Today...

Today, we tried to finish school shopping for the kids. We'll still have to get them backpacks because we went up to the Burlington Mall only to find that there was not a Disney store there. I still have tomorrow - Dylan and Angelica don't start school until Wednesday.

One thing we did find at the Burlington Mall is Chick-Fil-A. I think this may be the only chicken place that can even be compared to KFC. I'm not a big chicken fan - but I'm instantly a huge Chick-Fil-A fan. And today, they did their free chicken strips giveaway if you were donning a football logo of some kind. While Adam wore a Mickey and Donald shirt that dad embroidered with my sewing machine, he does have the Notre Dame Leprechaun tattooed on his forearm. That won us a free sample of chick-n strips. I had the original chick-fil-a sandwich with cheese and mayo - It was fabulous!!! I don't believe there are any Chick-Fil-As on the South Shore, but certainly the ride north is worth it. There are also Chick-Fil-As at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, NH and at the North Shore Mall in Peabody, MA. That chicken sandwich was enough to make me cluck with eggcitement (ok, I killed it right there).

Dylan had hockey practice again tonight. I took the girls (even though this is the most boring thing in the world for them) so that I could take pictures to post here. These are some of the shots I got:

I shot this photo through the glass with my Canon 75-300mm @f/4.5 1/30sec. with no flash. I set my ISO to 400 - meaning that this picture is not going to be the most buttery smooth picture when it gets printed - it would come out grainy (relative to ISO 100 which is buttery smooth). The graininess is called noise. You can reduce noise with editing software (that I don't have). PSE6.0 will let you reduce noise too. I didn't adjust the noise because I'm not printing a big picture and it's not that noticeable on the web.

Adam has been helping out as a "coach". Today, there were four guys on the ice with the Mite-C team. This photo was shot with the same settings except my shutter speed was 1/25sec.
This is a picture I took of Angel rinkside - yes with a flash - I don't care about the flash at this moment because that is the best smile I've gotten in a picture of Angel that I can remember. She still has this giant dimple in her left cheek - hooray for that dimple!!! I didn't edit this picture at all. She looks a little washed out but who cares when that dimple is all shiny and happy!!!
This is a cropped Mocha picture of Melody who was posing with Angel when Angel moved out of the picture and made her half blurry. She's been a load of trouble lately - sometimes, being 3 years old is challenging. Her favorite thing to say to you after you tell her to do something is, "I don't wanna"....sigh....that's all I have to say about that.

This is a short post because "Prison Break" has it's 2 hour season premiere tonight. Most people who know me know that the lead character in the show, Michael Scofield is my boyfriend. Even my husband, Adam knows it. Michael Scofield is played by actor, Wentworth Miller. You can see pictures of him here.

We can talk about him more later - time to get the kids ready for bed - school starts for all of us on Wednesday - we're dialing back bedtime to 8pm starting tonight....yippy for bedtime!!!

Holy - it's been too long since I blogged!!

I tend to put in a lot of hours at work - this week's adventure included back to back 11-12 hour days. I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning, but unfortunately, I'm a dedicated, hard-working employee of HarborOne Credit Union - and so off to work I went early this morning.

I got home and we went to Providence Place Mall in Providence, RI. I wanted to go to Lush - a store that sells all handmade cosmetics. I spent about $40.00 on stuff for my face, much to my husband's dismay. When my parents came to visit, my mom had brought me some shampoo and conditioner (which I love - thanks mom!!!) and coincidentally, this week, Lush made news this week by staging a protest against the overpackaging of products - they had their employees spend a day wearing just an apron with signs that said, "ask me why I'm naked". The employees in the store up here in Natick, MA ended up having to wear underwear (by order of the Natick police) but I guess the Providence group go to go completely commando under the aprons. Love how green they are and are encouraging the world to be...they have even invented solid shampoo so that it doesn't need to be packaged in plastic bottles.

We came home, did some laundry and then Dylan and Adam went outside to practice a little hockey...I took these:

In this photo - most everything is in focus - except for the end of Dylan's stick and his feet - those things were moving. He was in the middle of spinning around after scoring against Adam when I shot this. I know that I wasn't moving for 2 reasons - I was using a tripod and most of my subject is in focus.
I PSE6'ed this photo - I vignetted it - which I'm thinking is my most favorite thing in the world to do with my pictures. I also blurred Adam and the rest of the background from Dylan who was completely in focus...

I love this guy - I just cropped vignetted him - he actually posed for this picture which is a rarity all in itself - I think he was just trying to be nice to me after I felt guilty for buying facial products today. We don't ever fight about is money but I have a major guilty complex about buying things for myself - except of course if it is for scrapbooking or photography...

I took all of the above pictures with my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 - it's a good mid-range lens. This was a birthday gift from mom and dad. I'm hoping someone else (check out the guy in the picture above) will get me the new Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5 for Christmas...I'm not sure how much it is but I'm sure it's probably expensive - (I just checked - $399.99 - not as bad as I thought). If I get this someday, I'll have to sell my Canon 75-300mm - just because I won't need it anymore...sigh, someday....

After a couple more hockey shots, the girls wanted to get in on the photo action:

I hate hard candy - this is Angelica sucking on a baby bottle pop...yuck - I know, she needs a haircut.

Melody couldn't keep still enough for a decent shot this time - so I moved onto the mums that my "Mum" got us...when she sees this blog, she's gonna kill me for not yet planting them - Mom, get mad at Adam, I don't plant - he's the gardener around here.


These 2 photos were taken at 7:00pm in macro mode (denoted on most cameras by a flower) - Macro is one of the auto modes - you don't get to pick the aperture, ISO, shutter speed or whether or not to use a flash - all these things get determined by the camera.

These 2 photos were shot moments later in AV mode without the flash. To my own surprise, I like both the flash and nonflash versions. I haven't flashed anything in a while - pictures, I mean.

I'm off to do - what else? - clean my scrap room - it's like the neverending abyss of sorting that needs to happen...my scrap-a-rrifc friends know what I'm talking about - hope to take more pictures tomorrow...Dylan's skating tomorrow - I'll bring my tripod, make some adjustments and hopefully get some good shots. We'll see....

Is summer really almost over?

I love summer - I think I always have and just really didn't appreciate as much as a kid. I'm sure my kids love summer but don't appreciate it as much as they should while they are young. This summer seemed to fly by so quickly that here we are with about 2 weeks until school starts - haven't started school shopping and this year, all three of my kids will be in school.

Yes, 1/2 day nursery school - 4 days a week - counts. Melody will tell you that it is real school.

My job requires me to take 2 consecutive weeks somewhere during the year and what better time than the summer, when all the kids are home to drive me nuts? Since taking up photography I have learned to soak up and revel in the moment - even if it's the one that will drive me to drink. (Don't worry, parents - I barely drink...I swear.)

As a person obsessed with documenting individual moments, I find value in nearly everything that happens, bad or good. And not just the big moments - even the little ones. For instance: One day last September, after a good rain, the kids went out the backyard to play on their playground. All of a sudden, we hear the PAIN cry coming out of Melody's little mouth...and Adam finds her like this:
This was taken in the bathroom, right before I gave her a bath. This picture is hilarious!!! Melody looks like she's growing a goatee. Adam was kinda annoyed that I stopped to take this picture instead of giving the poor kid a hug - "for goodness sakes, she just took a header off the swing, there's no need for a photograph." he said. I'm not a horrible mom, I did ask Melody if she was ok and she said yes...there wasn't any blood or broken bones...just a whole lot of dirt and grass on her face. Look, she was fine, 2 shots later:
...still I'm glad that I took these pictures - they still crack me up!!!

Big moment pictures are a must, right? I don't know who took this picture of Angelica, but I know that it wasn't me as I was the 5 month pregnant (with Melody) Matron of Honor for a friend and Angelica was her flower girl:
...I do know that this picture wasn't taken by a professional (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe my dad took this picture). What a shot - check out the lights in her eyes (proof of a flash for certain because that church is as dark as pre-dawn with their lights on). I'm thinking the same person took this picture too:
...those lights in Angel's eyes, pretty cool. In this picture she's 2 and Dylan is 3. He was the ring bearer. They walked into the church right after I walked in and Adam stood at the front of the church to wave them in his direction and keep them walking. It was all going well until they got about half way when Angelica saw all the guests who kept awwing, and stepping into the aisle to take their picture. So she dropped the basket and high tailed it to the back of the church, crying, prompting Adam to run up the aisle to get her and leaving Dylan to walk the last half of the aisle by himself, waving at people, nearly running at me with the pillow in hand.
Since big moments are not readily available (not a bad thing), I take pictures of everyday things. I love taking pictures of people but I love practicing on things too:

Flowers and slow moving animals are great practice subjects. Either they are still or move slow enough for you to adjust your focusing (or for your auto focus lens to make the necessary adjustments).

Keep practicing - I am - it will take years for me to be the photographer I want to be. Ask any pro photographer; it took them years too...

I love this picture because.....

With a title like that - this may be my longest post yet....


...Melody climbed onto the back of Meghan's chair and called her name. So Meg had to look up to Melody who then just said "hi". (Originally there was some kind of insect on the towel - I took care of that in PSE6 with the clone stamp tool.)
...Angelica can have a thousand different smiles, but she has only one pout...
...because Adam is still my hottie - even after 10 years - even though he'll only let me take his picture when he isn't looking...I love this picture even though there is a giant house going through the back of his head...

...Dylan is the sweetest person I know and it always shows...
...Melody and bubbles are a staple in our household...
...this moment is why we had 3 kids...it only took 13 tries before I got this shot - this was the last one...
...while this is one of the most poorly taken pictures, compositionally, my kids are all laughing at the same time - maybe I had a booger hanging or something, I'm not sure....
...she is so pretty...even when she isn't looking....
...he's growing up so fast, and I'm so glad that I was there to see his first 2 wheel bike ride....

...they'll be friends for life even though they live 200 miles apart...next to Dylan is Andy, my nephew who lives in NYC with the rest of my family...

I could keep going but I am still trying to clean my scrap room. My mom called me today and told me that they might not be making it up here this weekend...even if they don't come, I still can't leave my scrap room looking the way it does - I did get some stuff done last night - only a million pieces of things to sort and store instead of the trillion I had before I started last night...it's progress...sometimes, that's all you can ask for.

Emotionally Perfect Photos

Ok, in a nutshell - there are technically perfect photos - you know, great shots that make you go "Wow!!! I'm the best photographer ever because I got the lighting, the timing and the whole thing just right". Then there are Emotionally Perfect photos - these are the shots that no matter what they look like, make you go "Wow!!! I'm so happy that I got that shot because it evokes an emotion in me that is summarized by this one moment on film." Well, it probably makes you go more like "AWWWWWWW!!!!" and you may get teary-eyed and quite possibly have the warm fuzzies.

Give you an example....this picture was taken in October 2001 at the Coronado Springs Resort in Disneyworld, Orlando, FL. Dylan was almost 10 months old when this photo was taken...hard to see but on Adam's right leg there is a tattoo that he designed and had done right after 9/11. (more on that some other time, like maybe in Sept...) Dylan barely knew how to walk but he made it over to his daddy while Adam was shaving. You can see me taking the picture where the flash reflects in the mirror. I love this picture SOOC, even though it isn't the most nicely composed picture. Whenever I come across this picture, I think about how Dylan was so curious and how Adam and he are buddies and how Dylan has looked up to his dad (literally and figuratively) all his life...and then I did this -

Black and white made it even better for me - I can color this photo green and it would make me happy - like Kermit the Frog happy but still happy.

Dylan was the only baby we know who had a backwards receding hairline when his hair grew in. He was born with hair, some of it fell out - well, most of it fell out and it took nearly 2 years to grow back in...at 9 months, it was growing in nicely...and for a while...it wasn't pretty...I'll post those some other time....













Another example of an emotionally perfect shot:
I am actually happy about the exposure in this picture...compositionally, it's a little short on interest - but I guess this isn't too bad. This picture was taken in Maine the first time we were all together with Melody (her second trip up - the year before Adam was in the Police Academy and couldn't make it up with us). In this picture, I don't they look even remotely related, do you?
















Black and white photos, I think evoke more emotion than color. Color makes me happy and black and white creates the warm fuzzies for me.

I'm sure you know where this was taken - we're Disney freaks - this is on the tea cups which Adam usually skips out on for fear that he'd toss his cookies from the spinning. The background blur is cool where the kids are mostly focused....good thing I don't get sick on the the spinning rides or this picture might not have gotten taken - yeah, right...I would have taken this picture while I was tossing my cookies, if it came to that. (***that date on the picture is Angelica's 4th birthday)

So most of my pictures posted will be emotionally perfect as those are the ones that I think are the best. And we'll continue to work on making those technically perfect. I will try to post tomorrow but I've got another 11 hour day ahead of me...yawn...