross really should rhyme with moss and toss shouldn't it?

So, whoa, we survived our first day back. I'm still plugging away at New Year's projects here on January 3 trying to wrap up 2011 before too much of 2012 goes by. I must admit, I was rather proud that I completed my Snapshot-a-Day challenge. I think I only missed two days all year. Granted there are a ton of terrible photos but I did it. I'm trying to compile them all into a (very expensive even WITH the half off deal snapfish is running) photobook by January 6 when this particular half off photobooks deal ends. It's tedious but sort of fun to look back on little bits of the year. I'm up to August.

My other year long thing which wasn't a project and wasn't exactly planned was my notes book. My sister gave me a recycled cover blank book last year and all year long I used it to jot down anything and everything. I also let Biscuit write notes in it and pasted in some of her little notes and scraps I find lying around.

Lots of grocery lists, menu plans, to do lists and the like--completely haphazard but sort of an interesting record of the year. I was almost out of space so I got a brand new book for 2012. Thanks, Laura!

I'm not sure if I'll do any year long projects for 2012 (other than the haphazard book) but so far I've taken a photo-a-day just in case. Anyone seen any interesting year long stuff?

December Daily thing

So, once again, Ali Edwards has inspired me to scrapbook.

She does an annual project called "December Daily" which is just what it sounds like. Scrapbook every day in December.

She focuses on telling one story each day (even if it didn't happen that exact day). I honestly thought it sounded like too much work but I decided to create a little formula for myself and go for it! I'm already a few days behind but I'm not worried.

As you can quickly see, my formula involves three photos, some journaling and a transparency over the top with a single word describing the story.

I'm sewing things together with the sewing machine and gold thread.

The only supplies I bought were the gold pen for journaling (it doesn't show up very well :( and the colored cardstock. About $5 total. Not bad and I'm already loving how fun it is to document one of my favorite times of the year.

 

Would you like to help choose our Christmas card photo?

Yep, thought so! Thanks in advance--I'm probably going to make this way too complicated and then ignore your advice. Nice, right?

The contenders:

#1--Six year olds--always with the super awkward smile which disqualified about 60 out of 80 photos.

#2 Takin' it outside

#3 Creepy tongue thing but the smile is semi-genuine. Oscar is scared....

#4 Mr. H realizes we should move to the tire swing. Too bad about that chain, Oscar.

#5 They look like they like each other

So, I guess only 5 contenders. I tossed out 5 or 10 more in making this post so that was useful right there. Which one gets your vote?

And now a reminder how much we should have appreciated it when we only had to photograph one kid at a time. And a kid that doesn't know the meaning of fake smiling.

Tipped over and still happy

And finally, FINALLY some very cool shots shamelessly copied from Pinterest. I needed more lights but of course half the strand went out right when I had everything set up so there you go.What do you think, black and white or "antique"?

A few minutes after this picture that other bottom tooth came out. Ah, snaggle teeth. Gotta love 'em.