A Photo A Day - The colors of childhood

Since becoming more serious about this whole photography thing, I find myself noticing more visual details in my everyday life. It's amazing how, all of a sudden, you go from looking at a pile of boring-ole dishes, to framing it from the camera's eye, analyzing light, color, and contrast. You know, it actually makes ordinary life that much more interesting. I'm loving every minute of it!

Which is how I came to stop myself in the middle of doing dishes this afternoon to grab my camera and shoot these fun, colorful shots. Kids' stuff is so full of color. I can't imagine the day when my life goes back to boring adult shades again. Although, of course, I'll probably get a few more dishes done. ;o)

Photo A Day: Wednesday, July 21 2010

July21
Originally uploaded by Travel Vixen

This photo was actually taken by Hubby, obvy. It's me and little miss, settling down for a round of story-telling before bedtime. As you can see she is bleary-eyed because she is not only tired but sick, poor thing.

Of course, I am now sick too. Pretty much no way that you can smooch with your sick 15 month old, without sharing in the "love".

Photo effects by moi, however, using my new play-toy (for 30 days while it's free, anyway) "Lightroom". Loving it! Turned an awful photo of me at the end of the day, into a half-way decent one.

Could be worth the $300 for that alone!

A new photo project

What? You say! Another one? What happened to the old one : Photo A Day?

Well, it has not been totally abandoned. Some days there is stuff to take photos of and some days there is not. Some days there is time to take the photo, transfer it to my PC, upload it to Flickr, and then blog about it and some days there is not. So, somedays there will be  a photo and somedays there will not. Maybe I should rename it my "Someday photo project". Ahem.

No, this photo project has been born out of a couple of different motivations. The first is to find something to do on weekends that gets me and Daisy out of the house, without shopping or eating ($$). The second is to attempt to remind myself that there are some endearing qualities about the area I live in, Sacramento.

Hence, my new photo project is going to be: "Daisy's Sacramento"

I'm going to find interesting - either visually, historically, or otherwise - places or sights in the Sacramento region and go-forth to photograph them from Daisy's perspective - as in whatever interests her about them (if anything) and from 30" off the ground.

I'm thinking I will focus mostly on the historical because, the whole time I was living in the Orange County area, all I did was bitch about how there was no history. The historical downtowns and older buildings were one of the things I thought I would like about this area, so now I need to put my camera where my mouth is. However, every week won't be a history lesson. We'll see where life takes us.

Not that I'm promising something every week, either. It's a project, not a homework assignment and I don't want to turn it into a chore. It's supposed to be fun and practice.

Oh, and if you live locally and have ideas about places to go, please comment or email me. Or if you live out of the area and would like to know something more about the area, that would be great to know too. Although the project is about me, it would be nice if it also entertained YOU!

The great thing about this new project is that I don't have to try and separate the time I spend with Daisy and the pictures I take of her, from my photography practice. This way I get to kill two birds with one stone, thereby substantially increasing the likelihood that I'll do it.

Woot! I'm in Lala Land

This weekend I am in L.A. with my long-time good friend, E, of The Gurly Life fame. It's her birthday on Sunday and I decided to give her THE BEST PRESENT EVER.  Me!

Of course, my gift is not entirely selfless. For a little over 48 hours I get to be childless, and footloose and fancy-free in crazy Lala Land. I miss Southern California, so getting down here once in a while is like a breath of fresh air for me. Although without the fresh air, of course - Los Angeles isn't exactly known for it's air quality.

Despite fervently looking forward to my away time, I had quite the issue leaving Daisy this morning, however. Being a mommy is hard: you know you need the "me" time but you can barely bring yourself to sacrifice time away from them to get it. Even though you know it's irrational, you wonder if they will forget you and you'll somehow be replaced as #1 by Nanny or Grandad or Daddy. Yeah, yeah, I know. I said it was irrational.

But I'm here now and already having a great time.

This afternoon and evening we spent in downtown L.A. and the new entertainment complex that has sprung up around the Staples Center, "L.A. Live". Now, before you wonder what on earth posessed us to go to downtown Los Angeles, let me explain: it's changed. It is no longer the armpit of Southern California. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's now a bustling metropolis full of new development and beautiful old buildings, living side-by-side. Cool lofts and chic bars, fabulous restaurants... it's quite the "in" area. And, get this - everybody walks in L.A! That's right... WALKS. What a concept!

E and I had quite the walking excursion, from Olympic all the way up to 10th street and back again, stopping to take pics along the way. Fortunately, E loves her camera as much as I do, so there was no foot-tapping as we moved around in 360 degree angles to try and get the perfect shot of this or that.

We stopped in one older building, The Hotel Figueroa, for almost an hour. If I ever come back to L.A. with hubby for a weekend excursion, this is where I would want to stay. It's just an amazing spot, with the feel of old Mexico. Cool tiles, elaborate lights, wrought-iron gates and fences, oversized dining chairs, and a fabulous bar-patio area that overlooked a beautiful pool-oasis in the back. You almost forgot you were slap bang in the middle of America's second largest city. And so much to take pictures of! It was an amateur photographer's mecca. E and I milled around, changing camera settings, experimenting, and sharing our results.

Here are some of them from our excursion...

THE HOTEL FIGUEROA















The great thing about L.A. is that you can walk around taking pictures of people and things and nobody pays you the slightest bit of notice. Pull out your DSLR in Sacramento and people look at you, wondering if you'll have the audacity to sneak a picture of them.

Did I say I missed SoCal? Yeah, Hubby's in for it for at least a month when I get back.

Right now, I'm off. I'm being a TERRIBLE guest, just sitting on E's couch and blogging silently. Off to be the birthday treat. LOL.

You can see all the pics here

Here's the link back to The Gurly Life's post on the same day (which I waited forever for her to finish. I mean, who takes 30 minutes to finish the last sentence and bothers to re-check the post for errors before posting!? Doesn't she know that posts are way more fun when they're full of typos and poor grammar? Sheesh. I could teach her a thing or two!)

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Edited to add: I guess this shows how much I know about different decorating styles. I looked-up more about the Hotel Figueroa and found that it is decorated in the Moroccan style. Oops! Just a sea or two away from Mexico. Aparently it also used to be a YWCA and is purported to be haunted. We didn't see any ghosts, however, although I'm sure we would have taken a photo of them if we had.

Photo A Day: Wednesday, July 7 2010

Yesterday, as Brandy and I were chit-chatting in my office, Ms. Daisy managed to pull-over the paper shredder (which was fortunately not on - I'd already made sure of that.) The top was heavy, so it dramatically collapsed on top of her, spewing it's mangled contents onto the floor of my office.

Of course, Daisy, after recovering from the shock-and-awe of it all, found the bits of paper wildly entertaining and proceeded to throw them up in the air and all around. Lovely.

Even after somewhat of a hurried clean-up (I had work to do!) the floor is still littered with tiny little bits of what were once personal documents.

Hence the photo. Thanks Daisy!

Experimenting with close ups

Instead of a picture a day for the weekend, I wanted to post some shots I took in my parents' back yard this weekend. I've been experimenting with camera settings and close-ups and I kind of liked the end results of these.

Agapanthus - my favorite flowers





Wood grain




Hands



Rocks and Bricks





Apples - soon to be apple pie... yum!

Photo A Day: Tuesday June 29 2010

Noooo, it's not upside down. It is indeed a dress tag and it does say size 6.

Somehow in the upside-down, completely screwed-up world of retail sizing, I am a size 6. I discovered this when I discovered a little black shift dress in my closet that I had never worn - presumably because I bought it shortly before I got knocked-up and then rapidly outsized it.

Of course, this is all actually a load of rubbish. I am not a size 6, as much as I would love to be. According to Old Navy, I am a size 10 pants. And I haven't just lost a load of weight because all my other clothes seem to fit me just the same.

Anyway, despite the fuzzy-logic of it all, I was proud enough to snap this photo, on my way out the door to a meeting.

Clearly, judging by the photos of the last couple of days, I'm clutching at straws, trying to find things (other than Daisy) to take photos of. Yeah, I don't get out much.

Photo A Day: Monday June 28, 2010

It's HOT. Holy moly is it hot. 103 today, they're saying. Ugh, just walking outside is like opening an oven door. This is what I hate about Sacramento: one minute you're moaning becuase it's raining in June, the next you're fighting to breath in desert-like heat. It's weather whiplash.

Our hopelessly poor ducting system is doing it's best to push cool air through from the air conditioner but it's still steamy upstairs in our bedrooms. Hence, today's pic is of the fan in our master bedroom; the fan that will be working hard tonight to stop us from sweating our brains out.

Photo A Day: Saturday, June 26 2010

If you're a Facebook friend, then you're already privy to the chaos and destruction that little miss Daisy brought to our living room this baking Saturday afternoon.

If you're not, then I'll just call this one "Spot the baby" and leave it at that.



Not my greatest work of art but sometimes I think that photography is as much about capturing the essence of the moment, as it is about having all the technical stuff sorted out.

Photo A Day: Wednesday, June 24 - a steal

Since my ultimate dream job would be to travel the world, meet interesting people, take pictures of them and write about them, it goes without saying that I am madly jealous of travel photographers or photo-journalists who travel the globe. So, I decided to cover my lack of a picture for Wednesday, with a steal and a link to a photographer's blog I found per-chance.

Sarah Elliott is a photojournalist with an amazing portfolio of pictures spanning multiple countries.

This particular image of hers was linked from the Medicins Sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders website.

See more of her work here: http://www.sarahelliottphotography.com/

I am in awe of her life and her talent. Her photos tell a story in a way that no words ever could.

Photo A Day: Tuesday June 22 2010

Today I am off into the office for our bi-monthly management team meeting. The above is a picture from the laundry-list of notes I made yesterday about things I want to discuss.

And off I go to discuss them... no time for thought-provoking reflections this a.m.

Photo A Day: Monday June 21

Obviously it's Daisy in the bath but the rest requires explanation.

If you have kids, you've probably seen these foam letters at one point or another. You buy them in bags and, when they get wet, they stick on the wall. Since bath time is one of the rare moments where you have your little one's rapt attention in a confined space, you can then use the letters on the tiles around the bath to spell out new words.

Funny thing is, Hubby found out that the letters also stick to Daisy's skin when wet. So, we usually play games with her during bath time, throwing the foam letters at her and seeing which ones stick. She normally gets pretty mad after a few and pulls them off, scowling at us. It's more fun for us than her, hehe.

Last night, Hubby found out that the letters stuck to her head also. What was extra funny was that Daisy seemed to have no idea that they were up there (or didn't care) and so Hubby kept plopping them on her head, one after the other, to see how long it would take to piss her off. It never happened and so this picture did.

What I like about this picture, aside from the obvious "moment" it represents, is that it sort of sums up toddlerhood for me. There are all these things - concepts, letters and almost words (see the word "bugs" has accidentally formed in the melee?) - jumbling around in Daisy's head but she hasn't quite figured out how to put it all together yet. This leaves us, as parents, trying to figure out what it all means. And like this picture, it's fun, funny, and confusing all at the same time.

Photo A Day: Saturday June 19 and Sunday June 20

Well, it looks like I'm not going to have a perfect record on this new project. They say new habits take 30 days or something, so these posts might be spotty for a month or so.

This weekend was freakin' busy, so there's plenty of pictures to share but, of course, I can only pick one for each day, that best summed up the day for me OR expresses something significant about that day.

Saturday, Hubby and I hosted a mega back yard play date with our friends who had kids about the same time as we had Daisy. Hence, our back yard turned into a creche, with 7 toddlers bouncing around from one activity to the next. Sand box, water table, paddling pool, swing, slide, food... This pic said it all for me, though: Mackenzie and Aaron, squealing with delight at the pool, water flying everywhere. I do so love our play dates and this one was especially fun because (aptly for Father's Day weekend) Dads were there also - it's so rare that we get the guys together too!



Sunday was Father's Day itself and we zoomed up the hill early to see Grammie, so we could zoom back down again to have a late lunch/early dinner with Grandad and Nan (aka: my parents. Funny how life is expressed in Daisy terms these days.)

Although I have a TON of cute pics of Daisy from our day (when don't I take a ton of cute pics of her on weekends!?), I wanted to post this one as my picture of the day because it's of my Daddy. This is just the second Father's Day I've been able to spend with him in person in more than fifteen years and I feel so thankful for it. In this pic he is watching Daisy mess around in our back yard. It brings immeasurable joy to my life to share Daisy with him. I had a wonderfully close relationship with my maternal grandfather and I'm so glad that Daisy will have the same opportunity with my Dad.



Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband and Dad!

Photo A Day: Thursday June 17 2010

As you know, I am a bit of an amateur photographer, with the emphasis on the amateur. And so, for some time, I've been trying to think of something I can do to give me some practice using camera settings - and on subjects other than Daisy. Not that Daisy isn't the most fun subject for me but, you know, variety is the spice of life. Coinkidentally, I've also been trying to find ways to make this blog more interesting, with more frequent posts about things other than my stupid back and hip pain.

Hence and therefore and so, I have decided to take a photo a day that attempts to sum up something about that day. My goal, however, is not to create photographic art; heck, I don't have time for that right now - sometimes my day is less than artful. Occasionally, of course, that may very well be my goal but I don't want the pressure of having to turn each photo into a masterpiece or, quite frankly, I'll be so intimidated I'll never do it.

Today's photo, from yesterday (which is how this may occasionally run, depending on the day), is of my dreaded office chair (the one that has been so problematic with my back) with it's new double-pillow set-up. I spend a lot of time each day on this chair, so it makes sense it is the first star in my new project.



Of course, I did play around with it a bit in Photoshop to make it a bit more interesting - it is, of course, a photo of a chair (yawn). Had no real agenda. Just left it in a place I personally sorta liked it more.

So, there you have it in all it's raw experimentation. The first of the daily photos...