131:365 Forty

Anna: One for the Love My Parts group.
Note: This photo was taken by Philippe for me, so it's not really a selfie. ;-)

I turn forty today, so I thought a photo of my silver hair might be appropriate. ;-)

I distinctly remember finding my first grey hair, though I don't remember how long ago it was. A fair few years. Actually, Philippe found it. He's a fair bit taller than I am, and can look down at the top of my head. When he suddenly said "you've got grey hair!" I went pulling at my hair, trying to bring it down to where I could see it. It was in a spot I couldn't see, however, so I got him to pull it out so I could look at it. I was so proud of that one shimmering hair! LOL

I've never been bothered by greying hair, and actually looked forward to getting some. I loved how my grandmother, who's hair was such a dark brown it was almost black, had these bright, glittering strands running through her hair. My mother, who's hair was as dark as her mother, now as sparkling bright streaks as well. My father, also dark haired, went grey all over. Being of the dirty blond persuasion, I wondered which way my own hair would go. Would I go grey all over, like my dad? Or get silver streaks like my mother and grandmother? That wouldn't be quite as dramatic as on my mother's dark hair.

From the looks of it, I'm going to be doing both - slowly going silver all over. I love how they shine. :-D

130:365 - Tozies..

Baby pictures today.. Though I obviously can't post actual baby shots, or mom shots, I *can* put these two up :D
P.

129:365 Poof! - Updated, Leg grounds

Anna: My elder daughter was kind enough to let me post this photo of her. I couldn't resist!

She likes to keep the sides of her head shaved, with only a "fishtail" of long hair down the middle. She never spikes it, so it's not a Mohawk, but it's the same idea. She likes it because it keeps her head cool, but she still has hair she can play with. A few days back, she asked me to do lots of little braids in the strip of hair. She undid them this morning, and this is how much it poofed out after brushing. Looking straight from the back, you'd never know the sides of her head are shaved! *L*

She's fun. :-D







Philippe: I hit the Leg grounds today to work with a buddy on photo concepts (aperture, ISO, exposure, etc.). Of course, you can't talk concepts without demonstrating :P

128:365 It's a miracle!

Anna: As the girls and I were leaving the library today, I got a picture of "Moses" parting the waters and guiding his people safely across the street. :-D

I got only a few photos of the street festival today - the first day back in a while, with all the storms we've been having. I'd hoped to get more, but it didn't quite work out. I kept waiting for the performers to actually *do* something. I understand that patter is a vital part of the show, but there's only so much spectators can handle before they get bored and walk away. We actually hung around longer than others.

127:365 More flowers...

Anna: First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone for leaving such encouraging comments with my post yesterday. They made me feel a lot better about the pictures. Thanks. :-D

Today, the girls and I had plans to take in another dragon themed movie at the museum. I had originally planned for us to have a picnic on the grounds, first - maybe get some pictures - then head in for the movie. Unfortunately, it was raining. So, we still stopped to pick up our picnic fixings and had our picnic - in the car! LOL It was fun.

We were rather stunned by how many vehicles were in the parking lot when we got there. Who'd have thought a Wednesday afternoon at the museum would be so busy? We went in early enough that I had time to try a few shots, none of which worked. Without tripod or monopod in such low light, even the ones I thought worked turned out to be quite blurry. Ah, well.

The movie turned out to be a "documentary" from Animal Planet, Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, narrated by Patrick Stewart. On the one hand, it was really interesting. On the other, it really sucked. Sort of a Walking with Dinosaurs meets CSI. Blech. On the plus side, the movie uses a lot of work from a guy named Peter Hogarth, who's going to be giving a lecture at the end of August. I think he'll be more interesting than the movie itself.

After it was done, we had no desire to brave the crowds in the museum, so we wandered the grounds a bit. By now, the rain was gone and the sun was shining. I set the camera on auto and went nuts.

Most of the photos I took ended up being flowers. There were a lot of new ones blooming, including a whole bunch of these. I love the spiky, rolled up petals. I almost didn't take this photo. The idea of getting down on one knee to take it just didn't appeal to me. The girls told me I needed to suffer for my art, so I told them sure, I'd get down and take the picture - but I'd need their help getting back up again!

They thought I was joking and walked on while I was taking the shot. Nice try, Ladies! Not gonna happen. ;-)

I've taken so many flower and plant photos that I've uploaded to flickr, I finally made a new "Flora" set. I hope you like them. :-)

126:365 Flowers

Anna: My darling husband came home with a bouquet of flowers for me today. So of course, I had to take pictures. ;-)

I have to admit, it was pretty frustrating. I'm still not used to all the settings that need to be played with on a DSLR. This first shot was taken on auto, and is the only one I did nothing but resize.







I borrowed Philippe's macro lens. The light in our apartment is pretty bad, and auto kept wanting to use the flash, popping it up automatically. You can't shut the flash off on auto on this camera, so I set it to multi-program, but goofed with my f-stop. I kept making it worse instead of better. :-/ Once they were uploaded, I was able to lighten them up with PSP X2 (we've got Capture NX, too, but I don't know it very well yet). With this one, I just used the auto-fix on the software. It doesn't always work out, but I think it did all right this time.





This one needed lightening up, too. I played with the curves to get this result. It looks a lot better than the original, but I just don't like fiddling too much with pictures on the computer. Some fiddling, a bit of cropping, sure, but to me, a photo that needs to be fixed this much is a crappy photo. I expect my photos to be better coming out of the camera, and that's a matter of skill and knowledge of the camera. I'm finding it confusing, and keep getting details backwards when I muck with the settings.

I'm going to have to re-set the camera to both jpg and RAW again. That's how Philippe had it before. If I'm going to have to do fixes like this, I'm going to need RAW.

125:365 part 2 - Public Spectacle

My Eldest daughter loves her cat; The cat loves her back and every once in a while will reach a paw out to 'pet' her human.. Take a look at what she grabbed off. :D