| life. photography. motherhood.

favorite places

Way back when I first made a confession about the state of my dining room table here, one of the items was a picture frame.  That post and item number three in the photo, well finally some two months later I just printed out the photos to go in it.   The dining room table may still bear a resemblance to it's earlier state, now topped by flashcards, crayon drawings and a harvest gourd centerpiece of sorts...

These are two of the photos being framed, taken during a Casco Bay harbor cruise to Eagle Island.  Why does summer seem so very long ago? 

garden spider

Best Shot Monday: the bee's knees

Monday almost over and I finally had time to sit down to consider what my Best Shot would be.  Funny, the first thing I do most weeks is check to see what Tracey has posted and let that guide my choice.  Well come to find out, she as me is feeling not quite here nor there.  A surreal state of mind she called it. 

With my baby off to start kindergarten tomorrow, well it does feel a tad surreal.  Luckily, it's only an orientation with her by my side me by her side and then the big day with school bus to and fro begins on Wednesday.   Today, though?  Today her sister and I stole away for a girls' day out with a lunch at Friendly's, an afternoon at the Elmwood Park Zoo and a trip to the nearby Ikea.

As we finished up the final loop of the zoo, I had a chance to sneak a few shots of one of my favorite subjects of late and daydream of days ahead when my photoshoots might last longer than a minute and a half.  It's all good though, this in between thing.  The bee's knees as it were.  It's not quite what I thought it would be, this crazy life with three, staying home day after day and wishing at times I were elsewhere.  Yet, the doubt is nothing more than honesty.

And in that vein, I confess.  My best shots don't always start out that way.  No one's do.  Okay, save the odd SOOC Saturday shot that composes itself owing to an infallibly blue sky.  But other than that, this is usually how it really happens SOOC. Well obviously it starts with the camera/lens combo-- here a D300 and the 60mm micro.  In my book the ability to edit, for content and image quality and for the finished product is a skill all should have whether you find your groove with Aurora, Picnik, PSE, Lightroom, Aperture or whathaveyou.

1. I import and view all my images with ACDSee.  This program was recommended to me when I took my digital scrapbooking classes with Jessica Sprague and beyond organizing digital supplies, it really is my preferred digital contact sheet.  You can change the size of your preview image and with a click, have it open in Photoshop. 
   
   
   
2. I chose the top image as the focus on the bee itself was a smidge better than the other two.  Here is what the full-size, unedited, SOOC image looks like.  Uh, not exactly a best shot. ;-)

1. A few slider adjustments in RAW and a spin through the Noise Ninja plug-in and ready to crop.  Cropping is probably my favorite part of the editing process and my biggest Aha! moment back from my first days in the darkroom during my high school photography classes.  The image below is a bit more vivid than my usual tastes, but the crop tones that down a bit.

Visit Tracey's blog each Monday to share your Best Shot.

the cutest little thing

One of our neighbors down the street keeps the tidiest curbside beds and saves me the trouble of needing to manicure my own for photography's sake.  I stole a few quick moments on the way back from the park when I saw that dozens upon dozens of baby bumblebees had descended upon these flowers.  

fair season

The ferris wheel is the thing I most look forward to at the fair, but apparently it's not his favorite thing.  This was one of the last rides of a very long afternoon at the Allentown Fair and as we took our second turn, he sort of enjoyed it, though still clutched at her shirt with all his might.  I would have kept him next to me, except my three year old was even less pleased than he to be spinning 'round and 'round....and 'round. 

You can't win them all and when it's you, three kids and a sheet of unused ride tickets, you make do, you make them cry and somehow you find some way to make it work. And failing that, there's always the chance to make up for it with cotton candy.  The boy was smitten with his fistfuls of fluff and hearing him plead, "mo sugar, mama, mo sugar!"--well, it really doesn't get better than that.  

*****

More than any other year to year set of comparisons, somehow the ones in photographs and in memory from this fair are that really hit home for me.  My five year old doesn't need me to lift her onto the carousel horses any more; she's tall enough.  My "baby" is big enough to ride every ride with her.  My three year old's most ecstatic moment is still the pony ride--we had a full year of being regaled by Peanut stories; this year ahead it will be Casper.

Somehow I never realized what an expense it was growing up to go to these fairs, to spend the day blissed out on fried dough, ice cream cones and rickety metal rides without a care in the world.  Keeping three kids in the funnel cake and lemonade is quite a chunk of change.   It's not the fair of my youth, but it's the one of theirs and if I have to pick and choose my indulgent moments, well this day each year will forever be in the heck yeah it's worth it category.   Right down to the cotton candy.