Light and movement

I've been playing around a bit with light, trying to find interesting ways to use the somewhat challenging natural light in my house. There are only so many times I can convince the kids to hang out in the front corner of the living room, between 10:00 – 10:25 AM, and look up while I climb up on the bench to take pictures. That may get me the best light in the house, but it’s not exactly natural-looking. Nor does it capture the unique moments that make up our days.

As far as movement goes, my Little Miss is the one who is playing around with that. Lately she's been more interested in moving up, so every time I turn around, I find her reaching for something or pulling herself to her knees and trying to get her feet under her. And then I very gently and lovingly push her back onto her bottom, because I am not ready for full mobility.

A large part of why I’m not ready for full mobility is that my son is normally a blur of action. I really love that I managed to catch him in a moment of no movement, watching for the garbage truck through the window in the play room with his beloved Blue near at hand.

Mama’s Boy

Although I spend every day with my children, I haven't had any "alone" time with my boy since Miss S was born. So today I planned a special morning to spend with my little guy, doing the things that he loves:

 

 

 

 

Here we are all packed up and heading out the door.

First stop:  His first ride on a city bus!

Next up:  Fun and rides at Seattle Center.  He went on the cars three times.

Now it’s off to the monorail!  He listened to the musicians play three songs before he finally noticed the monorail right behind them.

And then we eat our lunch by the train tracks on the waterfront (if you look carefully, you can see the train going by in the background).

After lunch, we watched the cruise ships on the waterfront while we waited for Dad to come pick us up.

It was a busy and fun-filled morning, and I really enjoyed being able to focus completely on my sweet boy.  We’ll need to do this more often!

first day

My sweet boy’s first day of preschool

singing

The easiest way for me to get a picture of him is to wait until he’s strapped into his high chair.  However, our dining room is painted a deep terracotta, hung with amber-toned Craftsman light fixtures, and filled with cherry furniture.  All of these rich tones mean that the light (as scarce as it is) is very orange.  So in order to avoid making him look like an Oompa-Loompa, I converted this picture to an antique sepia finish.

close-up

I had to do a fair amount of post-processing on this one because it was blurry, thanks to the high rate of approach of my darling 2.5 year old subject.

easter dress

Yes, this a highly processed image.  I generally don’t do a lot of post-processing on my photographs.  However, I will tweak a photo if I really like it, but it needs a lot of work before it’s ready for prime time.  That usually happens when I’m just starting to shoot and I don’t have my settings quite right, so several photos are over/under-exposed or blurry.  It also happens because one of my usual subjects is a very active 2.5 year old who doesn’t fully appreciate the difficulty of taking pictures of a moving target in a dark house painted in deep, warm, and light-sucking hues such as terracotta, marigold, and midnight blue.  So if you see an obviously processed image on my site, you can safely assume that I messed something up when shooting and tried to salvage it using the magic of Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop!

easter eggs

haircut

gear

I can’t help but smile whenever I look at these tiny little boots and helmet

hazy

curious

kiss