Day 5: Lake Mary

I have wanted to visit the Mammoth Lakes area for years so that we could go see Devil's Postpile National Monument.  But when we finally made the trip, we didn't realize until after a long bus ride into the trailhead that Paul thought I had the camera while I thought he had it (since he was carrying the tripod and camera bag and lenses) and instead it had been left in the car.  Since you aren't allowed to drive your car in and have to pay $7/pp for a bus ticket which takes hours round trip with the time hiking and everything, going back for the dslr just wasn't an option.  Which was such a bummer.  So we took a couple pics on our iPhones but I ended up practicing manual shooting with our dslr back by the lake our cabin was on. 

 

40 mm, ISO 400, f/8, SS 1/320

40 mm, ISO 400, f/4, SS 1/320

Day 4: Mobile Petting Zoo

The local library hosted a free mobile petting zoo today.  It was tiny and the line was long, but the girls (at least Clara) had really been looking forward to it and luckily we showed up a little early and were close to the front of the line.  Both girls were intimidated by the sheep and the goats but LOVED the bunnies, especially the baby ones.  There were also chickens, a duck, a tortoise, and my personal favorite, a pig. 

 

24 mm, ISO 400, f/5, SS 1/800

28 mm, ISO 400, f/5, SS 1/500

Day 3: Quiet House

It was another quiet day around the house while Clara tries to recover from this little fever that she has been dealing with.  We just took it easy and read books, played with toys, watched a movie (I got all the ironing caught up while the girls enjoyed Toy Story 2), and took naps.  Rose had the sweetest pigtails with her little curls.  The girls got a special afternoon treat of marshmallows, blueberries, and a few chocolate chips and basically thought it was the best thing ever so I could keep them at the table while I practiced adjusting manual settings on my camera and working on composition with them in one place.

 

50 mm, ISO 400, f/4, SS 1/500



55 mm, ISO 400, f/8, SS 1/13

Day 2: Backyard and Feverish

Our lawn is just starting to get a little green again after a week or so of being more diligent about watering it.  California's drought and mandatory water restrictions, along with us not realizing our sprinklers were broken back there for a couple of months, almost killed the sad little patch of grass that we have.  I have been trying to coax it back to life with a little extra watering and justifying it based on the weeks where we didn't give it any water at all.  Rose spent a happy 15 minutes watching the sprinklers and walking along the cement border like it was a balance beam this afternoon. 

 

40 mm, ISO 400, f/4, SS 1/1600

Meanwhile, Clara was inside catnapping in the sun coming through the window.  Poor thing came down with a fever last night and has been burning up all day so we spent a lot of time just resting and watching movies.

24 mm, ISO 400, f/11, SS 1/50

85 mm, ISO 400, f/4, SS 1/10

Day 1: At the park

I took the girls to one of our favorite parks today for the first time in a few weeks since we have been avoiding parks in an attempt to keep Clara from reinjuring her broken collarbone.  This was my first, real attempt at shooting in manual and I lowered the f-stop in an attempt to blur the background, which worked out well, but didn't get quite the exposure I wanted, even after metering the lighting, so I brightened this a little bit afterwards in Adobe Bridge (which I guess is a photoshop software or something? - I have plans to learn Lightroom but for now I think maybe I will stick with one thing at a time and just practice learning how to shoot in manual and doing basic edits with what I know.)  A few attempts later I got the exposure I was looking for but Clara was done posing for me at that point (I had asked her to hold still for one minute while I took her picture and it was killing her not to be on the playground equipment) so they didn't turn out as well overall as this earlier shot.

 

24 mm, ISO 400, f/4, SS 1/2500




40 mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, SS 800

40 mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, SS 1/2000

 

Project 365 Reboot

It was years ago that I started this blog with the intent of chronicling our daily activities for a full 365 days.  I let it lapse way before that year mark - possibly out of boredom or lack of inspiration or business (or a combination of all of those things) but here I am starting a class to FINALLY learn how to shoot in manual with our Canon 5D Mark II dslr and having seen the incredible progress my sister-in-law has made in her photography skills using her dslr and documenting it on her 365 blog, I decided I should get this blog up and running again. 

I'm older, wiser, and have the cutest subjects to photograph - my girls, Clara and Rose, and my handsome fella, Paul - and we have some fun trips coming up that I fully intend to overdocument, so hopefully I can start learning new techniques and tricks to get more out of my photography and become a better storyteller and recorder of our family's experiences through it.

Here we go again...

Valentine's Day Card

I just ordered these today with the free code we had from Clara's photo shoot with Santa at Christmas.

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.