Beauty in the Mundane: Week 27: Vacation

I made up the theme this week since it didn’t have one.

Vacation: the opportunity to play in the dirt in exotic and new locations.

Beauty in the Mundane: Week 26: Purple

This week’s theme was the color purple. I don’t own many purple items even though I like the color. I have two items in my house that are purple: my camera bag and a gown I wore for a military ball a few years ago. Being a mix of my two favorite colors (red and blue) you’d think I would have more of it around. Since the color purple is often associated with royalty, I went with the gown. I tried my hand at an antique edit to give the photo a feel of age. The antique edit reminds me of a painting in some ways. Softening the image adds to that effect.

After this week, I need more purple in my life. Such a great color.

To complete the effect of a painting, why not add brush strokes.

Frying Pan Farm Park Re-Edits

After some advice from Beryl, I have re-edited some of the photos.

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And one I just forgot to include last time:

Frying Pan Farm Park

I started my photography mentoring class this week. It is called Resonate and taught by the amazing Beryl Ayn Young. If you are looking for some amazing photography classes, check her out. Here is a link to her FB page. My first creative assignment was to take my family (aka my client) out for a storytelling photo shoot. I chose to take them to Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, VA, since I had been wanting to check it out for quite some time. It ended up being really hot that day and crazy humid. You’ll see soon enough. But we battled the heat and enjoyed the animals. Here are my results. Prepare for lots of photos. 🙂

 

Milestones

Two big milestones have occurred in the last couple weeks in our household. Baby C turned one!!! What?!?! Where did the year go? I swear it was only yesterday that I was standing in the hospital entryway trying to figure out where L&D was while collapsing on my husband through a contraction and having random nurses frantically trying to find me a wheelchair that wasn’t broken. Not to mention the world’s most chatty and oblivious valet parking attendant. No I don’t want to talk about how beautiful Washington state is when I am in active labor. Still surprised I didn’t grab him by the collar and yell at him to find me a wheel chair. LOL! Ah good memories. ;-P

Here are the photos of our simple celebration with our Norfolk friends that we miss so much. We went with a Curious George theme since the opening song to the show can get Baby C wiggling his booty like no other song. I need to get it on video.

The birthday boy himself.

Proof I can plan ahead and buy a candle for a birthday party. This is a bit of an inside joke. For J’s 1st birthday, I completely forgot candles and all I had on hand was a #7 candle. So I improvised. The 7 magically became a 1. Heh.

Starting out slow with the frosting.

And now we realize how yummy cupcakes are. 🙂

He was quite the champion cupcake eater. There were only a handful of crumbs leftover.

That kid is too cute.

Our second milestone is big boy J started preschool for the first time. How is he old enough? To be fair we found an early program that starts with 2 year olds. He loved it.

I decided to try and do one of those cute 1st Day of school signs. In true J fashion when I asked him to hold the sign up he interpreted my suggestion in his own way. I think it’s perfect. It’s hard to argue with his logic.

He cracks me up.

Beauty in the Mundane: Week 25: Black and White

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will note that I have a preference for black and white images. I love color images too, but I find myself and again and again back to black and white. Since starting this project I have noticed that the elements that induce me to take a photo tend to be the same elements that work best with black and white images. I love the simplicity of black and white. When you take away the color, the path of the light and structure of the curves and lines in an image stand out in a way that doesn’t occur in color. I love the energy and vibrancy of color images, but there is a power and timeless quality in the contrast of black and white. And for a dose of reality, black and white conversion is a great way to make all the crazy colors work that our kiddos are often wearing. 🙂

I had a number of pictures in mind for this week, but I feel this photo stands on its own. Not technically perfect, but I love how the simple joy of jumping on the bed is captured in one image.

Beauty in the Mundane: Week 24: Messes

After dinner counter clutter

Or as J would say, “MESS!”

My editing class is playing around with vintage edits this week. I thought I would share my favorite vintage edit this week.

Here is the original if you are curious.