A Few More Pics of the Chickens at the Beach

Good times had by all!

Columbia: Famously Hot

I always forget...


how hot it gets! Last week was a scorcher. On our 8th anniversary it was 101 degrees! In May! Crazy.

Time to bust out the kiddie pool.


The garden (behind the pool in the photo above) is doing well. We've enjoyed a handful of cherry tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, a few strawberries, and lots of fresh herbs already. We're watching the peppers grow and our Early Girl and Better Boy Tomatoes ripen...soon they'll all be ready! (Yes, our tomato plants are gigantic. They were taller than me by the first week in May. We credit this.)

So in other random news, my flickr account suddenly has newborn pictures of Mac in my recent photostream. I think Brad was deleting stuff off his jump drive and wanted to be sure it the photos were saved. Check this--Mac's first day on earth:

What a sweet ball of baby that is! Can you believe he's almost four years old???

Here's another one...just born! Ah sweetness!


In other news, our little ragamuffin sneaked out and got into a bar fight. Here's her mugshot:


Obviously--not true! She actually was bitten by a mosquito near her eye, which caused her eye to nearly swell shut. (We had to visit the doctor for this one!) I kept her inside for several days after, then, on our first venture back outdoors she had ANOTHER mosquito land and bite her about a quarter of an inch from the first bite. Atta girl.

{I do use bug spray, but not on their faces!}

"Don't mess with me, ya hear?"


My two chickens are hilarious. They are best friends or worst enemies at all times. I have no idea what they were doing here, but they thought it was hysterical:



We went to the beach a little while ago. So fun, but I caught the plague so I spent the first half of the week in misery. Antibiotics are a good thing. I'll finish up with some beach pics...




Mac called this, "water game fire game". He'd fill a bucket then throw it to "put out the fire":

And now I'm just flat-out annoyed with blogger because it won't publish the rest of my post. So, I'll post more beach pics later. Of course, I said that last summer and never did. So we'll see. Goodnight blog-world!

I love these chickens! (The stethoscope...a favorite. Arden loves it as a fashion accessory and Mac loves to pretend he's a doctor and we're all sick. A day rarely goes by that it is not played with!)

Mama's Helper

He took the seed scooping job quite seriously. Sweet boy.

Photography Lesson

I've mentioned that Brad is the photographer in our family. He's actually a great artist, though his artistic gifts are not at all the same as mine. He's great at "composing"--what some may call a "great eye". This makes him a gifted photographer (composing a picture) and also a great graphic designer (you wouldn't realize it, but graphic design is actually a relatively big part of his job in youth ministry--designing t-shirts, web stuff, brochures, etc. And since this generation of students is very visually oriented--ie: they want super-cool t-shirts and do judge a book by its cover--his gifts in this area come in quite handy).

ANYWAY, composing a picture and graphic design are my artistic weaknesses. Also I have zero patience for technical stuff (like aperture, ISO, etc.). There is nothing about me that is a natural photographer.

But since having children I've learned a lot--partly because I always have something (someone) to photograph now, partly because I'm cheap and want to save money by taking my own pictures, and partly because we have a semi-nice camera (not a D-SLR...which I now long for). I finally have motivation to actually listen to my sweet husband when he patiently demonstrates ISO and shutter speed and a million other things that our camera can do on the Manual setting (which I now use exclusively).

I could never explain most of what I've learned very well. It's all so...technical. I don't really get what it all means....I just know what works and what doesn't (kind of). The only photography lesson I can really explain is LIGHT. Pretty much...natural light=good; indoor light=difficult (but not necessarily bad). It's no coincidence that many of my blog pictures are outside shots. They just turn out so much better. Indoor shots often require a flash so the subject is not blurry from moving during a slow shutter speed (at least with a camera like mine that's not super-duper)...because it takes the camera longer to take a darker picture, so the subject usually moves a bit, causing a blurry photo...but using a flash is yucky too, making the subject look flat and unnatural.

Case in point: today, I wanted a shot of Arden eating her lunchtime yogurt. She was just so cute! But our dining room is one of the darker areas of our house. Here's the first shot I took:

Cute! But grainy and back-lit. Very poor quality shot.

A few years ago, I would have just kept adjusting my settings to try to work this one out. But now I know better. Instead of fighting my camera, I turned Arden's high-chair around so she was facing the light that was behind her before (towards the window in our kitchen). I kept all the camera settings the same (same speed, etc.). Here's what I got:

Amazing difference, isn't it? (She was so absorbed in her lunch I don't even think she noticed that I moved her. She is so proud and excited to be eating her yogurt like a big girl, she makes little sounds of happiness with every bite. So funny.)

Anyway--it's not rocket science. It's quite simple. But I'm so glad I've finally learned to stop expecting my camera to do something it's not able to do.

I have a loooong way to go, and so much more to learn with photography. But if I can get good (even half-way good) light, the battle is halfway over.

I'll leave you with one more:


Good light. Pretty much amazing, isn't it?

Just Outside the Frame

When posting pictures the other day, my editing stuff wasn't working right. I wanted to post this picture:


But needed to crop it so there would be no mistaking about Mac's random elbow in the shot:


I had not even noticed that it could possibly look like anything other than Mac's elbow...until Brad walked by and saw it over my shoulder...and pointed out what it looked like. Now I can see nothing else!

I promise! It's his elbow!

Ah, editing tools. Thank you.

(It's hard to believe this is even the same picture, without the distraction of Mac's elbow!)

Again:


Much better:



As I close, please take a moment to respect the frizz:


Yes. We do play in our backyard nearly every waking moment.