275 Lipstick

This is a pretty common scene Monday-Friday over on my desk. I have my books piled up that I need to work with, my papers that need to be graded or copied, and a general mountain of random odds and ends that need to be taken care of eventually. I have to pile all of this up because I have 1st hour prep period and another teacher uses my room during that time.

 The most important thing on that desk to me is the coffee cup. Every morning, because I am too lazy or disorganized to make it myself, I make a run to one of three places for the largest cup of coffee I can find. My favorite coffee comes from McDonald's- I could be one of those old men that hang out in the morning and have a cup of coffee to start the day known as "the regulars". After that, I guess my choice would be Starbuck's. I don't do anything fancy, just regular coffee with extra cream because I think Starbuck's coffee is too bitter, so I have to lighten it up a bit. My third choice is the gas station and I don't mind their coffee at all, but I just hate to have to get up and get my own.

 Notice the lipstick on that mug? Yep, I actually start out wearing makeup each morning, but somehow it manages to disappear slowly from my face during the day and so by the time I come home, I want to hide from myself and avoid all mirrors. Not sure how that happens, because I try to avoid touching my face. ?

272-274 Eagles with Paige

Today went out "eagle hunting" with Paige. I love looking through the trees and getting all excited when seeing one! I wish this year was a little colder because there aren't many in the area. I didn't think we would be successful at all, but we did see about 5-6 of them. I didn't rent an awesome lens this year, I just used my old Canon 75-300 lens. It doesn't have the lens stabilization on it, but because it was bright outside today, I had some fast shutter speeds going. This lens isn't very sharp anyway. Oh well, one day I'll have some L glass!

270-271 Slutty Brownies from Pinterest

I actually got off of pinterest long enough to try one of the things that I had pinned. Today I tried the Slutty Browniesrecipe. I'm not sure why it's called that, but it wasn't too hard and they taste pretty good.


First, make chocolate chip cookie dough as usual and spread it out in the cake pan like a cookie cake. Add a layer of oreos. Make a brownie mix as directed and spread that out over the oreos. I think I used too large of a pan because neither the cookie dough or the brownie mixes wanted to go all the way to the edge of the pan. It was a little bit of a task to get the brownies to spread because the mix that I chose was a little thicker than it should have been and I had to spread it out and hold the oreos down at the same time.


 


 Anyway, they were yum. I think I'd like to add some chocolate syrup or hot fudge in there too and then they would REALLY be slutty...

 However the most exciting news is that I took the pictures with my new lens! I found a Tamron 24-70 f2.8 lens on Craigslist. The guy was originally asking $400 a couple of weeks ago and then this week he went to $375. I talked him into $325 and went and bought it today! This will be a nice lens for portraits and also for weddings. The last wedding I did, I rented a similar canon lens for the wide aperture and I liked it a lot. Hopefully I'll be using this lens quite a bit in the weeks to come.

268-269 My Dad and his surgery

It is really rough when you see someone that you love with all of your heart going through something very painful.  About 4 months ago, my Dad found out that he had a cavernous hemangioma in his spinal cord in the c-2, c-3, c-4 area.  He was in a lot of pain all of the time, it kept getting worse and if he didn't have it removed, he would either be paralyzed or possibly die.  Of course, the surgery was very dangerous and those things could have happened on the table too.

After much worry and a few disputes with the doctors, surgery was scheduled.

That morning, Friday, January 13, 2012 was a very scary day.  I can only imagine being him in this situation.  I think I had been holding all of my nervous fears inside, because after I had to say goodbye to him, knowing it could possibly be the last time, I burst into tears on my way down in the elevator.  Thank goodness my Aunt Linda was down there to calm me down.

After about 3 hours, we were told that he was out of surgery and in the recovery room.  As I made my way up there, I was hoping that he would be normal.  He was up there moving his toes and his fingers and could see us just fine.  He talked and could feel us when we held his hand.  Of course, there had been a few more outbursts of tears of relief when we heard from the doctors and then got to see him.

The hospital messed up a catheter and he struggled with that quite a bit, but finally got to go home on some good medicine.

Here he is- my hero:




And here is another hero of mine taking care of him:



Staying in the hospital as a patient sucks.  Being there as a visitor is not a cakewalk either, though.  After sitting on hard chairs, sleeping in odd places and being a bundle of nerves, I took a much-needed break today and stayed home from work.  I slept until about 11:00am...I guess I needed the day.
Now, we just have to get my Mom fixed and hopefully they can just enjoy life for a while!

256- 267 Chicago Christmas display

While in Chicago, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I had never been there before, but it was actually quite fascinating. {Of course, my fascination only lasted through the big scene in the cafeteria...} Before the getaway was absolutely ruined, I managed to see the Christmas Around the World display at the MSI. The different culture groups in Chicago each decorated a tree for the display that represents their culture. Unfortunately, tripods were not allowed, so that led to shots that were less than spectacular, but I still really enjoyed the display. Here are the favorite pictures that I got at this exhibit:


 My absolute favorite tree was the Japanese tree. I must find out how to make these paper ornaments!


 

 Of course, I had to make a stop at the Mexican tree:


 I don't remember what tree the stars were on, but it was really sparkly and pretty too:


This tree was pretty with gold and purple.


Same view, two different focus points:

  I think these decorations added more to the room than anything else:

245-249

Since I had a day where I wasn't too busy, I decided to take a few more shots.  I actually like these, especially this first one:



The next two shots show what a little white balance adjustment in RAW can do. I like the vertical shot better, and the colors are truer to real life. I didn't really adjust the white balance much in the horizontal one, so the silver kiss looks a little gold.


These are the ice cube men that my Mom bought for me about 5 years ago. I thought they were really cute! I like the way the light is reflecting off and through them.

 Here is an ornament shot. It's ok, I used 30 second exposure on this one, so the twinkle lights have the sparkle lines from them. It's an OK shot. Not particularly interesting to me.


Now, I put the same picture in black and white, played with the levels, upped the contrast and lightened the vignette around the edges. I also put a bluish tint to it. Now it looks silver-ish to me and I think it's more interesting.

Merry Christmas 229-244

Christmas has come and gone and I think it was a success. As long as my kids are happy, then I'm happy. I had a good time with my parents and my sister and her family dropped in for a little while and it was good to see them too. Unfortunately, I don't think I got any really great Christmas shots this year. Of course, I thought I got a lot last year, so I looked back at them, and I don't think I got any last year either. I'm being a tough judge on pictures anymore. Here is the tree, nice and pretty before the chaos begins. I woke up early to get ready for the big day and took this shot. The camera settings are ISO 100, 30 seconds with a shutter release cable, @f5

This is a sideways shot to include all of the presents. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the top of the tree like this because my lens was the 24-200 Tamron. I'm not sure about the settings here, but they are similar to the ones on the previous picture.

 

Here is the insane mess after the kids are finished opening up their gifts. The shot is a little soft. Oh, how I need some better lenses!!!


The following are just some random pictures of the kids opening their gifts. I was bouncing flash off of the ceiling and I think the ceiling fan cast a shadow in some. I should have been using my flash diffuser instead, but I don't know where it is right now.

 


Here are my shots of the food. These turned out ok. The ham looks pretty even though I'm not a huge fan of ham.

 


 Here are some of all of us:


 I like these shots of my parents playing with Stephen:

 And that about wraps it up. Better luck to me next year on getting the shots that I think are worthy!

213 Photo shoot

A bit behind in the editing department.  I keep taking a lot of pics lately, so I need to stop doing that and just edit a little.
This is Miles-  I shot this on an overcast day with my 50mm 1.8 lens...I LOVE that lens!  Very crisp!
I'm pretty sure the aperture I used on these pics was about 2.8 or 3.5 because when taking pics of a kid, it's really hard to get them to sit still long enough to get the focus just right when using 1.8, so I up it a little.  I think the blur in the back is still enough for this to be a pleasing picture.
I'm also very happy that I shoot in RAW.  RAW really lets you have a lot of control over the exposure and different settings on the pic that usually JPEG decides for you.  Here, I wanted to up the shutter speed, but because it was rather overcast, that made the pic darker. I adjusted the exposure and the pic came out nice and bright.  Also, in photoshop cs5, in the raw edit screen, I added a gradient filter on the sky so that when I adjusted the exposure, it didn't blow out the sky and make it white, but kept it blue.  I LOVE CS5 and RAW!!!

Day 157 Using texture

I like the pic, but I'm not sure about my processing.  Is it missing something?  Is it too much?  Not sure, but I don't think it's quite right.
EXIF: 1/200 sec, 50mm, ISO 200, f1.8, flash fired.
In Photoshop, I first fixed blemishes with the healing tool.  Then I played with the levels until I got it where I wanted it.  Levels has become my new favorite tool on Photoshop.  It helps so much!
After that, I desaturated the picture and then adjusted the shadows and highlights.  I was satisfied with the picture after adjusting the contrast a little to make it pop.  I thought it was time I should try out a texture because I wanted to make the bricks a little "dirtier".
I downloaded a bunch of free textures {Baking With Mom Ethereal Textures} from the Coffee Shop Blog {one of my favorite sites ever!} and decided to try out "foamy chocolate". 
First I made a duplicate layer from my original layer so I could put the texture on the whole layer.  Added the layer by copying and pasting it, and then erased the texture from the people in the picture.  It was kind of like those trick photography shots I've tried, but I was using it for a portrait instead of making an orange fly...
Anyway, I am going to have to let this one rest for tonight and maybe after a fresh view in the morning I'll know what I should do.  Sometimes when I've stared at a picture for too long my brain goes numb.

Day 152 See below for another post

So this is the second post today trying to get caught up from yesterday. I was sick yesterday and barely got up out of the bed. I felt better today and managed to get the lamp from IKEA finished and went out into the pool for a while and now I'm burned. I can tell I'm still not totally well because I'm completely wiped out.
Since I was up and about, Mendy and I went to take some pictures tonight. First, she took me to "The Barns", a place she knew of in {ummm...where were we again???}. These were some cool old barns with a lot of history. Pics for Day 152 are some pics from the Barns. I'll have more to show tomorrow from the second half of shooting pictures. I'm just too tired to edit them right now.