Day 10: Thursday, April 30, 2009

I pretty much worked for 7:30 am til 10:30 pm today without a break or any kind of outside activity, so all I have today is a cute picture of a girl I babysat.  It's nothing special, but there's no way I'm doing anything else tonight!  As background, I left work  early today because a friend of both my aunt and I needed a babysitter desperately.  So, I watched her three kids from 4 - 10:30.  This is her youngest, Daphne, whose hair I put in a whole bunch of pony tails.

In spite of the lame post, I'm so proud of myself for going 10 days legitimately!  Only 355 left to go!  Yeah!

Day 9: Wednesday, April 29, 2009

In case you couldn't tell, the theme for today is frogs again.  I think I'll be satisfied when I get a good one of a frog jumping.  Anyway, I snuck up on these frogs.  I was actually looking at the first one, who was VERY close to me, when this second (and third?) one started mooing at me!  I hadn't even notice him and it almost made me jump.  Luckily I kept still and was able to get some pictures of him.  Then I tried to get a picture of him jumping, which, didn't work.  So THEN I slowly positioned myself for a great picture and waited for him to come up again.  I waited FOREVER.  All the other frogs came back up, but of course, this one just wouldn't!  Maybe tomorrow.

Day 8: Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Of all the days I've done this so far, I think I had the hardest time narrowing down my photos today.  Maybe eventually I'll get the hang of just putting one up, but not today.  Anyway, the first photo I chose, simply because it was pretty.  The next set is all of birds.  In case you were wondering, I love cardinals.  I love other birds too, but cardinals are also very easy to photograph.  
I like how this next one looks kind of dreamy.  Also, I must say that at this very moment, the ducks are outside quacking.  They sound pretty frantic, which means the female duck is probably out there with at least two males.  There are four males total and they all fight like crazy over her.  I'll have to go over that some other time.
This next set of photos, showcases birds while they are flying/diving.  So, here's the male cardinal sitting in the tree.
Here he is dive-bombing.
Here's the female cardinal sitting in the tree.

Dive-bombing.
I like to think they dive-bombed into the same tree and spent some quality time together.  Two little cardinals sitting in a tree...  This next one is just funny.  Here's another male cardinal dive-bombing...
...straight into the feeder.  I guess he was eager for some food.
And lastly, a fluttering cardinal.  Feel free to zoom in.  I didn't want to include a cropped photo of it.
See if you can guess what this next section features.  That shape on the left there is Ariana.  What is she looking at?
Frogs!  There are TONS of frogs in the lake and they're all really noisy and active right now (mating?).  I can, in fact, hear them right now.  In case you've never heard bull frogs before and don't know how they got their name, I'll tell you that they sound just like cows.  If I want to, it is often very easy to imagine I live on a farm and there are a bunch of cows outside my window.  Anyway, Ariana and I saw this frog (which is not the same one as above) when we were on the neighbor's dock feeding fish.  He let us get unusually close, but wouldn't make any noise like the rest of them.  Ari and I were trying to get him to talk ("Come on froggy, talk!  We're not scary strangers!  We're nice!  We love you!  We want you to take a bath with us!  We want you to go everywhere with us!  You an sleep with us!") when one of the other frogs moo'd.  Right about that time, Ari goes, "what was that noise?"  I, thinking she was referring to the moo, said, hopefully, "I think it was a frog!  Maybe it was our frog talking!"  And she goes, "I think it was me tooting."  "Or maybe it was that."  Anyway, aren't these cool?  The first one is just to show you how he really looked.  The second two are me getting artistic.  BTW, most of my photos today have been cropped, but none otherwise edited, since I still haven't had time for that.


Later we came back to the dock and saw this one on the other side.  I included the non cropped one so you could see the beautiful colors in the water.


And just one final frog for good measure.  Thanks for looking!

Day 7: Monday, April 27, 2009

I almost didn't take a picture for the blog today, because it's getting toward the end of the day and I have a lot to do and hadn't taken any pictures yet.  I'm so glad I did though!  Here's the story.  I have this snake staff in my room and had just written something about it for my facebook status, so I decided to try to make it the subject of a still life photo.  I also have this vase with some bamboo sticks(?) coming out of it, and I thought it might be cool to have the snake's head be coming through the bamboo fronds(?).  The vase with the bamboo stalks(?) was too short when on the floor and too tall when on chairs, so I decided to flip this book carryer thing on its side and put the vase on top of it, which then made it just the right height to have the snake head come through the bamboo ------- .  I took a few pictures of it, then had to go to the bathroom.  While I was in the bathroom, my aunt came up to bring me some strawberries in cream, but since I was in the bathroom, she just came in and put it on my night stand.  Now, just to be perfectly clear, there is no way to not see this whole setup with the staff even if all you did was stand at my door, but especially if you walk in and go to the nightstand.  The setup looks like some kind of pagan ritual.  My aunt, bless her heart, doesn't say a word, just sets the strawberries down and walks back downstairs.  She doesn't even say anything to my uncle when she gets down there.  I come out of the bathroom, see the setup and realize that my aunt just saw it and must think I'm crazy and I go down and explain.  I haven't laughed that long in a LONG time.  Below I have included pictures of the setup and of the finished product.  Ha ha.  The end.

Day 6: Sunday, April 26, 2009

Ok, I'm really tired, so this isn't really my best pic of the day, but I don't really care.  I do like that I caught both a male and female cardinal together though.  This photo is cropped btw.  Ok, done.

Day 5: Saturday, April 25, 2009

Today I went to Angel Mounds State Historical Site (look it up) and took these first two photos.  I am having an incredibly difficult time getting my camera to focus on fast moving subjects that are far/semi-far away.  I realize that's difficult for any camera probably, but any advice?  Mine's suppoooosed to be good at it.  I mean, I realize I can manually focus, but that isn't so practical in this scenario.  Anyway, these next two aren't perfect, but are better than the vast majority I've taken in those conditions.  Both are cropped.

I also acted photographer for my cousin and her friend's joint birthday party.  I took tons of great pictures, but I figure you're probably sick of kid photos, especially of Ariana, so I left it to just these three.

Obviously I didn't take this one.  It's courtesy of one of the neighbors.

This one would obviously be better if the hand and the other picture taker (Andrea) weren't in it, but I love Ari with the balloons.  It's so purely "kid."  Besides, you can photoshop those things out right?  I really need to learn some editing skills.

Well, that's all for today folks.  I'm quite proud of myself for narrowing the 1071 photos I took today to just 5.

Peace.

Day 4: Friday, April 24, 2009

So today is Ari's birthday.  She is now THREE.  We are having her party tomorrow, so expect to see some party pics then.  Today wasn't that eventful though.  Since I can't figure out how to really move around pictures and text in blogger so that they are exactly as I'd like, the pictures are in reverse chronological order today.  The first one here is from when Ari and I took our neighbor's dog on a walk.  A couple of the kids down the street came with us and this little boy's name is Christopher.  He is SO sweet to Ari.  I chose this picture just because it was a sweet moment.

 The second photo here is from Ari, Greta (my aunt, Ari's mom) and I painted together.  I decided to go Jackson Pollock style.  And, in case you couldn't tell, the painting is actually upside down here...

Then we have a robin who I caught sitting in a tree in the backyard.  Robins are everywhere.


The last on is of Ari taking her camera outside so we could both take pictures together.  It's a little blurry and imperfect, but I like the colors and the composition.  Though, having her whole hand in the photo would have been nice.

The end.

Day 3: Thursday, April 23, 2009

My cousin Ariana (who I nanny) is turning three years old tomorrow, so we had a birthday party for her at her preschool today. I, of course, was the designated photographer. My philosophy always has been that the more pictures you take, the more good pictures you are likely to end up with. So how many photos did I take of this one hour preschool party? Exactly 648. Luckily, it seems to have worked, since I did come up with some good photos. Although, once again, since I'm still learning, the pictures aren't perfect and quite often they're either over or underexposed. Of those 648, it's been difficult, but I've chosen just a few of each kid. First will be Ari:



I laud her for how daintily she is eating that tiny cupcake here.

Clearly the dainty didn't last.

Ari likes hats, so all the kids got hats.

I think this one is pretty funny of Ari and her mom.

Next comes Arnoff:

He was totally hamming it for the camera the whole time.



He chose the ladybug hat right away. There was no question in the matter.

Next comes grant. He's about half the size of the other kids and so quiet he's always being forgotten about.

Here he is looking evil.

Lauren:

I love both of the Lauren ones.

Mallory:

She was probably the easiest to photograph.



When she first got her hat she got a little shy, but I managed to catch her sneaking a glance at me and my huge camera.

Here's Vince:

Lastly, Susannah. She's super quiet like Grant and is ADORABLE.

Having a bit of trouble climbing.



Love her smile.

And this is a random girl on the playground:

Now for the group shots:




This was when I had from 3 - 6 kids at a time all staring at me while I just snapped pictures right back at them. They were fascinated with the camera.



Here we have Vince crying, Grant staring at him, Susannah covering her ears, Lauren picking her nose and Ari...poking her eye?

Last but not least, here's Susannah and Mallory laughing at my fishie faces.

Whew - glad to be done with uploading those.