Nature is Nuturing Us

This week has been a whirlwind of back to back activities and functions and I really don't know how I am keeping up. Today my little one even said after pulling into the garage for the third time "please tell me we are done today" and I couldn't have agreed more with her.

I will be finishing up with standardized tests for my two oldest towards week end and then sending those off for scoring. Whoa, those are so stressful. But, I want to ensure that this homeschooling momma is on the right path with my kiddos education.

One lovely aspect of this week is the sun finally made a lovely appearance. Oh, what a glorious appearance I must say. Everyone seems to be in much better moods when the sun is shining. The birds are chirping like mad outdoors and really enjoying the bird feeders that my son set up. I gave him my old Canon Rebel and he is out there taking all sorts of photos of the birds that come to visit and really not doing to bad of a job at it either.

We went on a nature walk earlier in the week and I'm sad to report that ticks are out already. My daughter had one sucking away at her neck when we were walking back to the car. That was it, my kids told me they were done with nature walks. It wasn't even May 1st yet! My girls asked me why God even created ticks and I am completely stumped on this one.

This weekend is going to be even busier than this week is and next week is even more jammed packed. May is always super busy, but I seem to have my act a bit more together the busier I am. Why is that? Not enough time to make mistakes, perhaps?

 

Live. Eat. Breathe. Photography.

 . . . so it seems that these two little poppets laugh more than they breathe . . .

I really wanted to do this photo outdoors, but we have been slammed with some really cold weather this week and there is no way I would have been able to let the girls lay on the icy, cold ground. Thus, a bit of studio setup in my house again and we were off. I wanted the girls to be on the serious side and I couldn't seem to stop the giggles, so I just went with the peals of laughter instead. They were trying so very hard not to giggle, but it just didn't work.

I think I take these challenges a bit too literal as well. Blue had me wondering which direction to go. I could have take some selfies and made an attempt to be all super sad, but I knew it just wouldn't work out well. So, I opted for the literal sense of blue.

These blueberries didn't even make it one day in our house!

Thursday Favorite Things 

Silver Photography

What is more silver than The Bean?

I was digging around in drawers looking for silver items to photography this week.Ireally didn't want to polish silver, but I did clean a few pieces up.

Since silver is very reflective, it makes very little sense to light the silver objects as they do not absorb any light. The silver will simply reflect the light.  Just like a mirror.  So I needed to move the light around a bit to light a different area other than the silver I wanted to photograph. It was a great learning experience.

The issue I was having with taking photos of silver was motion. I simply couldn't get close enough with the tripod, so I was holding my camera. I couldn't keep the camera as motionless as I needed and I was getting a lot og blurry shots. I was getting a bit frustrated, but was able to capture some photos using my macro lens. I'm not too happy with the results and will revisit this task again later.Thursday Favorite Things