Living the glamorous life!

This Jan. 1st I shared on Facebook that I was going to start walking, outside, every day! I asked if anyone would like to join me. Some did, hopefully more still will!

So far we’ve walked outside for 30 mins every day.

First day we walked the field, next day to the lake down the road and hubby joined us.

Yesterday we started down the road towards the lake and soon turned around to the shelter of our treed yard. It was WINDY!

Today however, we opted out of a walk in favour of something more glamorous.

We scooped ‘poopsicles’ instead. I think the hour and a half of poopsicle scooping we did was probably the equivalent to a few hours of walking! Phew!

Farm kids work hard, and no, it’s actually not glamorous, but it comes with benefits of extra fun!

Lots of extra fun!

And when we were all done, the horses were thankful.

And we went in for some well deserved hot chocolate!

Northern Lights

We had the rare opportunity to witness the Northern Lights on the last night of September! Since being on the prairies, I had yet to see them. My husband had seen them several times on his way home from work at 6 am last spring, so I knew it could happen!

I’m not the greatest photographer when it comes to night time photos, I’ve still got LOTS to learn but I always like to at least try. Since I didn’t have time to set up a tripod, first I tried hand held.

Cool, but the blurry trees really bothered me!

So I tried again, but this time I rested one side of the camera on a surface, in hopes of solving the camera shake problem with the long shutter time lapse.

Again, kind of cool BUT, there’s that shake again! Those stars should be pin points, they shouldn’t look like blurry falling stars. lol

I had ONE photo left on my card, so this time I opened things up a little more, set the camera fully on the flat solid surface, and clicked the button in hopes of one last try at a decent shot!

MUCH better!

I think I’m going to set up my tripod near the door to have it ready, and I cleaned off my camera card so I have more then three tries next time too! Hopefully there will be a next time REAL soon!

The beach with Julia

The other day I had to stop by my parents place to pick up something. They live near the beach, so I thought I’d see who wanted to come along, and take my camera too, just in case we could possibly catch a beach sunset.

The skies were too gray and cloudy for any sunset colors, but it was a nice little break in our day anyways. Julia and Teagan decided to join me.

I LOVE beached wood. We get some pretty amazing trees brought up on the shores here.

Normally you can see across the straights here but it was just too cloudy.

It still made for some worthwhile photos.

And some memories, with a side of fun.

For anything in life to be truly worthwhile, you must add in that little side of fun!

Anniversary flowers

These flowers were a gift from our eldest daughter, Alesia, for our 21st Wedding Anniversay on the 22nd. She knew I was feeling down about her dad and I being apart for so long, so she brought me flowers.

She brings me flowers quite often. She knows that even though the flowers themselves won’t last forever, because I love snapping photos, they will still be captured forever in time.

When I saw how pretty they were looking in my kitchen window, I decided to snap photos of them right where they were.

I love how the sunlight was shining on them.

Flowers, I love them all. My daughter knows this well.

Thank you Alesia for thinking of me. You are indeed a blessing. Don’t ever forget that!

All creatures great and small.

I was going through some photos on my camera card and came across these photos of some moths the girls had found on our front deck.

They knew I love to snap photos of interesting things, so they called me to come take a look, and to bring my camera.

*as you can see, they’ve developed my love of awesomeness too. hee hee.

As I was looking through these photos, especially the ones that show the details of the moth,

I found myself pondering whether I felt the moth was pretty,

or ugly?

In either case, I definitely find it fascinating.

As I do pretty much all creatures.

That is, until I got to the next photos. These were the very next photos on my card.

This is one creature I consider pure ugly.

Not at all fascinating, just ugly.

A vulture.

We see them periodically around here. One time, a few years back, we had three of them on the property. Each one sat on a different fence post at the horse pasture. One on each post, 1, 2, 3, ugly creatures. They all sat just like this one, wings spread out wide.

I have to admit, THAT was slightly fascinating.

But this single vulture on this day sitting in a dead tree overlooking our pasture?
Fascinating? No. Ugly, and even disgusting? Yep.

And when he finally flew away, I was glad to see him go!

I’m learning to take better photos

Some time this past summer my mom and I attended a photography workshop.

We were unable to stay for the entire day. Both of us needed to leave early, so we only had the opportunity to listen and learn from the two speakers, in a conference room. We would miss the afternoon “safari” lessons, the hands on part of the workshop.

This was a bit of a bummer, but… it is the reality of busy people.

We were both just very glad to even have the opportunity to attend a workshop and learn some things! “Groupon” had an awesome deal that we simply could not pass up, so away we went.

Before we left Victoria, we made a quick stop at the harbour for a few photos!

I love the harbour.

My mom snapped this quick photo of me snapping photos of the ocean, with the family around. I couldn’t believe she used her point and shoot after we had just sat through that workshop!

I snapped one of her taking pictures too.

*my younger sister in the foreground, my mom snapping photos in the back.

Since the workshop, I’ve felt much more confident in playing around with the buttons on my camera. My wonderful, wonderful camera (a Nikon D300) which I purchased used from an online friend a few years ago. This camera has been one of the best investments I have ever made. Not only does it help with my business, GREATLY, as it makes for great product shots, it also allows me to learn more about how to get great shots of what’s even more important to me,
every.day.life.

*my husband and three youngest girls checking out an old sailboat

Great product shots are important… but life? It’s passing by me so quickly that I’m happy to beautifully freeze frame snippets with my camera here and there. We may not be able to go back in time, but we can relive the memories through photos.

*my mom and sister

The biggest change I’ve noticed though, by playing around with buttons recently, is the sunset photos I can finally achieve.

I snapped a photo of how I ‘used’ to take sunset photos.

And it was ‘ok’, the photo may even look pretty to some, but it always frustrated me that what I was seeing with my EYES, was not what I would see in my photos.

That photo above, was NOT was I was seeing with my eyes that night.

THIS is what I was seeing, and what I so desperately wanted to capture!

The sky that night, it was amazing.

I’ve become brave enough to play around with settings, get myself out of ‘auto’, and just keep snapping away until I get it right.

And now, what I see in front of me for just a few short moments as the sun sets.

I can keep forever, even after it’s faded and gone.

I can’t tell you exactly what settings I changed, that was so different from how I used to take photos. I’m not real good at teaching others what I know. I learn simply by doing.

What I can do, is tell you to get brave with your camera if you haven’t already. Read, read, and read some more. If an opportunity comes along to take a lesson, attend a workshop, or anything else that’s going to help boost your confidence, go for it!

You’ll never regret getting better photos!

My neighbours garden.

While the girls were homestead sitting the neighbours animals, I’ve been enjoying their garden. Such as this tree.

I just love the colors.

The fuchsias.

A rose.

Even some apples!

It’s always a pleasure to enjoy another’s garden.

Fireworks!

We spent the evening at the ocean last night, waiting for the fireworks which began at 10:22 pm.

While waiting we visited with good friends and watched droves of people coming and going. It was a very nice relaxing evening. Relax-evening. Something we don’t do often enough.

We ate cheese bread sticks, fresh vegetables and dip, fruit candies, freshly fried mini-donuts, shared some hot dogs, and cotton candy. The dinner of champions, at the beach, on the 1st of July, Canada Day.

I spent several hours yesterday afternoon preparing my camera, and myself, for snapping fireworks photos. Since fireworks are very bright, but the skies are very dark, I knew snapping decent photos wouldn’t be as simple as putting the camera on “auto”.

I knew had I better be prepared, or prepare to be VERY dissapointed!

One article I found quite helpful was by Pro-blogger, Darren Rowse, which I found here: 
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-fireworks

Between reading online, checking out other photographers fireworks photos, flipping through the two books I have here on the Nikon D300, and playing with button after button trying to decipher what every bit of information was trying to explain, in what seemed to be “greek” to me, I went out that evening feeling ‘somewhat’ confident that I ‘might’ be able to get some decent shots.

The only problem was, once we got there, I wanted to snap photos of my children and friends while we were visiting, and the crowds of people, etc. but I didn’t DARE tamper with my settings! Silly me didn’t even THINK to at least bring along my little point and shoot! Total “DOH!” moment there.

To give you an ‘idea’ of the scene a couple of hours before the fireworks, I managed to get one ‘half decent’ shot, well actually, it’s a horrible shot but at least shows where we were at for the fireworks!

Oh and look, I even managed to get Shaylah’s head in the shot. Proof I was not there alone. lol

By about 10:15, this entire area, from one side of the beach to the other, was FULL of people. So glad we got there as early as we did!

My camera was set up on the tripod, but I panned it around every once in a while just to snap a photo to collect ‘info’. This night was all about learning for me. I wanted to see what every change in the lighting did to each photo. At this point it wasn’t about getting the ‘perfect’ shot, or even a good shot, simply getting shots to see what goes on with my camera at these settings, in this situation, as the lighting changed through out the evening.

There’s Joshua and Alesia! So nice to have everyone there. My husband was ‘on duty’ (auxiliary RCMP) that evening but was able to make it over to us before the fireworks began. That was a nice treat and unexpected!

The fireworks started out small (I think our area fireworks were probably fairly small in comparison to large urban areas, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of fireworks, so I’m not really sure). But it was a lot of fun, and very pretty!

This first one looked all red and white on the water, so very Canadian!

At this point I hadn’t a CLUE what I was doing. I had read that you could hold the shutter open for as long as you felt necessary, but since I’m really still learning, I had NO clue how long that should be, so I just did what I love to do, and “winged” it, releasing the shutter each time when it ‘felt’ right, and hoping for the best!

Once I began looking through my photos on the computer, I realized a couple just happened to be sitting, snuggling all cozy with one another, pretty much in line with my camera. I love it! Turned out so pretty in so many of the shots. I have NO clue who they were. Ha! I have to say Thank You! for helping make the shots even prettier. Gotta love Romance on Canada Day!

Through the 15 minute show, I just kept watching, and pressing down the shutter button, and releasing when I felt the timing was right.

That’s how I ended up with these streaks of light.

And even though I know I ‘real’ photographer can do so much better, I’m actually pretty happy with my first try!

And I think I may just try again when we have our next fireworks this summer.

A lot of the fireworks were actually not all that bright, which I think made it a little more difficult to truly get ‘great’ shots.

Some were very artistic and turned out really cool.

Then there were the bright and colorful ones.

Other’s were simple, yet still very pretty. Just as though lights of rain were falling from the skies.

So I kept shooting, and shooting.

Learning with each explosion of lights.

And that’s what it’s all about! Learning, and creating memories!

If you snapped some July 1st Fireworks photos, please share!
Or those of you celebrating on the 4th of July, get brave with your camera’s, get out there and snap some photos!
I’d love to see them!