A Birthday Weekend with Alaina!

Happily for us, Alaina decided to spend her birthday at our house!  Hooray! To help her celebrate, we took her to Kidzu, an elementary school obstacle course and even a T-ball game- and as an added bonus, weather conditions were cold and blustery, bordering on miserable. Oh, and she helped organize my closet AND went to lunch at Stephanie's school (which is a noise sensory overload). Who could ask for more for a birthday??

It was thrilling to have another adult around all day on a weekday, and I had a blast dragging her around, and am really pleased she came to see us on her day!

She arrived Thursday night. Stephanie was still in bed but kept herself up until Alaina showed up, mostly to gush over her upcoming obstacle course which was to include a mud pit and a fire truck to hose the kids off. More on that adventure later. Friday, Alaina got to enjoy a solo lunch with Stephanie and 200+ other children, and then we all headed to Kidzu after school. I have likely never blogged about Kidzu, but it is a Children's Museum in Chapel Hill. The people that work there are pretty fabulous and the space is really fun- especially the "makery" where the kids are allowed to craft using all sorts of wacky recyclables and they set up fun, and often messy, planned crafts each morning. Sounds great, right? And it totally is! Except that it is fairly small and we have spent a lot of time there, so I am kind of over it at this point. But the kids still love it, it is close and we are members. So we go regularly.

Kidzu's climbing wall- Gwen scrambled all the way to the top (Alaina and I had to trade places as she has a critical few inches on me).

The next day, we treated Alaina to the anxiously anticipated obstacle course. The monkey bars were not part of it- but I am totally impressed that she can do them, as I am certain I never could.

I will also mention that I hijacked Alaina's camera for these pictures- so sharp with that 50mm lens!

I was back on my camera here, and this is by far my favorite mud pit picture I was able to get. I had her wear crocs because we don't have any old tennis shoes to wear as throw aways. It fell off and she had to retrieve it from the mud.

And a second round of obstacle course. We strongly reminded her how excited she was about the mud and that we wanted her to dive up to her neck. Crawling through it (and looking miserable while doing so) was the best she came up with. It was overcast and windy, and I am pretty sure she was awfully uncomfortable, but she was happy enough to be muddy once she was out.

I didn't get any fire truck hose pictures- it is just as well, as there were tears. It was so cold and no fun getting that mud off. And who didn't think to bring towels? That would be me. Instead, I gave her my jacket and the good mood was restored.

Next it was off to T-ball. Gwen plays around the bleachers while Stephanie plays, so I took a chance to get some pictures of everyone.

Gwen moved a bunch of big rocks (and talks about them every time we now go to T-ball - I think someone threw them into the woods) and was very pleased with herself. Some other adults looked worried that she was going to drop the rock on her foot. I took pictures instead of worrying, and she did drop the rock eventually, but luckily missed her toes.

And then Gwen helped Alaina back to the car.

Now, the for real birthday stuff! We had reservations at Nana's in Durham and picked up Alaina's former neighbor Analeise on the way. We had a lovely dinner as a trio, leaving all the kids at home. Did I mention the dinner was lovely? Because it was.

I am grateful for a fun and busy weekend, and I am especially grateful for an amazing friend to spend it with. Happy Birthday Alaina!

Easter 2017

Happy Easter-This year from New Jersey!

Since we spent Thanksgiving in NJ and it is such a long drive, we held off another visit until Easter. We elected to drive via 301 through Maryland in lieu of 95 through DC. This has two distinct advantages- traffic and my parents. We always hit DC and Baltimore traffic, regardless of the hour (short of it being practically the middle of the night) and we drove within miles of my Mom's house. She kindly provided us lunch (which we so needed by the time we showed up around 3:00) and a walk to the river. I left my camera in the car, unintentionally, so this is left to the memories of the mind's eye. We found these really big snail shells down by the river and piles of cool driftwood. It was a short but nice visit, and then we were off to NJ.

Kevin wanted to do some work around his Mom's house, and mostly we ended up outside. It was chilly to me, but really not bad.

Another huge benefit to NJ over Easter is Mary! Mary now lives within a few miles of Kevin's Mom, but we never see her when we visit over Thanksgiving or Christmas because she travels home. The girls and I got to spend the day with her on Saturday and attend mass with her (well, mostly with her, as she is in the band/choir!). Again, where was my camera?? This is starting to look like a theme.

Easter Sunday the Bunny showed, of course, complete with clues to find the baskets (on adorably fun stationary that may have been found at Mary's house and assembled with her help!)

At least I had the camera for this one! This takes my winner for best photo of the trip.

Found them!!!

After church, we headed to Grams for a meal- prepared with love and as delicious as anticipated. The homemade noodles she makes are incredible (as is always the case) and we probably could have all just eaten that, but there was way more than one would have anticipated for an advertised "simple" meal.

Outside of Grams house (before I fixed my white balance- grr!)

Grams showered the kids with gifts, including these little lawn ornaments, which we love- just the right amount of quirky for us!

The weather was really hot on Easter (much to my relief, as I packed a sleeveless dress with no backup plan) but it poured down rain later in the day. There were Easter egg hunts at Grams' house courtesy of Aunt Chris and the kids did more confetti eggs, but I left my camera behind because of the weather, which was intermittently sunny and lovely and sheets of rain.

We raced home on Monday morning (happy that Stephanie was off of school that day!) to make T-ball practice. We skidded into my parents house for bathroom breaks and to pick up food to go (so much food- but we managed to take nearly all of it down before we hit the NC border), but we were ultimately foiled by the bad weather. The rain was steady and hard, and we would have been about 20 minutes late for practice, so we skipped it entirely. We at least made it home early enough to have dinner, get to bed and reset for the restart of the normal routine.

Through a new lens

It is never a bad idea to take a look at the world from a different perspective. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to try, but instead I am going the route of viewing the world through an actual new lens- for my camera. If you aren't into cameras, then scroll on and check out the pictures of what we have been up to lately!
My first lens was the "kit" lens that came with my camera. It is a very standard 18-55mm (so it zooms a bit, but not a ton) with an f-stop (aperture size) of 3.5 at the lowest zoom, which is a totally respectable aperture, but something lower would be more ideal in low light situation and also give you that nice portrait image with a sharp focus on a person and a beautifully blurred background.

This is the photo that set off my obsession for a new lens. This was taken with Alaina's Nikon 50mm fixed lens (so no zoom) at f1.8. Canon makes a similar lens and it is very affordable. On the other hand, Alaina has that lens, so I wanted to get something that would expand our options. I also found the 50mm to be zoomed in (if you are tracking, my current lens only goes to 55mm, so this is almost max zoom for my kit lens). I started flirting with a 35mm low aperture lens, but those are $$$. I settled on getting a 40 mm f2.8. Then I spent another 20 hours on the internet and found my "dream" lens- it offered zoom and a low f-stop at a fairly affordable price. It is not made by Canon (Oh, Canon makes a comparable lens for close to $1600- not going to happen!), but instead a Tamaron (28-75mm, f2.8). I bought it used from a reputable site, so the cost was less than half the retail value.

When I got the lens, I was in LOVE! But (big BUT) I have been using it for a while and am not totally satisfied, though am growing more and more satisfied. Here is the deal- I love the photos I get from my zippy little DSLR. Then I upgraded my lens to get even better pictures- but at the same time, I switched from using auto mode to a manual mode (controlling the aperture selection) and I don't think that I have gotten any brilliant photos. Part of this is a learning curve that I hope ends up being well worth the fairly minimal investment, as far as lenses go. It is so hard to judge, as I can't switch to my kit lens and take the same picture for a side by side comparison with the kids. I am also NOT willing to pay more that $200 for a new lens at this time, and that severely limits my options.

While I work all of this out, I am going to go through some of my most recent adventure photos to analyze what exactly I have going with my new camera.

This is a good demo of what my new lens is capable of. I cranked up the f-stop for the first photo and then dropped it down to 2.8 for the second shot. There is that blur I was looking for!

And then I can get some low light photos like this one that I love:

After some casual play with the lens, I took it on the road to the zoo- and I didn't love the results. Part of this is because you don't want to blur the background at the zoo (duh! I was just so in love with the portrait sharpness that it occurred to me too late that this was not the effect you want for the zoo).

I tried really hard to get carousel photos that were amazing, but I was really close to the kids, so it was tough to get good pictures starting at 28mm as a full zoom out. I don't think the pictures are bad- but I just don't know that they are better than the old lens set on auto, especially in an outdoors, high light setting!

The additional zoom over my kit lens was a nice boost in this case.

Fun focus option

I was really happy with the color and light of the helicopter, as that is in a garage type structure, so lower light.

Not a great picture, but this was really low light, so any picture is better than what I have gotten in the past.

Downside: The camera starts at 28mm, so it is hard to get a good angle on things when you are really close, like I was on the carousel.

So overall, I was reasonably happy with my pictures, but I can't say that I couldn't have gotten most of them with my original lens.

The next time I played with the camera, I was back at the zoo- three days later! This time, I was a chaperone for the Kindergarten field trip. I switched back to my kit lens, as I decided the benefits of the new lens aren't significant when somewhere like the zoo.

Looking at these pictures, I see that I don't love the color- which is related to the camera white balance more than the lens. Prior to this zoo trip, I took a bunch of test shots with my new lens and I was also unhappy with the white balance. For the next set of pictures, I still hadn't worked out what the problem was, so the color is also a bit blue-toned. This adventure was to a community egg hunt followed by Stephanie's first T-ball practice.

Cute picture- but a good demonstration of why you don't want to stop the camera all the way down- we were outside, so light wasn't a real issue, so the result of a low f-stop meant that Stephanie was out of focus- living and learning!

The new lens has a bit of a soft focus at the lowest f-stop. I don't think it is necessarily apparent unless you do side by side shots to compare, but I am a little disappointed in not being able to get a really crisp image when the aperture is wide open. However, more reading indicates that this is not atypical for any lens. That means that I should probably be in the market for a lower f-stop, but my options are limited unless I am willing to spend big bucks- which I am not. Also, I am trying to become less obsessed with a low f-stop, as it clearly is not always what I want. But if I want it, I just really, really want it.... such a sucker for that crisp portrait and blurry background!

The color tones are just a bit cool- something you can fix with white balance- if you realize you need to fix it! Now I know that this is a general issue with my camera and I am on it. It has always been an issue, I see it when I look at older photos on my digital frame. I was just never analyzing the pictures so heavily.

Okay, other than the color being a little cool, I really love this picture.

SUCCESS! Jump rope picture was at dusk, and the grass really is mostly dead (which is intentional- but that will have to be another blogpost), so I am happy that the picture has some warmer colors. This was stopped all the way down and I slowed the shutter speed to stop the jump rope. Not a fantastic picture of Stephanie, necessarily, but I was really happy to achieve the image.

Our next time out with the camera was for an Easter egg hunt at the neighbors house. Her grass is beautiful and green, I was attentive to the white balance and generally happy with the image quality.

I brought some confetti eggs (literally eggshells that have been emptied of their eggs and filled with confetti)- they loved them, and they were pretty cool. We did a few more on Easter, and I held some back to get some fun family photos- it was too rainy on Easter to bring the camera out, but I still haven't gotten to it. Is it too late? Maybe, but I might still do it anyway.

My last problem is photo composition- and this has nothing to do with my camera. It is like what Kevin says about his race gear- it isn't the bike quality that is holding him back. At some point, the person on the bike, or in this case, holding the camera is limited by their own skills. I often realize, too late, that I needed to shift angles or take a few steps back. I am hoping that once some of the camera settings become easy and natural to adjust on the fly, I will be able to work on composition. I suspect I will never be great at it, as I haven't shown a particular inherent skill in this area- but, like anything, practice can go a long way to approach natural talent, and I have plenty of practice ahead of me.