Landscape Saturday Night

Every time I write one of these posts, I always finish on another day.  Maybe I should start calling them "Landscape Really Early Sunday Morning"!  Let's see if I can beat the clock on this one.  I suppose it's still Saturday night in the next time zone right? 

I actually haven't dragged my cameras out of the bag in a week (oh, the horror of it!!).  We shot 2,000 pictures at Tenille & Kevin's wedding, so I am working on narrowing that down to a manageable 800 or so, and then editing those.  We also went back to school this week - well, the kids did, and that means we are back to our crazy schedules.  I miss Christmas break already!

At least when I don't feel like dragging around the D3, and all 14lbs of it and my gear, I have my handy little iPhone that my hubby got me for my birthday.  Bless that man for getting me a phone made in this century!!  When we had a hard freeze complete with ice all over everything earlier this week, I had a second on my way to drop the kids off to take a few shots.  We were all so mezmerized by the ice and how everything was blanketed in ice.  My daughter declared that "snow was really real" when she saw it!  Living in Florida all our lives, we were beginning to think it was only a mythical creation used on tv for Christmas specials.  Even though it wasn't snow, I didn't have the heart to tell my children that.  It was just gorgeous.  I snapped a few pics with my iphone of all the ice.  My photographer self had to have a picture of it.

Of course the camera on the phone doesn't have all the awesome features that my camera does, so I decided to put these in black and white to make them more interesting.  I wonder if Ansel Adams would be proud?  (Kidding, kidding...)

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Landscape Saturday Night

My hubby is usually THE BOMB when it comes to landscape portraits.  No joke.  I will take 20 trying to get the camera settings just right and none of them will look awesome.  He will take 1 that will blow me out of the water.  Seriously.  Most of our contest entries for magazines and art galleries are his landscape shots.  (Now just don't ask him to photograph a baby.  That's a whole nother story.) 

SOOooooo, I was really surprised and proud of myself when I imported these on the computer today.  - My daughter's dance school moved into a new building that is on the outskirts of town.  Every week when we go, I think to myself that the landscape would make for pretty pictures, but we are always running around like crazy.  I have never bothered to try to photograph it.  Then this week was their last week of class, the one where they do a little performance for the parents.  Naturally, I brought a camera.  On the way into ballet on Tuesday, I was blessed with this awesome sunset:

I saw how pretty the sky was and just snapped a couple (yes 2, not 20) pics on my way in.  This one is pretty much straight out of camera - I had to convert it from a raw file to a jpeg.  But other than that, this is exactly how the sky looked.  Oh so pretty! 

Then on Thursday, we pulled up to see the sun just breaking through the overcast sky.  It made those awesome rays coming down, and I always think of them as God's rays.  I think some people call them God's fingers, but whatever they are, I think they are heavenly.  It makes me warm and fuzzy inside when I see them.  So naturally, I had to snap a picture of that! 

Amazing!!  I love it!  Again, it only took me a couple of shots to get this.  (Happy, warm & fuzzy sigh.)  Can I just say I love my camera and I love being able to capture beauty with it?

Well, happy Saturday night.  Oh - well happy Sunday morning now.  LOL.  It's close enough right!?

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Film is Not Dead

When I learned how to photograph, and I mean really use a SLR camera and develop my own negatives and print in a darkroom, it was miraculous to me!  I spent all of my free time in the school's dark room.  I always had a camera in my hand from the time I was pretty young - like 8 yrs old or so - much to my mom's wallet's dismay.  But I never really "got it" until I got an SLR.  Being in school just made things click.  (Haha - didn't mean to make the bad pun, but it works!)  No really, I was able to be creative in a way that was beyond cool.  I had wonderful instructors who pushed me in the right direction and my pictures started getting really good.

Then I met up with my then boyfriend, now husband, and he was into photography more than I was.  We were a match made in heaven.  On our honeymoon, we photographed our way through 4 different countries!  To this day, those are still some of my favorite pictures.  He had this crazy professional Nikon with all the bells and buttons (and I still have NO clue how to use it), and I had this little fully manual Nikon FE10.  It was the only thing I could afford in school.  I paid like $100 for it and the little 35mm-50mm lens that came with it.  The sad cool thing was that I had used it so much, I could set everything - f-stop, shutter, check the light meter, and focus the lens in about the same amount of time it took him to use his camera.  And our pictures were GREAT!

Then we got married and got busy with our lives and our house, and we really didn't use it anymore.  Then we had a kid. We bought a point and shoot digital camera.  We thought it was the coolest thing ever.  It was the coolest thing ever at the time.  We even got some great pics with it.  Then our fancy Nikons sat lonely on a shelf.  Another baby came along.  Technology improved.  Our amount of time to learn technology did not.  BUT we upgraded and bought a Nikon Digital SLR camera - the D50.  We thought this was the coolest thing ever!!  Plus it came pre-programmed and it seemed smarter than us, so we left it on Auto.  All the time.  Do you know where this is going yet?

We took decent pictures - heck, we opened a photography studio!  They were better than decent.  They were good.  We were good.  But they and we weren't great.  We were still missing something.  And for the life of me, I just could not figure out what it was.  We couldn't get our pictures to the level of professionalism that we wanted.  The fun was gone.  The pictures seemed flat and had no dimension.  After FOUR long years of this, and several camera upgrades later - yes a D80 and then a D90, and now a D3 - I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT!  Take the damn camera off of auto and put it on manual.  FULL MANUAL!!!  It seems simple enough right?  Well, I guess I am smarter than the camera after all. 

I would look back on our honeymoon pics and think, "Look how great this simple camera did."  Well, it was me, not the camera.  (Someone come thunk me on the head now.)  Why it took me so long to figure this out, I have no idea.  But I have spent the better part of the year shooting on manual, and my pictures are so much better for it.  THEN, I got this wild idea to go back to square one and shoot on my 35mm FE10.  I wanted to see how my skills compared on that camera.  Simple, easy, and beautiful.  Guess what??  There was still a roll of film in there that was like 7-8 years old!  I honestly don't know when the last time was I used it.  It had to be before Hurricane Charlie came through in 2004.  We even threw out cases of film that were no good a few years ago because no one was developing them, we weren't using them, they had expired, and we thought film was useless.  Film was dead.  (Ok, someone come thunk me on the noggin again please!)

Well, I took the 35mm out for a test drive, not even knowing if the film in the camera was any good.  I had the D3 in one hand to document everything side by side for comparision and in case the film was bad.  I nervously dropped it off tonight hoping I would get something back, and I was elated to get 23 GREAT pictures back.  I am so excited.  And addicted again.  Gotta buy more film - NOW!  (The hubby has been telling me this all along, but I am a bit hard headed.)

Here are some of my favorites:

 

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Images from Recent Travels - The Lighthouse Special

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Mother's Day Gifts from Above

For those of you who don't know, I struggled with infertility for years.  After four years of unsuccessfully trying to start a family, my husband and I were thrilled to finally be pregnant with a little boy.  We named him Michael Hunter and anxiously awaited his arrival.  We both went to every appointment with joy and couldn't wait to hear his heartbeat or see him on the monitors.  I was high risk and not without complications, and was put on bed rest.  I was in an out of the hospital towards the end, but after a few scares and scores of doctors looking after me, we had finally made it to the home stretch.  In my final weeks of pregnacy, I had made it full term and was told I could deliver whenever I went into labor again.  We were so excited and couldn't believe how our lives were about to change.  Only, they didn't change the way we had planned.

During a routine test (a non-stress test) where the labor monitors are placed on my belly to monitor heart rates, movement, and any contractions, my son mysteriously died.  Five days later, he was delivered as a stillborn.  It was and still is the most devastating thing that could ever happen to us.  Parents are not supposed to outlive their children.  Births are supposed to be joyful events.  We have been deceived by modern medicine and science into thinking that everything can be fixed and repaired, and that the human race is in control.  We were taught a harsh lesson that day about the powers of the universe.

As much as that tragedy still affects us, we have been able to find joy in life around us.  We went on to have 2 more beautiful and healthy children.  We got messages all around us that proved love is eternal and ever lasting. 

My first Mother's Day was a horrible event.  Was I a mom?  I didn't have the chance to experience all-nighters and 4 am feedings.  I couldn't say that I had even experienced little newborn cries, kisses, and cuddles.  I had never changed a diaper, or wiped a runny nose.  But my arms ached for my baby. 

And then the most wonderful thing happened.  Life.  All around me.  Birds and flowers and butterflies surrounded me everywhere I went.  My FAVORITE flower is the rose.  I love red and pink ones especially.  They are beautiful in any color, and I always have them in my garden.  We even planted a special rose garden in memory of our son, Michael.  Only, I am a terrible gardener.  I didn't even think anything of it at first, since my roses rarely bloom.  I never pay enough attention to them and fertilize them.  Yet there on Mother's Day, every single rose bush in the garden was covered in buds and blooms.  Dan said to me that Michael got me roses for Mother's Day. 

Seven years and one big move later, Michael has yet to miss a Mother's Day.  I was really worried this year.  With everything going on with the business, my Master's degree, and the kids - PLUS - Dan's job and school, our yard looked like a big over grown pasture.  When it froze here during the winter, we were so excited that the freeze would kill all the weeds and make the yard look neater.  Sad.  

Then it was no longer winter, and here we were facing another Mother's Day.  The constant reminder that I really have 3 children and not 2.  I didn't think that Michael would be able to work his magic this year.  The rose bushes were hidden underneath all the overgrowth.  I swore that some of them were even dead.  I had started to prepare myself for a let-down later in the week.  I figured it was my own fault for totally neglecting the yard.  Then a few days before that Sunday, I noticed buds forming on some of the rose bushes.  I couldn't believe it!  On Sunday morning, I walked out into the yard, and was greeted with the most wonderful presents ever.  There they were - all of the bushes blooming like crazy.  Roses everywhere I looked.  They seemed to have just burst into bloom over night.   

Thank you baby.  I love you too.

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