Somewhere Along The Way

The Week Ahead

Spring arrived early. Not sure how happy I am about it. I'm a winter lover. Sometimes when it gets this warm and there are this many blooms I feel Mother Nature is making a big mistake. Anyhow the Magnolias are stunning and they are super fragrant.

This week:

Finish and submit Julian's gorilla project!
( have to say I was super excited when we were able to use MY pics of gorillas from the Bronx Zoo. )

Exercise, exercise, exercise and swim swim swim

Register T for Kindergarten

Have a teacher conf with Mrs Orr, Julian's 2nd gr. teacher.

Get ready for girl's scrapbook weekend in
Jackson, NH.

Make sure Julian gets in two swim sessions.

And I think we have an eye dr appt for both boys!

Lastly, Stormy could really use a bath at the groomers.

Whew, and that's just a snapshot of the week to come!

weekend

Sometimes I can barely remember what we did on the weekend.  It's all a blur.  Thank goodness for the camera.  For the most part we puttered around the house.  Swimming lessons at the Y in the a.m., followed by naps and family playtime in the backyard.  Bill and I attended our neighbor's annual Harvest party in the evening.  Sometime Saturday afternoon I was reading Jasmine Star's discussion on Facebook about shooting wide open and remembering to stand back far enough so that one or more subjects remain in focus.  I guess that's the key to her signature style. 

Sunday,  Bill took his dirt bike on an a 40 mile Enduro ride and that took up most of his day.  He came home wiped out.  The dirt bike is the replacement for the airplane, and that's okay w/ me.  The boys and I headed to church.  Julian has started his Faith Formation classes which he calls "Fake Formation Class".  He's not trying to be funny, but it's hard to correct him because he makes us laugh.

  Yes, it's November in New England and he's barefoot!  He's constantly taking his shoes off outside!!! It's driving me crazy. ( photo is a bit blurry)

Little Tyler came up to my bedroom for a little break.  The room was dark, but the sunlight on his face was perfect.

Oops! I forgot to mention that we did stop by a local fall festival that featured an army black hawk helicopter.  The boys LOVED it.  Julian had a few minutes at the controls, Tyler decided to have a chat w/ the pilot while being buckled into a jumpseat!

Tyler with Black Hawk pilot !

Welcome to Fall ! These are my neighbor's glistening gourds!

and these are my mum's!  Love that pinky purple color!  Shot wide open here at about 12 ft. away!  

Dark Chocolate cake w/ chocolate ganache and raspberries!  Made w/ my new DeMarle bakeware!

a quick self portrait w/ my new Galapagos hat !  
 
 
 

 

 
 

Excited!

This week's theme on I Heart Faces is "excited" ! 

I captured this very cool skater on our beach vacation this summer.  He was a sweetheart.  I first saw him cruising down the hill, then I stopped him and asked him if he wouldn't mind going back up the hill while I took pics.  He was so so enthusiastic and smiled all the way while cruising on his skate board !  I love action shots.  The not so funny part was that while I was panning this shot I tripped on the sidewalk and banged my ankle and cut my foot ! I was bleeding, and down on the ground, but saved the camera and kept shooting !  It's all about the photo!  I can barely remember the foot pain, but I'm so glad I got this shot !  Just looking at it makes me happy!  I think he was excited that he had an audience and that he was about to get some very cool photographs!!!

faces - just for fun

 

Beautiful little friend of ours enjoying a candy apple at our local country fair.

bracketing

Yesterday I decided that it was time to start re-reading the Nikon D300 manual and play around with some of the custom setting features, so I set up the camera to bracket for exposure in 1/3 step increments. 

What is bracketing?

"It means you have the ability to be able to take three shots of the same scene each with differing exposure, white balance or flash values. One is taken with a correct exposure according to the metering setting on your camera, one is underexposed and one is overexposed.

The under and over exposed shots can be taken within a range of + or - 3 stops either way with half stop increments."

I took a few pics around the house, then picked up Julian and drove around the neighboring towns.  Below are the exposures I was pleased with. 

  Stormy's official portrait ! My sweet girl.

snow drift on the deck. Time to melt and go away.

view of the marsh from our favorite road in town, but I'm so over the winter color scheme.  gray, brown, brownish yellow, white...sigh.

(fiona, this one's for us!)  If I ever own homes simultaneously both here and in the UK, I too shall have these flags over the doorway.

  These seagulls are also wondering "where is Spring?"

So I'm going to keep on bracketing for awhile.  I was quite pleased w/ the different exposure results, but the best part was that those perfectly exposed shots required hardly any tweaking and that's a good thing.  I don't want to ever rely to heavily on photoshop (even though it's so addicting).  Goal is to get a near perfect photo right out of the camera.  Next task - figure out why the photos I post seem a bit washed out.  I have a feeling I know why.