I even managed to get a candid shot of Sweet Peter today.  You definitely have to sneak up on him to not have bunny ear fingers behind someone’s head, or funny faces, tongues, or whatnot.  I love those silly photos because those ARE him, but sometimes it’s just the challenge of getting one NOT in silly mode that excites me.  The thrill of the hunt, as it were.  Hiding in the trees works…

So that was our day today.  Can’t complain a bit.  Fresh air and I’m exhausted.  Both my boys are SNORING LOUDLY!  I may sleep in the basement tonight.  Well, okay, not there, but behind a closed door somewhere.

So, I got TWO comments on my last post.  Sheesh — I don’t get that many in a month.  Mostly I get emails from my timid, not to share with the rest of the world, readership.  So thought I would post my answers to their comments here AND turn it into a “work your art” assignment since I’ve been doing miserably with coming up with ideas.  So this week’s work your art…SNOW PICTURES.

Photoshop is a great tool to tweak not-all-that-great photos.  When I take pictures of my kid, I’m more interested in preserving the memory than getting a great shot, so those photos are not always the best.  However, a couple snow hints.  Snow is bright.  It reflects sun and makes it brighter out than it would be on just a plain old sunny day.  If you can change the ISO on your camera, turn it down, WAY DOWN (lower numbers — 100 or 200.)  If you shoot manually at all, you can also speed up your shutter speed and crank down your aperature.  I happen to like my aperature wider for blurry-in-the-background shots. That said, some of my shots are also superbright because I want that blur and will deal with some bad, BRIGHT photos.  I always say I’ll throw out the ones that aren’t that great, but they always end up being the fun pictures of Oliver so I never do.  See photos above, for example.  I could play around with them in photoshop, but I’m not going to tonight.  Also, if you can control your camera, look for spot metering — meter on your subjects face and not the surrounding snow.  Even on point and shoot cameras they often have a “manual” mode.  Seriously.  I actually use mine.  I had a friend who never knew why they had that silly “M” on his dial.  Read the manual.  If you cannot change much on your camera, (and even if you can) a lot of times they have several pre-set modes.  Look for a snow mode, or a high light mode.  Having only taken one photo class EVER (which was primarily black and white darkroom techniques, NOT camera useage) I’m thinking that my advice might not be best.  There are tons of photo sites out there — try searching and see what you find….then let me know! It’s Sunday, so it’s time to do the lunchbox notes again.  Sleep tight snow angels!

This week’s challenge is COLORS!  Get wild.  Okay, so mine’s not WILD per se, but think about putting color maybe where it doesn’t belong, using things that are just COLORFUL, or making something similar to mine with one thing in different color schemes.  Looking forward to what y’all come up with.  Still haven’t figured out how to have people post so everyone can see.  ANYONE?  (Sheesh, I’m an awfully demanding-for-information-blogger tonight, eh?)  Alright, I’m off for a big night of …. something (hopefully!)  Two projects for classes to finish up, a book for a teacher I’d like to do, a baby book for a couple people (I guess I don’t have to get BOTH of those done tonight…), and a thank you book.  NO PRESSURE!  I need to clean my house, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking I’m doing that…it’s 10pm.  Oh yeah, and I have a gazillion baby pictures to edit from a photo shoot eons ago.  I am to have a reshoot with the family, but we haven’t scheduled it yet.   Speaking of babies…here was the baby announcement I did that I posted the teaser for.  I think I’m safe now — I’m sure the mum got all those out for the Holidays.  I just got distracted with rain in my house (yes, still.)

Actually had some WAY cuter announcements, but no naked bum pictures to be posted here, so we’ll go with the revised crazy text version (I HATE the text half on and half off her body.  Oh well.)  Alright, enough playing around, GET TO WORK!  Get going!  Get some get-up-and-GO!