30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 30

Day 30, the last day of this gratitude challenge. It's been really fun thinking outside of the box on some of the "challenges" and trying to come up with interesting images. Today is a self-portrait. It was a little awkward trying to take a photograph of myself for the sole purpose of taking a photograph. I have used my phone to take pictures of a new haircut or an outfit I need an opinion on, but to photograph myself for the sake of art was like I said awkward! Ha! Thanks for all the comments and likes along the way and I look forward to my next challenge, a sort of 25 Days of Christmas Challenge, nothing specific just images that celebrate the Christmas season!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 29

Only one more day left to this challenge. Day 29 is light and I decided to show off a neat trick I learned about in my photography class, fun with bokeh! Bokeh is what the blur of light in the out of focus areas is known as. Now there is a way to manipulate the shape (normally seen as circles) by making a cut out on a black piece of paper and taping it over the lens. In the spirit of the holiday I chose to manipulate the bokeh to look like Christmas trees. It's not perfect but I still got the effect that I was looking for! Definitely something I want to keep practicing!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 28

Day 28 is nighttime. I can't believe there are only a few more days left of this challenge. It's been a lot of fun, I might have to find a new challenge for December, since I am going to start Project 365 in January!

I Heart Faces / Laughter

They say laughter is the best medicine, right! This week at I Heart Faces, it's all about "busting a gut"! This is my son David laughing after Thanksgiving dinner at his Auntie Robyn, who was being really silly, trying to lick Auntie Kim's ear when I was trying to take a nice picture of the two of them! David thought it was HILARIOUS! It's not the most sharp image but it was one of those images where it was more important to capture the moment than to get it perfect!

Find out what's so funny over at I Heart Faces today!

 

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 27

Day 27: Daily Routine. Sunday is one day where are not in our normal every day routine, but one thing always remains the same no matter what the day and that is the boys morning teeth brushing routine!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 26

Day 26: Transportation = image of my Mom-mobile! I love my van, purchased before Evan was born, it's my very first brand new car and aside from the mess on the inside from the boys and the fact that it clearly needs a bath, I take very good care of it!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 25

Day 25: Artwork. David is turning out to be quite the artist. He certainly doesn't get it from me but he LOVES to draw and this is his drawing of a Christmas tree because we were getting ready to put up our tree tonight!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 24

Today is a photograph of gratitude, and nothing could exemplify gratitude more than this image of my family all together celebrating Thanksgiving dinner in our new home! I am so thankful for today going off without a hitch, I thankful for having a space big enough to have everyone together but most of all I am thankful for family!! It was a wonderful day filled with yummy food, laughter, togetherness! I am also thankful for the remote I purchased a few weeks back for my camera so I could be in the picture without having to set a timer and run back to my seat!



Happy Thanksgiving! I hope yours was as wonderful as mine!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 23

Today is "in your closet" and so here is a very non-exciting image of my closet from the doorway. If I had more time today, I could have maybe tried something a little more exciting but at the end of the day it's still an image of the inside of a closet. I will say thought, that since this is a gratitude challenge, I will say that I'm very grateful for the storage space.

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 22

Today is clothing. I love my boys (as does my wallet!!), but seeing all the beautiful dresses that are out in stores this time of year does make me a little sad that I don't have a daughter to dress up. The same thing happens to me around Easter! Thankfully, my boys don't mind dressing up for special occasions and so I will dress them in sweater vests and button down shirts. Sometimes we even go the shirt and tie route, just like Daddy, though I am a sucker for the sweater vest!

I am posting this picture of my boys dressed up for their Thanksgiving Day celebrations at school. David read & made Stone Soup in his class and Shaun had a Harvest Party where he shared a fruit salad with his classmates. Evan, just wanted to stand with his big brothers so I put him in a sweater too! I love that they humor me and I'll milk it for all it's worth until they no longer let me!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 21

Kind of a weird one, but Day 21 is where you sleep. Not exactly an exciting image, but my beautiful king size bed is definitely something to be grateful to have! I love it. I debated making the bed up and putting on the fancy pillows that go with the bed spread set but then it wouldn't be "real". This is what "where I sleep" looks like every day. Ha!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 20

Day 20 is "seasonal" and today couldn't have been a more perfect late Fall day! With the "unseasonably" mild temperatures for this time of year, it's almost hard to believe that Winter is just around the corner. And what better way to spend it, than a bike ride around the neighborhood with one of your best friends!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 19

Day 19 is Best Friend and as fate would have it I got to see my best friend today as we celebrated her son's third birthday! She is a wonderful person and I am lucky to have her as a friend!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 18

Day 18 and we've already done something old, so today it's something new, and so I photographed the new generator! It's not a fancy image but it is new and will be something we're grateful for having next time we lose power, which we've been told happens quite often in this neighborhood! We're just waiting for the plumber to come back and hook it up to the gas line and then we'll be good to go!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 17

Today is day 17, hard to believe were more than 1/2 way through the month and a week from today is Thanksgiving! Day 17 is to photograph "memories". I wasn't sure how to interpret this one, I mean the reason I always carrying my camera every where I go is for the sole purpose of capturing memories. Each photograph I take is a memory, so that is when I got the idea to photograph my scrapbooks. Each scrapbook is filled with memories that I will cherish forever!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 16

Day 16 is Animals. This is Trot, he's been a member of this family going on 9 years now. We also adopted his brother Drew. They are old and crotchety now and pretty much only like Charlie! But Trot let me get up close to him for this head shot! Maybe he likes me a little after all!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 15

Day 15 is Technology. Where would we all be without technology, more specifically, Angry Birds?

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 14

Day 14 is movement. I took this one of Shaun this morning riding his bike across the driveway. You get the sense of movement from the blur in the pedal and wheel. You achieve this by using a slower shutter speed. It's all starting to click and I am able to do a lot of this now without even thinking about it!

I Heart Faces / Autumn Splendor

This week's I Heart Faces challenge is Autumn. I took this as part of a photography class assignment asking us to capture motion! What is more fun, and more fall than tossing the leaves from the giant leaf pile into the air and watching them fall all around you!



Don't forget to stop over at I Heart Faces and check out the beauty of Autumn!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 13

Day 13 of the Gratitude challenge is the written word. This is my written word, a recipe I wrote down for a squash casserole that was given to me by a friend of mine. I tried it out tonight for a possible place on my Thanksgiving Day menu, and while it was rich and savory and delicious, I'm just so used to my squash having a sweet taste from brown sugar and butter. It's going to be a tough call on which squash I end up making on the big day and might even be a game day decision!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 12

Day 12 is Hands! I had a picture all planned out for this that I staged this afternoon but then ended up catching this moment at the birthday party we attended tonight. All the older kids were having a blast trying to high five Evan and teach him how to "pound it". This was the Birthday Boy trying to show Evan a "pinky promise".

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 11

Today's installment of the 30 Day photo challenge is Something Old. Last night I was trying to come up with ideas on what to photograph. I don't own anything antique or and I am sure an image of a person being tagged as "something old" wouldn't sit very well with that person! Ha! So I was stuck. And then I remembered we do have something old, something very antique that belonged to Charlie's grandfather. So my something old is an image of Charlie's Howard Pocket Watch that was made in 1907, originally belonging to his great grandfather, passed onto his grandfather and now it belongs to Charlie.

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 10

Today is Nature. I'm not exactly a very nature oriented person so I wasn't sure how I was going to depict nature today. I could have gone into my archives but the point, for me anyway, is to practice and take new images. So into the pouring rain I went with my camera to try and snap some pictures of the rain. This was my favorite of the bunch. I love the few rain drops hanging on to the branch for dear life! And I can only imagine how cool it would have looked with a macro lens, but those are really expensive and I'm not really looking to do a lot of Macro Photography.

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 9

Today in the 30 Day Photo Challenge is to photograph an inspiring person. I snuck into David's room and took this tonight of Charlie when he was reading to the boys. He is inspiring to me for all that he does for our family, he's the smartest person I know, an amazing husband and the WORLD'S BEST DADDY!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 8

On to day 8 of the 30 Day Photo challenge which is favorite color! My favorite color is Orange. Orange is known as a "hot" color, it's often used to promote food and toys, and is a color that "demands attention". No surprise that I LOVE this color!

This orange windbreaker has been in this family since David was 18 months old and it's been passed down to each brother. It's only fitting to snap a picture of Evan wearing my favorite color in a jacket that has been worn by both his older brothers!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 7

Today's challenge was to photograph something funny. The boys have been playing with these silly glasses that I picked up at the Dollar Store for a Halloween fun. Originally it was just a photograph of Evan, but then the other boys wanted to get in on the fun! So I spliced the three images together to make one new image!

I Heart Faces / Black

Today's challenge at I Heart Faces is featuring the color black! I took this of David over the weekend in his beloved Darth Vader winter hat while he was outside rolling around in the leaves!



Head over to I Heart Faces and check out all the other amazing entries!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 6

Day 6 is Books, and I am so excited since Santa brought me my 50mm f/1.4 lens a little early. I have been wanting to try photographing shallow DOF with text. I grabbed one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and opened it up to a random page. It's not perfect, but I did want to get the entire open book into the image as well. Something for me to continue practicing!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 5

Today's challenge was the Morning Sky. I am grateful that it was today and not tomorrow since I would have to get up at 6am to get the morning sky, and today getting up at 7am was just right! I don't love this image but that is what the sky looked like at 7am this morning looking outside my picture window in my great room. You can see the grain in the shadows from having to up the ISO. What I should have done was set up my tri-pod, but I was lazy and it was cold outside! And if I really wanted to get a spectacular morning sky, I could have gotten in my car and driven over to the nearby Country Club, but again. I'm LAZY!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 4

Day 4 of the 30 Day Photo Challenge is leaves! Today was a great day to be outside and photograph leaves. I snapped some neat images of the swirling leaves blowing in the wind, and the boys rolling down the hill in the leaves, but in the end my favorite ended up being close up image of some leaves on my lawn!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude

I found this idea on Pinterest and decided that it would be a good way to get in some more practice. Especially since Santa, out of the kindness of his heart, came all the way down from the North Pole to deliver the 50mm prime lens I have been wanting, a little early!

Since I'm a little late to the game, I am going to post the first three in this blog post!

Day 1: Favorite Food
This was easy, I just made my favorite dinner tonight and photographed it for my food blog!

Cuban Pork! YUM!


Day 2: Smile
I have lots of pictures of smiles, but I want to use one I actually took today so I am posting this one of my Shaunie kicking the leftover snow from the freak October storm we had last Saturday!


Day 3: Happiness
I don't think it gets any better than a picture with my 3 little guys!! I am lucky that they genuinely love to play together, it's never forced! They have lots of fun together and I think it shows!