10 on 10 | January Edition

It is hard to believe yet another 30 days has passed and it is time for the 10 on 10 again.  I have enjoyed this personal project so very much.  I love the flexibility it gives me - I can shoot any time within the next thirty days.  I can work with that kind of deadline!  But I also love that it has forced me to capture not only the more perfect moments, but the ones that I would more than likely neglect to capture if it weren't for the project.  Completely boring, mundane moments.  And then,  the ones I shy away from for ridiculous reasons.  The ones where the light stinks or the background is horrendous.  The ones that the insecure part of me has begun to shun, the more I've delved into photographer circles.  The ones I fear other artists would deem less artistic and more "snapshotty" (oh, how I simultaneously fear and detest that word).  The ones that would reveal my carefully concealed artistic weaknesses.  I have limited myself to times where the light is good.  Over ISO800 with my D90 and grain becomes insistent and frustrating.  Or where the backgrounds are clean, neat, simple, appealing, instead of the real messy crazy chaos that is our home.  That ugly comparison monster rearing its head again.  I know better.  I so do.

The day after I shot this month's 10 on 10, I gave a dear friend and fellow D90'er the pep talk that I thought we both needed to just let go of our ISO issues.  I did just that for this month of 10 on 10.  It is January.  It's cold and dreary.  The days are short.  We're stuck inside, mostly.

But the 10 on 10 remains.

And it extends beyond the hours of decent light.  So I can use my flash, which I'm so very far from adept with, and am constantly disappointed with the results.  Or I can let go of my ISO issues.  I can embrace the grain so that the artistic vision in my head is still captured, even if it is captured with digital noise.  I can embrace that the less than perfectly decorated and less than perfectly kept home.  I can embrace those mundane, ordinary moments and find the beauty in them.  I love having all the parts of our days captured, preserved forever, for my future self.  To transport me back in time to this very moment.  The time before we enter the realm of school and deadlines and commitments.  This sweet, carefree time in their lives.

Once you finish my 10 on 10, make sure to visit the next photographer in the circle, talented San Francisco Bay Area Photographer Jayme Franklin.

This edition I shot on January 3, 2012 - the last day of the Christmas break before preschool resumed.  I tried really, really, really hard to narrow things down better this time.  And while I do aspire to having a mere ten images, my style just tends to lean toward needing more than one image to tell the full story of a snapshot of our life.  So I give you collages of ten hours of life on January 3rd.  I say ten hours, since for two of those hours, I simply had to sneak in a few extra images.  Hey, it is ME we're dealing with here.  Queen Indecision.

8am and I barely remembered this was the day I'd chosen to shoot the 10 on 10.  She's offering me her chocolate here.  Yes, I'm a questionable mommy and let my children eat their holiday chocolate whenever they choose until it is gone.  So if you want chocolate for breakfast at Christmastime, then chocolate for breakfast it is.  See her satisfied little smirk?  I also wanted to capture here the crazy MESS that is her head in the mornings now.  I am officially the mother of a curly girl.

9am and Little Buddy is still sleeping away.  Craft time for our craft obsessed girly.  She got these Sticky Mosasics: Unicorns and Ponies for Christmas and I must say, they are pretty rockin' awesome.  They come in a million different options for both girls and boys, too!

10am and Little Buddy has finally woken from his slumber.  Much to my surprise, he wanted to join us in craftdom instead of snuggle on the couch for a bit, as is our usual routine.  As I was shooting this moment, I noticed that both of them were sitting in their trademark way - we call it frog position - across from each other at the table.  I love that.


Little Lady was kind enough to share one of her four posters with big brother.

11am brings us to one of their many habitat creations.  They are constantly setting up these creature centers.  He LOVES to arrange each and every animal or piece, not letting us in until every nuance is perfect.


While he was working on this, the Lady got a bath.  I am one who doesn't bathe my kids frequently, trying to avoid drying out their skin.  They love baths, so they generally get one when they think to ask for it.  But we've come to the conclusion that since she's a curly girl, we are entering a new world with the hair.  She needs a conditioner rinse more often than she's getting it, so in the bath she goes these days, now.  Little Stinker suddenly starts licking the door seal, which garnered quite a reaction from me, which then prompted more licking and consequently more giggling.  After all was said and done, I had a lot of smiling shots.


12pm and time for lunch.  The other day in the van, Little Buddy confessed that Little Lady had taunted him by saying she wasn't his best friend.  I don't know where that idea came from, but it is utterly preposterous, because they truly, truly are the best of friends.

1pm - we went to visit their most favorite friends in the whole world.  The Little Lady giggles like a maniac when she's around animals.  You can't possibly keep yourself from giggling right along.

2pm - more playtime at their friend's house.  Little Buddy wore the Spiderman costume nearly the whole time.  And I'm obsessed with her hair.

It's afternoon.  We're back home.  And it is time to clean up block wonderland that was left in tact the day before in Little Buddy's room.  I asked them to stack the blocks against the wall - the blocks have been in the attic for a while out of rotation.  They had asked for them the day before to build a city.  Nevermind we just got ten million new toys for Christmas.  We want the old toys out of the attic.  At least it was imaginative play.  ISO2500.

7pm and we have after dinner family time.  Shawn has waited a long, long time for this.  Little Buddy has shown next to no interest in sports on tv or video games... until now.  He was really enjoying finally doing something with Mario Cart on the Wii.


I had to include these.  First the thumb sucking images because, I love that she sucks her thumb. But she's 3 and a half and we are trying to get her to stop, at least during the day time.  She gets to when she's sleepy, in her bed, or hurt.  Can I just say out loud, I don't want her to stop?  And then the other one.  She has watched older brother do these crazy faces and poses for the camera for a year.  I have no idea where he came up with the idea, but he has done it.  And suddenly she has decided that this is what you should DO when the camera comes out.  I don't know whether I should ignore it, encourage it, or what.  But it makes me laugh.

Bedtime is 8pm here in our house.  But somehow we shifted Little Buddy over Christmas break.  He was going to bed later and later, sleeping later and later.  This night, he laid in bed for 45 minutes, wide stinking awake.  We finally let him have his leap pad to play until he got sleepy.  Shawn went to check on him at 945 and told me I HAD to get up there to take some shots.  I'm so, so glad I did.  I love them.  (but we've had a bear of a time trying to shift the dude back to our normal schedule!)  ISO1250 and ISO2500.  Yeah baby.

Since I was up there taking nighttime shots, I snuck a few with my flash of the lady.

Until next month....  Don't forget to continue on our group and visit Jayme Franklin | San Francisco Bay Area Photographer and her 10 on 10 post for this month!

I shot these with my
D90
Sigma 30mm f1.4