Weekly Portraits from August

Apologies, as I seem to have fallen asleep at the wheel this month.  We’ve been making the most of our August and it hasn’t left much time for the computer.

There has been ice cream to share, swimming and plenty of hours at the park.

Their shoes are filthy and their knees are scraped and I’m not sure either of them has any clothing that will fit once the cold rolls in.

 

We’re ignoring those first few trees that are already starting to change color and milking August for every last drop of summer sunshine.

 

I hope you’re enjoying the end of your summer as much as we’re enjoying ours!

 

 

Weekly Portraits-The Last Week of July

Just one portrait this week, after last week’s deluge.

Weekly Portraits- The Fourth Week of July- SO Many Brothers Pictures

I wound up with more great pictures of the boys than I know what to do with this session.  Grandparents, get ready, you’ve hit the mother-load this week.  The light in my bedroom in the afternoons tends to be wonderful for photographs, so I dragged the boys upstairs, tossed them on my bed, and shot while they played.  They had both just gotten up from naps and were in a very loving mood, which resulted in lots of extremely sweet shots.  Shots I plan on clinging to when they knock each other down and steal each other’s toys and are generally being horrible little monsters to each other.

G helped me get my settings right for the light before we started:

Then it was time to play!

If these all look pretty sedate, there’s a reason.  These kiddos move FAST, and me, being silly, I didn’t change over to sport mode.  So, most of the “action” shots are blurred streaks of hair and teeth.  The ones that are in focus are almost all from resting in between bursts of activity.  Ah well.  Some day I’ll learn better!

Weekly Portraits- The Second Week of July (Extra-Handsome Faces Edition)

OH I’m such a good mom, capturing my boys at their absolute most striking and documenting it for posterity!  *snickers*

Don’t feed these monsters after midnight folks.

 

…and yes, that IS the face R has been making that I mentioned last week.  I get it at least a dozen times a day.  It’s kind of my most favorite thing at the moment.

Weekly Portraits- The Third Week of June

It’s always fun watching little kids play.  I mean, sometimes it’s also incredibly frustrating, because they’re dismantling your furniture and won’t stop slapping the cat…but it’s always fascinating to see how they re-purpose the items in their lives to make them more suited to play.

  The table my Mr. made has small spaces in the supporting legs that are just perfect for a train or car to drive through.  Both boys take advantage of it, but R is at just the right size where it’s one of his favorite places to play.

  I took G outside to play while R slept the other afternoon, and gravel around some pavers became a mountain for his car to climb, and a puddle in a tree root became a lake for his boat.

 

Weekly Portraits- The Last Week of May

  Another week I’ve dropped the ball on.  Oh well, I’m definitely hitting my bare minimum of every month…I’m going to go ahead and give myself a little bit of slack.

  The last few days we’ve been getting outside when we can, but there have also been thunderstorms rolling through.  G decided he wanted to build a “pirate ship” and yanked all of the cushions off of our couch to do so.  It has quickly become our favorite indoor game.  The pillows all get piled into a big heap, and the “deck” (made of the two, large, flat cushions that make up the base of the couch) becomes a dance stage.

  Being as crazy into super heros as he has been lately, most of his dance moves consist of “blasting” and “web slinging”.  All that dancing is a lot of work, so we all take turns.

  R on the other hand, does laps around the “ship”, occasionally stopping to “butt-hug” me.  …I’m not sure if this is a “normal” phase that all kids go through, but both of my boys have done it.  They go in hard for a hug, and then at the last minute, turn away so instead of a hug, it’s you holding onto them while they sit on your lap, or just refusing to look at you while you hug them.  It’s awkwardly adorable.

  He’s getting lots of mileage in walking now, but, poor kid, kinda looks like he has been brawling.  I told my husband, he doesn’t ever hurt himself when he’s doing something that you’d expect him to get hurt…he’ll climb up on the top of something insane and be, like, hopping on one foot while waving a sword (WHO GAVE HIM THAT SWORD?!?) and he’ll be fine…but then five minutes later he’ll be walking on a perfectly flat surface, and totally bite it, giving himself a black eye (see exhibit A above).

  As for me, when I’m not herding cats, I’m working on prototypes, artwork and trying to tame some of the overgrown flower beds in our yard that got neglected last summer.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get a little bit more sewing and creative stuff up on here soon!

Weekly Portraits- The Second Week of May- R’s First Haircut

These have been sitting on my camera for a week now…time to get them posted so that we (hopefully) don’t have a constant week lag for portraits!

Because I was gone a good chunk of the weekend of Mother’s Day, and was going to be gone for the entire next weekend, my Mr. took a couple extra days off of work to spend together as a family before I headed to Pittsburgh for Quilt Market.  R’s hair had been getting rather shaggy and was always getting in his eyes, and both G and my husband’s hair were in need of trims as well, so we decided to take a family trip to the barber.

  R’s first haircut started out a lot like his big brother’s first hair cut did.  That is to say, not well.  He managed to sit in the chair by himself, but beyond that, there was just as much wailing, gnashing of teeth and general misery, despite his brother and Daddy’s attempts to soothe him.

Luckily, not long after the haircut started, he got startled by a large truck passing by outside and stopped crying.  It occurred to us that if we could keep him interested enough in what was going on out the door, he’d probably be a happier camper.

So G and I headed outside the building and played peekaboo with him through the window.  Which mostly consisted of me repeatedly lifting 40-some pound G over my head.  Huzzah for aerialist arms.

It did the trick.  He went from sobbing to smiling by the time his hair was done.

  Then it was big brother’s turn.  He’s old hat at it by now.

 …but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still tickle sometimes!

 

Wild Women of Washtenaw, Take 3

Ok, you know I’ve been busy when it takes me two weeks to get my pictures from WWOW up!  As always, the wild women’s weekend was the same weekend as Mother’s Day, and as always, I had a blast.

The weather was ridiculously better this year than last year.  Where last year it was utterly freezing overnight, this year we went traipsing around in the woods, in the dark, in 50 degrees.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

This year was slightly different than the previous two in that since so many new folk signed up, they added on a fourth session (instead of the usual 3) to accommodate everybody.

I always take my photography class…I learn something every year, and archery is just a given.  This year I decided to take “instinctive” archery.  I could have gone for the intermediate, since I now have my own bow, but my bow doesn’t have a sight….or, uhm, anything but the bow and string….so I figured instinctive was more what I was doing anyhow, and I might as well get some tips and tricks for that.  Also, since I already knew I was going to be hauling my camera and gear along, I didn’t really want to bring my bow too.  Cuz I’m lazy like that.

My other two classes were survival and Smartphone GPS…which was my 4th class, that I didn’t know I’d be getting until a couple weeks before the event.

We also shot pellet guns Friday night after dinner…more my speed when it comes to guns than the shotguns I tried last year…quiet enough you can shoot them inside and not have a ringing headache by the time you’re done!

My husband asked if I was threatening him when I sent him this picture

 

  In my photography class, we tend to hit several of the same landmarks every year, so now that I’m photographing some of these things for the third time, it’s getting more and more challenging to find ways to make them interesting.  For example, there are always bright orange cones marking the edge of the parking lot.  The first couple years we used them as an example of line and depth of field.  I have both of those concepts pretty well under my belt (at least I think so), so I decided to try and do something that made them…a little less like traffic cones.

  First, I shot the cone from almost directly above it.  Not terrible, but still pretty obviously a traffic cone.  Then, with my instructor’s help (she held it for me while I took the picture), I shot through the hole in the cone, towards the trees.

  I sort of love the result.

  As I know I’ve mentioned, ahem, once or twice, this winter was really hard here in Michigan.  There was a lot of damage done to trees, and it made for really incredible texture shots, just waiting to be taken.

This tree’s trunk had entirely splintered, and the colors inside were astounding.  It ranged from pale, almost butter yellow, through red and almost to purple.  I had to take this shot!

  We actually wound up wandering off of the sportman’s club’s property by the time we finished the class… There were some really cool, twisty trees just outside the gate, and once we were outside, we just kept finding things that drew us further and further down the road.

  Good photography seems to require a mild disregard for trespass laws.

  This shot is actually of a powerline tower, but the lines and angles in it make me just about giddy.  I want to turn this one into a fabric, bad.

  I have many, many more pictures I could share, but I’ll call this good for the moment.

  If after 3 years, I’ve finally convinced you that WWOW is something you want to try, the link for the event is here.  I’d love to see you next May…you know I’ll be there!

Weekly Portraits-The First Week of May

  Another rainy morning kept us inside today.  We’ve actually gotten outside quite a bit in the last week, but never when I’ve had my camera on hand.  Poor little R good and walloped his face (as you can see) yesterday.  He was “helping” me with some yard work, and decided to see how well his face could catch him on the driveway.  Here’s hoping he figured out that that isn’t really what faces are for, and doesn’t try it again.

  We decided to make a train track together.  R mostly filled his usual role, as “the monster of Sodor” and ran around pulling apart the track as quickly as it was built, much to his older brother’s chagrin.

  Disputes about destruction aside though, they’re finally starting to really play together, and I love it!

  The little one gave me this lovely shot:

…but when I start getting poses like this, I know it’s time to put the camera away.

Weekly Portraits- The Fourth Week of April

  Finally!  It’s warm/dry enough we were able to get outside and play this past week!

  The lighting on these was rough.  I picked high noon, in direct sunlight, because, well, that’s where the boys were.  Anybody who knows anything about photography can tell you that’s a terrible time/place to take pictures, especially when you’re working with munchkins who aren’t terribly cooperative about posing with the light hitting them in a nicer way…but uh, I did it anyhow.  So forgive the harsh, harsh shadows and squinched up eyes.

  This guy has decided in the last few days that crawling is pretty lame, and is walking all over the place.  He has also upped the climbing, and gotten so grabby that we had to put child locks on a half dozen cabinets and drawers that went through G’s babyhood without them.  Not because there was anything dangerous in them mind you, but because I was spending 90% of my day cleaning up Tupperware, pots and pans and casserole dishes after he yanked them out.  It’s cute the first 2 or 3 times.  By the tenth time that day, you want to cry.

  For G’s pictures we added the challenge of a helmet to the mix.  Glaringly bright sun, directly overhead + giant, shade throwing helmet sending his face into darkness?  Yeah okay, I’m game.

  G was super excited to get his trike out again.  We’ve already done a ride downtown with it and it seems like he’s angling to get out on it just about every morning.  Our neighbors were kind enough to bring over an old two wheel bike that their daughter had grown out of, so we’re starting to let him try his hand at balancing on two wheels instead of 3, but until we get some training wheels, that bike is only usable with Mom or Dad holding the seat behind him…a not very tenable situation when R is outside too.

  The flowers are blooming, the trees are budding out, the birds are everywhere and, despite the vicious swings back towards cold weather we keep getting, spring is finally here.  I’m so excited to get out and play in the dirt soon!