in the waning light

being one who takes almost all of my pictures with natural light... the changing of the season is sure having an effect on my daily life! it's getting kind of hard to sneak in a natural light picture when the girls get home from school. by late afternoon so much of the light is already gone. guess it makes for a good reason to learn how to use my flash better... today i played around with the lensbaby and the creative aperture disks again. i gave the heart a try today with torrey. thought the irony of her grumpy face and the hearts sort of flying away worked. i did get a bunch of her smiling too here.

we have theis amazing japanese maple in our backyard that turns the most vibrant shade of red in the fall... then gets even brighter when it's wet with rain. i completely missed getting a picture of it since it dropped all of its leaves suddenly one day. well, by golly, i wasn't going to miss it this year! so the past couple of days i ran the girls out there for a few shots by the red tree. there are a few more shots of emma here.

this was one of those i-missed-the-opportunity-to-use-natural-light moments. so i grabbed my flash {nikon sb600}, used my on camera flash in commander mode... and did my best.

on a scrappy note... my very favorite scrapbook store is making bunches of cards for service members on veteran's day this year. they asked if i'd write up a blog post for them... which you can see here. if you're in the area & would like to come by the store to make cards for soldiers on veteran's day, there's a bit more info here. we hope to see you there!

i also have a new layout up on the ella blog along with my fabulous ella friends. the super cute tami morrison wrote the post up. while you're over at ella, check out stacy julian & lain ehmann's latest book "20 simple secrets of happy scrapbookers".

let there be light

don't you just hate it when you sit down to write something and.... blank... nothing. there you are in your chair staring at your screen & keyboard with nothing witty or even remotely interesting to say. well, that's me today. so forgive me for this post in advance! {pretty please!}

first off, ashley harris posted a team review of melody ross's line for gcd studios on the scrap review today. check out the great layouts & tsr team thoughts on the line here.

and as for daily life:
we spent a fabulous weekend doing about as much as i can think of to write. nothing really. we spent a bunch of family time together. saturday stan took the girls bowling while i headed to a weight watchers staff meeting. we met up afterward to pick up a few deployment necessities... a shower/toiletries bag & a new duffel bag for the traveling man. the desert always seems to do a number on his bags, and they don't usually survive a deployment. i, of course, teased that he was picking up a cosmetics bag & said he should try to get one of the gift with purchase bags at macys. no dice. guess he was looking for something slightly more manly than that. lol.

we got home after dark, so i pulled out my flash {sb600} do try for some not terrible flash pictures. after much fooling around, and a child who was seeing spots, i came out with this dandy of emma that i really liked. someone on facebook mentioned that she looks like a retro silver screen star. amazing how much of a difference turning a shot to black & white can make sometimes. i liked it so much i used it on my tsr layout (above). even added the xoxo, emma joy to the bottom for that movie star face shot effect. love that facebook inspiration. thanks guys! 

the saturday picture {with flash} went so well, i gave it a second run with torrey on sunday after church. it took me only slightly less time to get it right than saturday night. oi, this lighting deal is hard to learn! in the end, with minimal retina damage, i had another picture i liked. what a lucky mom i am to have such willing subjects!

forgive the random picture order. this was friday's after school shot. torrey with my very favorite tree in our yard. it's amazingly beautiful in every season. i'm not even sure what kind it is... but it flowers in the spring, is lovely and green all summer, turns a beautiful golden color in the fall... then has leafless branches with berries in the winter. what's not to love? i'm hoping we can zip up to the mountains before stan has to leave. we try to get up into the cascades this time each year to check out God's canvas. we live in such an amazing place and there is just so, so much to be thankful for.

speaking of being thankful... emma and i read "did i ever tell you how lucky you are?" by dr seuss together the other day. i love dr seuss' take on life lessons. in addition to being thankful for all of the blessings that come into our lives, we can be doubly thankful for all of those things that don't come into our lives. and if we're having a hard time getting to doubly thankful, maybe we can work our way into feeling not so bad by being thankful "for all of the things that we're not."

When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad...
you should do what I do!

Just tell yourself, Duckie,
you're really quite lucky!
Some people are much more...
oh, ever so much more...
oh, muchly much-much more
unlucky than you!

-Dr Seuss
Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

flash

i ordered a nikon sb600 speedlight (flash) recently, but today i just got around to figuring out how to use it wirelessly with my camera. man, this whole flash business is a whole new game. i'd checked out a couple of books from the library on lighting, but i feel like they're written in a whole different language. i need something more simple for learning the concepts of lighting first, i think. any suggestions? i'm thinking about picking up one of these cheat sheets for starters.

i did get it on my tripod with a diffuser. not entirely ideal, but better than mounted on the camera for sure. then there is the whole thing about where you put it in relation to you... what angle should it be... how much power should i give it... if and what should i bounce it off of? so i'll be messing around with it to learn more about it.

so these were the first few shots i got using my speedlight today. i love how it picked up the brightness of their eyes, and kept the details without washing them out. :)

i think this shot of emma ended up a little funky. her face looks like i used the flash, i think. although it did bring out her pretty blue eyes. she's pretty much perfected this pouty look. i love it because it is so "her" with her sunny smiles and her pitiful looking pouts. it's all out there on her sleeve, just like her mama. :)

stan got up super early to fly this morning. (by early i mean, he got up around the time i've been known to go to bed.) but he did get home a little earlier than normal, so we got a little time to hang out before the girls got home from school. so i got to listen to him play his guitar for a bit. just another one of his amazing talents! :)