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Winter Wonderland

I woke up this morning to freezing rain, super icy conditions, and almost busted my bum when I decided to "test" the road.  It's still pretty gross out there and since I live on a back road, it's taking a little while to clear up.  So while I enjoy my hot coco and snuggle with my kitties, I thought you might enjoy the beautiful sunrise that I experienced yesterday morning.

 

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Holiday Cheer

Holiday Greetings boys and girls!  It's that time of year.  Everyone is recovering from Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.  But maybe you didn't find what you wanted? Maybe you didn't feel like braving the crowds or logging onto your computer?  Not to fear citizen.  I've got the perfect gift in mind for you, for any friend, family member, or coworker. Nothing says Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, or just I'm thinking of you while I eat a lot of Christmas cookies today...like a beautiful photograph.  So if you've had your eye on a photograph for awhile, now is your moment to snatch it up.  Maybe even keep it for yourself, I won't tell.

Here's the low down.

5x7s-$10

8x10s-$15

11x14-$20

Send your requests with the image# and the post name in a comment at the bottom of this post.  Once I receive the comment I will contact you through email for your shipping address and payment options.  This deal is only good through December 10th!  That way we have time to get everything shipped.  *Ahem, side note.  Unfortunately I cannot guarantee getting it there by Christmas since it depends on how busy the company I print through is.  But I will do my best, cross my heart.

Having trouble remembering what posts had those super duper pictures you are thinking of?  Here's a little jog:

For the Cow Lover in your Life

The Retro Lover

Kitty Lover, Again, and Again

And for all you nature and landscape enthusiasts, lots and lots and lots to choose from.

But I suggest just taking a little bit and look back through each post, that way you can decide what you really want.  Remember this is only good through December 10th so hop to it!

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Cows, Cow tails, and Cow pies

We all know it's not nice to make faces behind people's back, especially cow's backs, I prefer to make faces...TO THEIR FACE.  Okay, random I know, but I thought the above picture warranted a comment.  Moving on. As I have mentioned before, I live in a weird no mans land of city and country.  We've got cows, as you can see, but Target is literally 3 minutes from my house.  It's a little strange.  But these cows in particular always keep me entertained.  They're located on my way home and I constantly get to see new baby cows which I usually identify by screaming "BABY COW!!" out the window while I almost drive us into the ditch and Speed Racer tries to pretend that I have kidnapped him and he doesn't really know me.

This little family is so cute.  Big Bull, pretty Momma Cow, and cute black and white patched baby cow.

This lady was a curious one...

And a grumpy one...

And a pretty one.

Poor little guy was trying to avoid me and got caught all alone.

Most people who work with cows will probably think I'm crazy, but I think they're interesting.  Their faces have such great expressions that make fantastic pictures.  It made for a fun afternoon taking photos of some cows, cow tails, and unfortunately cow pies.

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I love September

It's hard to believe that today is the first day of September.  Fall is upon us and I don't feel quite ready.  I love September.  It's my favorite month...also because it's my birthday month, and well, quite frankly I LOVE birthdays.  Especially mine.  But this year it has snuck up on me, and I'm not quite sure what to do with September. I woke up Saturday morning at my parents house, to a foggy field view.  (Thus all the pictures.)  To me, it's a magical time when the seasons begin to transition.  Everything changes, and seems full of mystery...and there is fog.  I love fog, it reminds me of fairy tale books for some reason.

But I woke up, eyes still blood shot and exhausted from the day before to this beautiful view.  I stumbled out of bed...found my shoes...mumbled something about photos as I passed my Mom and went out the back door.  While I shot, I began to wake up.  The cool crisp air made me realize that summer is gone...and somehow I feel like I missed it.

I am determined not to do the same with September.  Don't get me wrong, it's going to be a busy month.  I have two, possibly three, weddings to do with Rebecca Claire Photography.  I have to get my tonsils removed.  And I have several senior portraits lined up.  Not to mention just the day to day working.  Speed Racer also has a ton of travel ahead of him this month, so that just makes us busy.  So I already feel like I'm letting it slip by.

Usually by now I already have my birthday list sent out (at times I have sent it out in July...yeah, I'm that kid).  But I haven't done it yet, and each time I try to I just seem to get discouraged.  Speed Racer wistfully asked what I wanted for my birthday this year, and for once I said, "I just don't know."

Unlike most people who say that who are modest and not greedy people, I did not say it because I don't want presents, I think I said it out of exhaustion.  There are MANY things that I want, but none of them seem to come in gift form...or affordable gifts at that.  I want time away.  Just for me and Speed Racer.  I want to buy practical things that make dumb presents.  I want to figure out things.  I want to be surprised.  Stuff like that.

But the great thing about fall is that it always seems full of new prospects to me.  Unlike Spring, fall to me is a time to hunker down with a good book outside, and spend some quality time.  Even if this fall is busy, I know it's going to be a good one.  I'm taking fall back.

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The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

It's a beautiful evening here in Knoxville, TN.  It's that time of year when you can feel the change in the seasons.  Summer is on it's way out and autumn is pushing it's way in.  I love summer, with all my heart, and I'm always a little sad to see it go.  I also love fall.  After all, my birthday is in the fall.  I love birthdays too.  I would be perfectly content if it would just go Spring, Summer, Fall...Spring, Summer, Fall...and skip winter all together.  As I was sitting on the back porch, pretending that I was not getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, I was thinking of how this week so far has brought a little bit of everything.  There's some good...there's some bad...and there's some ugly. Let's start with the good.  Good thing #1, pretty weather and beautiful evenings.

Good thing #2.  Speed Racer in a fit of "I'm tired of mowing around this," last night, demolished our little weird patio thing we had going on.  Now it looks like this....

So that's some progress.  I too hate mowing around that thing.  Good thing #3.  Speed Racer passed his motorcycle course and is now road worthy on this lovely piece of machinery.

I think it's hot.  Nuff said.

Good thing #4, and I have no pictures for this one, is I got a part time job!  Just call me Nanny McPhee, or yeah, something like that.  I will be babysitting/nannying two little ones each morning.  I start tomorrow, so as always, I'm a little nervous, but excited all the same.

The Bad.

So it's really not that bad, the bad and the ugly are going to be kind of combined in this section.  One "bad" thing is that due to my new job, etc, the blog might be a little crazy here for awhile.  I am still totally dedicated to it, and will desperately be trying to write every day, but if I slip...don't blame me.  Okay, well you can blame me, but don't point your finger at me.  Not a finger!

The Ugly.

I have chronic tonsillitis.  I have to have a tonsillectomy.  I have to have it two days before my birthday.

Like I said, the bad and the ugly kind of mingle on this blog.  And I swear, this is the least gross, but representative of what I have, photo I could find.  It's icky.

So, still more good than bad or ugly.  I'm not looking forward to my surgery but definitely want to get it over with.  I'll keep you posted, and wish me luck on my first day as a nanny.

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Portfolio

Portfolio's are very important.  It's important to keep track of what you have accomplished over the years.  It's easy to get too busy to take a picture of something you've done, but make the time.  It will be worth it. In light of that fact, here is my portfolio from my Undergraduate studies until now.  It has a little bit of everything, sculpture, traditional black and white photography, photojournalism, digital, landscape, portraits, and weddings.

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Summer Surprises

I have to admit I was not in the best of moods when I woke up this morning.  I did not want to wake up.  I did not want to run.  I did not want it to be blazing hot.  I did not want to do anything productive.  Lucky for me, Speed Racer has motivation, and I have guilt.  As soon as he's out of bed I know I have to get up or forever feel like a bum.  I rolled, literally rolled out of bed, my old runners feet creaked and popped as I shuffled down the hall on the hardwood floors.  I pulled on my running clothes and poured some cereal.  Hunched over my frosted mini wheats, my eyes finally peeled open. I still really wasn't awake on my way out the door.  It was hot, the humidity engulfed me to the point it was hard and thick to breathe.  My glumness transferred to the weather.  Everything looked brown, everything was crusty and dead.  (This is how lovely I am in the morning.)  As I walked towards the road, this caught my eye.

A beautiful lily was just opening up, still covered in morning dew.  I smiled.  Flowers always make me smile, especially stubborn flowers that just try to carry on no matter how hot it is.  This lily was there going, "I'm a flower and I'm going to bloom, dagummit."  I started to run and as I ran it was like little flowers opened up to me everywhere.  Blue, white, red, and yellow just peeped out from all the dead foliage.

As I ran I was reminded of how last Lent, I decided instead of giving something up and being sad about how I couldn't have chocolate, to dedicate a time each morning to come up with five different things I was thankful for.  It worked amazingly well, I felt so grateful for all that I had been given, and it got me out of the habit of just saying, "I'm thankful for my husband, my family, my friends, my home, and my kitties."

I really enjoy trying to figure out the little things I'm grateful for.  The small changes in life that make it surprising and lift my spirits.  So in the hopes that this lifts your day as well as mine, I encourage you to write down ten unique things you are thankful for today.  Here is my list:

1. I am thankful for stubborn flowers.

2. I am thankful for the shuffling sound of my running shoes on pavement.

3. I am thankful for curiosity and that I still have some.

4. I am thankful for furry paws that greet me every morning.

5. I am thankful for late night talks.

6. I am thankful for fingers gently moving through my hair.

7. I am thankful for the feel of sun on my skin.

8. I am thankful for funny emails from friends.

9. I am thankful for hugs that take my breath away.

10. I am thankful for smile wrinkles.

Oh! And #11.  I am thankful for my camera so that I can share pictures and my random thoughts with you! Happy Wednesday everyone!

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Hello, Monday

The day after coming back from vacation is always a rough one for me.  I have a sense of "coming back to reality"and trying to play catch up, while really all I want to do is go bask in the sun. There are good things about coming back from vacation though.  It's always good to realize you're home, to be kissed hello by a husband who maybe, (maybe) missed you, and to sleep in your own bed again.  But even then, I usually spend the first week back, thinking about my vacation and smiling at all the great moments.

This vacation my family and I spent at Pipestem State Park in West Virginia.  We stayed in a cute little cabin at The Resort at Pipestem, and were fantastically isolated in the woods.  It's always hard, for me, to find a balance between activities and just being lazy on vacation, but this time I think we got it right.  We usually got about one activity in a day, whether it was cards, playing life, archery, hiking, boating, swimming, or horseback riding.  There was even a little mini golf...I won't tell you my score, because I would just hate to brag that much.  And between it all I was able to get some couple portraits in of my Brother Jack and His wife Pockets, but more of that later.

If you've never been to Pipestem State Park, I highly recommend it.  The park is clean, there are a variety of places to stay from the lodge to tent camping, and the staff were all really nice.  So without further ado, here is a lovely mix of our activities.  Sorry there aren't more of the swimming, archery, etc type activities...I had my hands a little full.

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Camera Basics: White Balance

Are you having trouble with your pictures coming out too blue? Too orange? Too purple? Okay, so let's hope not purple. Odds are you're not setting your white balance correctly.  But don't worry, we're going to get that all straightened out, and you'll have beautiful, regular colored pictures in no time. There is a lot of scientific, intense information on White Balance (WB), and I'm sure if you google it you can get really in depth.  However, we're just focusing on the basics and easy terms here.  Essentially, there are many different types, shades, and temperatures of light, and our eyes are very good at perceiving them, but our cameras are not.  White Balance is the process of removing unrealistic colors from your photos, so that the objects that appear "white" or even in color to your eye, also appear so in your photographs.  As always, it's easier to explain with examples.

We are going to be focusing on this section of your display screen, so ignore all the other settings for right now.  If you need to, put the rest of your settings on Automatic, just this once, so you can focus on what we're talking about.  You can access your different White Balance settings by pushing the WB above your top display screen, and then using your large wheel to move in between the settings.  So here we have it set on AWB, that's Automatic White Balance, and is probably what most of you have had it set on until now.  AWB is good, but it is just the camera making an estimated guess at what the best white balance would be for what's going on in the photograph.  You're going to run into trouble with it if you have multiple light sources, or low light.

Here is an example of AWB.  Pretty good on average.  It's a little too cool at times for my taste.

Next up is your sunlight setting.  It's that happy little sun icon.  Obviously you want to use this when it's sunny outside, or you're near a window where you are getting primarily sun coming in.

I think this looks a little better than the AWB setting.  It's a little more vibrant.

The icon of a house casting shade, is your shade setting.

Obviously, you would want to use your shade setting actually in the shade and not in the middle of your back yard like I am.  But I primarily want to show you the difference in the tones.  Your shade setting is going to add back in some of the golden you would lose, if you were just on a sunlight or AWB setting because it is compensating for some of the lack of direct light.

The cloud of doom!! Cloudy setting folks.

Still adding in some golden tones, but not as intense as the shade setting.

Light bulb!  That one is pretty self explanatory.  You want to use this indoors when you have Tungsten light.

Again, this is just an example of how it would look on the wrong light source, it would look just normal if I was inside.

That icon is suppose to look like a fluorescent bulb.  You know the old ones in your elementary classrooms  that would sometimes go out and half the class would be left in darkness?  Yeah, those.  It's confusing to us young folks who now have fluorescent bulbs that look like regular light bulbs.  But if you take a picture outside with your camera on fluorescent, it will look like this:

Not pretty.

Flash!  That's right, you would need to use this setting when you have your flash on.

When you don't it looks kinda blue.

This little guy is suppose to look like a gray card, I think.  Anywho, this is your custom white balance setting.  If you have a gray card you can custom set how you would like the white balance to be.

Mine is not custom set at this time, so it just kinda looks normal.

K is for Kelvin.  Kelvin is literally what is used to measure the temperature of a light source.  Kind of confusing, but think of a burning fire.  Lower levels of heat are orange and yellow and red, at higher levels it is blue and white.  Thus the different "temperatures" of light.  This setting allows you to set the color temperature over a broad range.

Now we're going to look at examples of using white balance correctly and incorrectly:

So here, I am in the shade shooting on my sunlight or daylight setting and it's a little blue.

Correctly, with the shade setting on.  Brings back some of the golden colors.

Disturbing photo of Ms. Brisco.  She wasn't too happy about being woken up to have her picture taken.  But this is on the Tungsten (light bulb) setting, and you can see the colors are even.

With the sunlight setting, you can see it's way too orange, and she's done with letting me take her picture.

Finding a more willing subject, here is another example of with the sunlight setting indoors with a tungsten lamp, and then the correct setting.

So there you go!  You're on your way to getting great looking pictures.  A few parting words before you go.  If you have lots of different light sources, say you are inside, with a lamp but there's a big window beside your subject with natural light coming through, what should you do?  You want to do what you can to make one light source the dominant source.  So either choose a setting to shoot on, and edit later if you have editing software, or close the shades, so the Tungsten is your dominant, or turn off the lamp.  You could also use a flash to try and blast out the other options.  But just try and think of which setting is going to give you the most even colors.

Also, color as always, is subject to opinion and taste.  In other words, if you like a photo but it's on the wrong setting, no biggie!  This is a creative art, and it's always fun to experiment.  I like most of my nature shots as realistic as I can get color wise, but for people I like to have a little warmer tone.  It's all about preference, so have fun!

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Compassion

Yesterday, I was frantically mowing before it started raining again, and came across this little guy.  He was hiding in one of our bird houses which I thought was both clever and asking for it.  What if a bird flew by and thought, "Oh awesome, food AND a house!"  I mean that's what I would probably think if I was a bird...I'm very food driven if you haven't noticed.  But this little guy did get me thinking...which is always a dangerous thing. This little guy (or lady, I guess it could have been a lady frog) was so smiley, it actually made me giggle.  He just looked so content and happy.  I thought I would share his smile with everyone.  What he got me thinking about was that I feel like we all need to smile a little more, to enjoy the little things a little more, and to share that a little more.

With so much going on lately, the ever changing economy, things being tight, trying to work on my photography as well as find another job, I've been in a very "What about me? What am I going to do about me?" mood.  I feel a lot like Smee in the movie Hook, "Smee, Smee. What About Smee? Smee! Smee! Smee. Smee. What about Smee? Smee's me. What about me?"  Lately, I have been reading some inspirational writings by Sue Monk Kidd.  It's a book of compiled short stories that she shares, they're great to read when you just have a short moment.  In the past two chapters she's been sharing stories about open availability and compassion.  By open availability she means, making yourself just open to someone you wouldn't normally be open to.  Listening to someone who is upset, even if they're not your friend, not yelling at someone who is angry at you but listening to their story, or offering just a hand of comfort to someone who needs it.  All these things are also linked with compassion.  But in her short stories Sue Monk Kidd talks about how although she has the ability to give compassion, she often doesn't take the opportunity when it reveals itself.

In the story I read last night she describes how she came out of a shopping center on a bitterly cold day, and saw a homeless man sitting on a bench out front.  He had taken pieces of cardboard and put them down the back of his collar to try and keep out the cold wind.  As she describes how she merely stared and felt pity for the man, a little girl with a red wool scarf walked by, turned around and wrapped the scarf around the mans neck.

I think it's fair to say that we've all tightened our purse strings as of late.  But that's fine, I'm not saying that we have to give money to be compassionate.  There is plenty more we all have that we can give: time, food, hard work, a smile, and just being willing to be open to see what the other person needs.  We must also keep in mind that it's not just homeless people that need compassion and open availability, it can be a coworker, a friend, a child, a stranger crying on a bus, a loved one, a neighbor, or just someone you run into.  I think we have all had an experience where an opportunity for compassion has come up and we have let it pass by, whether it was because of fear, awkwardness, not being sure how to help, or it just being out of our comfort zone.  I am ashamed to admit that last summer when I was eating lunch outside with a friend from work, we were approached by a homeless man, and she gave him a dollar, and I told her that probably wasn't wise considering I'd seen him in the area several times and he was probably just "working" the area.  But now, I'm ashamed of myself.  A couple dollars couldn't hurt, and we were in a very popular area, if I was homeless I would go to popular areas as well, to try and get some help.

So what I guess I'm saying, is that this little guy inspired me to be happy and grateful that I have a warm (or cool in the summer) dry place to stay.  And challenged me not only to be happy with what I have in hard times but to share happiness and compassion with others, and to try and make myself available to those around me.  It's always something to strive for, and I am going to challenge myself this week (as a start) to be more compassionate.  I challenge you to try to do the same.  And until then, smile and count your blessings, I'm sure that's what this little guy is doing.

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