just an ordinary evening in the backyard

I've always felt like my photos work best together in series to tell my stories.  There are amazing artists out there who tell a whole story through a single image.  I'm not there yet.  Perhaps my verbose nature with words crosses over into my image life and I have to include lots of images to tell my stories, too.

I love golden hour backlight.  It inspires me.  But lately, I've really been enjoying the "golden hour" of our backyard.  We don't get golden hour there because all of the trees surrounding us block it.  But I get this hour of even light.  It's different than all the other times of day.  For most places, you only get a few minutes of this before the sun goes down.  But I feel like our trees at least give me a little more of this time since they take away that golden hour glow.

I notice  my kids' eyes most during this light.  They seem to just pop.  But the other night, I just observed them playing.  I love their little relationship so much.


I shot these with my Nikon D800
Nikon 85mm f1.8
Nikon 50mm 1.4D
Sigma 30mm f1.4

ordinary September

This morning I realized that I'd lost my opportunity.

The sun has barely risen now when I turn out of the driveway to take the kids to school.  All of August, and now most of September, I had the opportunity to photography our real mornings.  And I squandered it.  I didn't photograph once.  Not once.  Not because mornings are hectic.  Not because we aren't morning people.  Not because there wasn't anything to photograph.

Because I just didn't think about it.

I wasn't purposeful.

And now that the sun doesn't rise until they are gone, I remember.

Next year I must remedy that.  Next year I must remember.  Next year I must document the start of a new school year's morning routine much better.  I want to always remember these days in our family's life.  I had been thinking about the change in seasons and how I'll be photographing indoors more...  Recalling the wonderful lessons I learned in Ginger Unzeuta's Everyday Beauty workshop at The Bloom Forum.   And it hit me.  I should have photographed this... and now I can't, because the light has yet to rise.

However, I have been photographing this September.  It's so hard to find the time to process the images I take.  I wish I could find a balance.  For now here are a handful that I've managed to squeeze a few moments to edit.




 I shot these with my Nikon D800
Nikon 85mm f1.8
Nikon 50mm 1.4D
Sigma 30mm f1.4

coach pitch baseball

I bring a lot of things to the parenting table, but sports knowledge certainly isn't one of them.  I'm learning how to play these sports right along with my kids.  I can truthfully say that the Buddy's athletic ability at age 7 now far surpasses mine.  I'm not one to just stand off to the side doing nothing, however.  So if I can offer up photographing the sporting activity, you better believe I'm going to! I tried to photograph most games this past spring season, which seemed a great win-win for me.  The fellow parents get photos of their kids playing baseball, and I have something to contribute to the team!

These were all the images I took of my [not so Little] Buddy.



I shot these with my Nikon D800
Nikon 85mm f1.8
Nikon 50mm 1.4D
Sigma 30mm f1.4

100 days of Summer 2014

A day or two before Memorial Day, my friend Tiffany from Peanut Blossom suggested I join her in the Instagram 100 Days of Summer project.  Someone somewhere noticed that there were exactly 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day this calendar year, and thus, the project was born.  I've never done a DAILY photo project before.  I've always been intimidated at the drudgery of the task - could I really fit that in to my DAILY life, with how much time it takes?  And let's just be honest.  Perfectionism has stopped me in my tracks in the past.  I knew that I couldn't take a rock star amazing image DAILY, which meant, I'd fail.  In my eyes.  I'd come onto the other side of the project and not be proud of my work.  So I've never done it.

Which is kind of [read: exactly] the opposite of what I've been coaching my two perfectionistic children...

You destine yourself to fail if you never even pick up and TRY. 

You never change your patterns of behavior if you always do the same old expected thing. 

So I decided I'd TRY and I'd do something different than my norm.  I'd do this project.  With a few 'freeing' restrictions.

1 - It would all be on my iPhone. To make participating stream lined and easy.  Shoot, quick edit, post, DONE!

2 - It would be our real life.  Whatever was really happening that day, significant or not.  So if real life was in yucky lighting conditions, that was OKAY.  I wasn't setting out to create an amazing piece of art.  I was setting out to document our real.  No pressure.  No expectations.

Once Labor Day came and went, I was able to put all of the images together into our official 100 Days set.  Let me tell you - this was SO MUCH FUN.  The whole family got into it.  Seeing this visual glimpse of the summer when the kids were 7 and newly 6 is priceless to me.  I am so thankful Tiffany suggested it to me, and I'm thankful I got over myself and went for it!  There were days I was uninspired, or it felt a little bit of a burden toward the end (I think 100 days is a really good length, particularly for someone starting on a daily project).  But I believe it was good for me as an artist to experience that, and to have the responsibility of pushing through it.




Be on the lookout!  I'll be sharing on the Peanut Blossom blog soon about some of the lessons I learned in doing a successful one of these daily projects.