Busy weekend!

OMG, it's been a busy weekend. We have decided to tackle our deep, dark and dingy basement. It is extremely dated and disgusting! Why are we doing this? Well we have decided to use this large and unused area for a photography studio for me! I am so excited and so nervous all at the same time.

Before this weekend, this room was such a mess that you could hardly move and it was too embarrassing to even take a photo of, not to mention post it. There was a pool table, treadmill and HUGE weight set (oh and I can't forget the washer and dryer) taking up all the floor space. Not to mention all the toys and boxes. It was bad! It was really bad.

By the time we went to bed on Saturday night it was looking much better. Mariska and Al came and took away the pool table and helped to get some of the big stuff out. Our basement looked like this...



Please, take note of that amazing red and black carpet. Not to mention the stunning black panelling! ICK! Yuck! What were they thinking?

It's now Sunday night, we have made more progress. The weight set is gone. The walls are all washed and prepped for paint and the gorgeous new flooring is acclimatizing as we speak! YEAH!! I'm so excited to update this nasty little secret in our basement.



Stay tuned, as the new studio space continues to take shape. I will be sharing more and more photos! Now on to decided what to get for studio lighting.

I love where I live!

It's days like this that I love where I live. The weather is fantastic. My neighbours are great albeit a little weird sometimes (see pic below) and there are lots of kids around for mine to play with. I really do love it here.



I live on a really quiet street so it was pretty funny to watch people slow down and stare as they saw this happening. It was the adult in the group that started this silly little fire and all the kids were grabbing debris like crazy to throw in it.

After school, the girls and I never did go inside. They wanted to stay and play outside so I grabbed my camera and the bikes and we stayed outside until Daddy got home. The girls had a fantastic time playing with all the kids. It was so nice to watch some of the boys teaching Natalia and Emma how to play basketball. They were even racing Emma on her bike down the street.



Michelle, my neighbour, got the freezies out of her freezer for the kids to enjoy. These are the first ones of the season and judging by Natalia's outfit you would think it was June not March. The weather was a balmy and sunny 10 degrees!! Not quite freezie and sundress weather but that's what we did anyways.



I just had to get a new pic of my snowdrops today because they are so cool looking! I love the way they look all opened up.



And the one thing on my entire yard that I love more than anything, is my magnolia tree, and it is starting to bud! I LOVE seeing this thing all covered in flowers. It is gorgeous. I just wish it lasted more than about 5 days to a week in flower.



Oh yeah, one last photo I just have to show. This little guy is in Emma's class and was so into me taking photos of him. He asked me to take this photo for him and I am so glad that I did. He actually stood on a bucket and jumped off it to make this shot in the basket. It's not best, but I cloned out the bucket under him, and I'm going to give it to him at school on Monday. He was so excited to see this photo on my camera today and I promised him a copy.

I took over 400 photos today! ACK!

Ok, I admit it's a little crazy but we had such a fun and busy day. Natalia and I went to our favourite drop in program for the majority of the day. It is the best place. There is so much to do and tons of kids to play with. Today was actually a pretty small group so the kids got to play Roly Poly on the ball. It is always a hit!



On the way to get Emma from school I asked Natalia to sit on our bench so I could get a photo of her to play with on the computer. I love the photo but man the colour is killing me. She looks so pink. I am sure that is because of the reflection of her coat but I don't want her looking like a lobster. Does she look like a lobster to you?



After we picked Emma up and got settled in at home I begged the girls to go outside and let me take some photos. They actually agreed. I didn't get much that I loved but it was fun taking photos of the girls playing with their outside toys that they haven't seen in a while. Emma was so excited to get her bike out. I don't think she got off it for more than 2 minutes.



Of course, Natalia was watching her like a hawk, in the hopes to get in on this cool action! But she didn't.

Not only did we get some playtime outside but we also got the front gardens cleaned up a bit and Emma found our first spring flower. She was so excited!



Heck, I didn't even know we had flowers in this particular planting bed.

What would a day outside be without sidewalk chalk and tree climbing? Our poor magnolia tree seems to constantly have a kid in it. It's the perfect climbing tree.




There is one more thing that I just have to show tonight. You may or may not know this but Natalia is OBSESSED with her hair and in particular, she is obsessed with ponytails. I honestly think that if I cut the child's hair off she will go into withdrawal. Anyways, last time were were in Arthur, my cousin Melanie gave these hair elastics (at least that is what we use them for) to Emma and Natalia. Well, Natalia just LOVES these. She wants to wear them constantly, the cow in this photo is by far her favourite. Thanks Mel!

Program mode is my friend, not my enemy!

Ok, so in the 2 plus years that I have owned an dSLR I have really only ever shot in either aperture priority or shutter priority and on occasion I have used manual. I am beginning to learn that if I am only chasing the kids around that I need to relax and trust program mode. It actually does a pretty nice job. All these photos, with the exception of Emma were taken using program mode. I am no longer a "program mode snob!"

This first group of pictures is for Aunt Karen. She pointed out that there is some McDougall in Natalia. That's the part that sticks out her tongue every time she concentrates on something! I'm pretty sure my brothers used to do that a lot while playing sports.




Today, I took Natalia to the park at the school just before we had to pick Emma up. I must say that this is one of the most pathetic parks in all of this city. The worst part is that the best slide for the little kids is the most treacherous to get to. Here is Natalia scaling the bars to get to the slide.

Stupid park! No wonder we never go here.



I have one last photo to share today.

Emma went to a Hannah Montana themed birthday party over the weekend. Up until this she had absolutely no use for Hannah Montana. I guess now that she knows her friends like Hannah Montana, she suddenly does too! It's crazy how kids must follow what their peers do. I remember being just like that.

The crazy, ugly sunglasses were part of the goodie bag that she got at the party and I must say, she LOVES them. I personally think they are dorky but this is coming from a woman with NO style.

I learned a new trick today!

So of course, I just had to try it out. This is a sun flare and so easy to do! All you do is close your aperture as much as possible and you get these cool flares. I love it! Supposedly it's awesome at sunset. I must try that!




Last week when the girls and I were at Chuck E Cheese, Alexander was so sweet and bought Natalia this huge lollipop! She was so excited! So today, I finally gave it to her and took the opportunity to shoot lots of photos of her with it. I think I got some really great shots. I love her eyes in these photos. I didn't even touch them up in photoshop. They just popped today.








And last but not least, is the look I get when Natalia is sick of me and my camera! She informed me that she doesn't like having her picture take.

Off to Arthur for the Day

Seeing as we have 3 birthdays in our family to celebrate this month, we always get together once and celebrate them all at once. Today was the day. We headed to my parents house for the day.

I didn't take too many photos but I did take a few. Here they are...

Mom's laundry drying on the line.



Down by the River (couldn't decide if I liked the black and white or colour better so you get both!)




My beautiful niece, Ava



I also wanted to post 2 other photos. One of Emma from the other day and one more from my walk with Amy yesterday.




I don't know if anyone has noticed but I have also been slowly getting behind on my weekly 365 layouts. I finished up week 10 tonight and here it is.



The kit is called Me and MaryJane by Angie Kovacs and LilyAnne Taylor at ES.
Template by Chrissy W and is in her A Photo a Day set.
Border, number tags and the "best buddies" tag is from Life 365.

A few fun days

Yesterday, Emma, Natalia and I went to Cambridge to spend the afternoon with Amy, her friend, Sue and 14 kids at Chuck E Cheese. Surprisingly enough it was actually not as bad as it sounds. The kids were really good and because you hardly saw them you never even noticed that there was so many of them. After we left Chuck E Cheese we went back to Amy's house to get clothes for Madison, as we had invited her for a sleepover. We just happened to beat Amy there so Emma took the opportunity to bounce on the trampoline.




It wasn't long before Natalia saw the great fun that Emma was having and so she decided that she wanted on the trampoline too. Now, I know you all think that Emma is my sweet innocent little angel. But you know, she isn't always that way. Check out this look! What do you thinks on her mind?



Hmmm, maybe a little of this?





Which of course, caused some of these...



And Emma, being the amazing big sister that we all know she is, had to do just one more of these...



And that, my friends, is proof that Emma isn't always the innocent angel that she comes across as! :)

Seeing as I am a day late. I am also going to post some pics from today. I had to bring Madison home this afternoon and I decided to take the opportunity and invite Amy out for a few hours of just wandering and taking photos. We decided to head to downtown Galt near Millrace Park. There are some beautiful ruins down in that area along the river. And it's pretty easy to find lots of things to photograph. We were out for about 2 hours and these are a few of my favourite photos.





I also used this opportunity to try the bracketing function on my camera because I had just heard about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and wanted to try it out. Basically you take 3 different photos of the same image but at different exposures and then blend the photos using a program called Photomatix. I learned about it on a podcast called dtowntv. They also have a website. www.dtowntv.com The podcast is all about Nikon and this was one of the things they showed in episode 2.

Here's my first attempt at HDR. Please excuse the watermark. Because I am only using the trial version this is automatically placed on my photo.



It's a pretty cool effect if you ask me. Do I want to shell out the money for this program? Probably not. It's a fun toy but not something I would use frequently.

Fantastic Class today!

Well I must say that I am totally impressed with my photo class today. It was so nice and inspirational to hang out with a really awesome photographer and pick her brain.

She taught me a million things about metering and how to get it right. Especially with my D300 as it seems to handle it completely different than my D80 did. We worked on how to see in black and white and how to find your inner creative being.

What I really need to work on is learning to ignore my inner critic and just let the process happen. Relax and enjoy what I am shooting and not let the technical get in the way of the fun parts of photography.

The exercises today were all about relaxing and finding my creative space and what speaks to me. It was actually really neat. I am a huge fan of conscience relaxation and that is one of the techniques that she used.

My assignment for the coming weeks is to use crayons creatively. They are bright and colourful which I LOVE but they also make great black and whites and teach you about the tones you can get in black and white photography. These are a few of my shots from tonight and I must say that I am in awe at how well the crayons converted to black and white.






The other two photos that I have to share are of a ravine near Trina's studio. I really like how the shots turned out. Not sure what it is that I like about them, all I know is that I do and that is an encouraging feeling.