Day 218- Words of Life

I never knew my father’s grandfather. Rev. Andrew J. Mowatt or had even heard of him when I started researching our family history about twenty years ago.  Thomas and Elizabeth Mowatt came to Harvey, New Brunswick, Canada in 1837 from Ford, England (near the Scottish border).  My great-grandfather, Andrew was born a year later, the oldest of seven children.  He was educated in Nova Scotia (and married my great-grandmother, Louisa Jane Annand there) and served as pastor in several churches, his final one being Erskine Church in Montreal. He actually died in the pulpit as he was about to preach from the text, “When I saw Him I fell at His feet as one dead”.

When I was researching the family, I came into contact with a researcher from Harvey, New Brunswick who had already completed research on the Harvey pioneers.  She very kindly sent me this book, which is the collected sermons of my great-grandfather.

This image is edited with one of Kim Klassen’s textures, appropriately called broken book.

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Day 211- Unplugged

Last night as Caitlin and I were watching the Olympics, our power suddenly went out.  We sat on the front porch in the moonlight, watching bats swooping by until we figured there was nothing else to do but go to bed. Their big red golden, Cooper used the excuse of unusual circumstances to sleep with me.

 

The power was still not on when we got up this morning, so we drove into Gardiner for breakfast.  The boys spent the morning playing outside. Here’s Henry playing in the sandbox.

Neither of our phones are charged, but my MacBook and MiFi still have a charge, so I’m able to post my photos.  As I write this, some help has arrived- a good friend arrived with a generator.  The fridge is now plugged in, and later we plan on charging our phones.

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Day 210- Photoshoot Interrupted and a Bonus Baby

We took a drive this morning to a trailhead where we are thinking of doing a family portrait in September. There were lots of boulders for the boys to climb, which was fun for both of them. The lighting was harsh in late morning, so, if we are going to try for a family portrait session, it should be in late afternoon.

 

 

We were just getting in the swing of things, when Caitlin spied a herd of bison coming up the hill toward us.  We hustled out of there!

And here is the bonus baby photo taken in his crib this morning!

 

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Day 209- Youngin’s

It was a quiet day at home today- outside playtime, Candyland, stories, singing, dancing, coloring. The group of mama and baby elk returned after an almost two week absence, so the boys’ outside time ended abruptly.

Here is one of the baby elk nibbling on the lawn.


And here is Miles looking out at the elk during the late afternoon thunderstorm.

And last, but not least, here’s Henry playing five little monkeys jumping on the bed (on Gramma’s bed).

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Day 208- Yellowstone Lake

Caitlin, the kids and I had a wonderful day at Yellowstone Lake, a drive of at least an hour and a half (depending on how many cars stop to view the bison in Hayden Valley).  Today we were delayed about a half hour as the line of cars came to a complete stop, with tourists abandoning their cars to take photos.  After a ranger moved cars and bison along, we met Caitlin’s friend, Susan and her two boys at the lake- and had a delightfully relaxing day watching the boys play on the beach. I took several hundred photos- but am too worn out to post more than two.

Here are Miles and Henry playing along the water; the mountains in the background are where their daddy is backpacking for the next four days.

It wouldn’t be a trip to Yellowstone without at least one bison photo.  This guy was walking through a field of wildflowers toward our car; you can see him kicking up dust as he ambled along.

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Day 205- First Day at Yellowstone

My day began at 2:30 am when I could sleep no longer. We left the house around 3:45 for the drive to the Oakland Airport for my 6am flight to Bozeman, Montana.  Allegiant Airlines is my new airline of choice, because of its (relatively) cheap and DIRECT flights to Bozeman. I was there by 9am, Mountain Time- amazing!

Surprise! Miles, Henry, and, oh yes, Caitlin met me; I’d expected Justin and Miles, but he had to go into work.  We went out for coffee, did the grocery shopping, went out to lunch at Miles’s favorite Mexican restaurant in Livingston, and then drove on Yellowstone. Shortly before we arrived at Mammoth, Miles and Henry were both asleep.  Miles continued to sleep for 20 minutes in the car while we unloaded the groceries. I snapped this photo with my iPhone- I love the light and shadows on his face.

It was now naptime for Henry and quiet time for the rest of us.  Here is a photo of Miles showing me his “construction” he did during his time in his room- a replica of where they live, complete with the Roosevelt Arch.  I only took a few photos today- and very few are in focus. These boys are moving targets!

After an early dinner, I babysat the boys while Caitlin headed off to a preschool board meeting, and now Justin is home playing his guitar while I, bleary-eyed, am uploading my photos. A wonderful (but long) day!

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Day 192- Forty-one!

f/2.2, 1/320, ISO 160, 50mm

Happy 41st anniversary to us! There is no listing for forty-one in the traditional wedding anniversary gift list (have to wait for forty-five- sapphire), but the modern list says LAND is for forty-one. I personally think that is an excellent gift idea- perhaps in a prime real estate area, preferably with a gorgeous house sitting on it! Anyone? Anyone?

But Lonnie had the BEST idea for number forty-one- LENS!

This photo was taken with my BRAND NEW Nikkor 50mm 1.4 Lens!!!!!!!!!!   I have been lusting after this lens for so long- and was totally taken aback when he surprised me with it this morning.  We don’t normally do anniversary presents (maybe flowers), so I was shocked! And thrilled!!!  I can’t wait to play with it more.

I broke a rule with this photo- a minor (to me) limb chop- and also didn’t have enough distance between subject and background to get great bokeh.  But the sprinklers were on, and the sun was starting to hit this area, so we had a time crunch.  But all in all, it’s a decent anniversary photo.

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Day 150- Rerun

I’m really working on my portrait skills this week, since I only have a week and a half to finish my class assignments. I grabbed Matt before he went out the door and managed to get a decent photo of him.

This time I stood on a stool to get a better angle.  I swear, my best people photos happen in doorways!

I did a quick clean edit and then discovered the thread sticking up from his collar.  For some reason, I could not get any of the Photoshop tools to work (healing brush, clone stamp, patch etc.).  So it is still there.  It doesn’t matter for my class, because we can only submit SOOC shots (sigh. . .), but I wanted it gone for the blog.

And yes, he had wet hair. . .

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Day 148- Storytelling

If you read this blog fairly often, you know that I am taking Karen Russell’s photography class.  It is fantastic, and I wish I had taken it when I first started this adventure.  It starts at the very beginning, which concerned me- because I am not a beginning photographer.  However, she is so thorough and goes into everything in such depth (with lots of repetition to get the point across) that I am filling in a lot of gaps in my photography skills.  Plus, she answers questions all day long in her forum- and I have had a few!

One of the types of photography she talks about are photos that tell a story (normally in one shot).  Today, I am offering a story in several shots- so follow along:

These were all shot with aperture priority (because I had an uncooperative subject- a Karen Russell term) with varying shutter speeds at ISO 500.

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Day 140- Adventures in JPEGing

One of my photo class assignments is to use the picture control feature on my camera to shoot images in different modes, such as vivid, landscape, portrait etc. This is a feature that is only available in JPEG, since RAW images are just that- RAW, undoctored, just what the camera records. For almost two years, I have only shot RAW photos- and only in manual.  And that is still my comfort zone.

So this afternoon, Lonnie and I went downtown for a little photoshoot.

I felt like I had no idea how to operate my camera. I was also using Aperture Priority with exposure compensation- and went back and forth in my white balance settings, because I couldn’t remember if the picture controls took care of that or not.

And then it was time to upload. Some photos I evidently shot in both RAW and JPEG and others in just JPEG.  I messed up the first upload, so did it again. I still haven’t gotten them sorted out- so I’m flagging JPEGs as I go and will deal with them later.

Unfortunately, my photo of the day was shot in JPEG only (!)- and it had a few issues that took a half hour to fix in Photoshop.  I wonder if a RAW version would have been more cooperative.  I would like to go back and take this shot again- but not today. . .

I’ve been having issues with Aperture and Flickr, so I now export to a folder on my computer again- this time using Photoshop (which is a more complicated process involving sharpening and resizing). Since I’ve spent the last three days winnowing 3000 family photos down to about 400 and editing and uploading them to SmugMug, the last thing I wanted to do tonight was edit photos.

Enough of a rant! I’m grateful I know how to edit. I’m grateful for my camera. And I’m grateful for having a husband who will patiently sit through a pretty boring photo session.

And here he is (and yes, I edited this one- but just a bit)!

 

And here is the other photo I shot for Flickr (with about 8 layers of edits in Photoshop. . .):

 

BTW, we went grocery shopping after our downtown jaunt- and then left all the groceries in the car for over an hour when we got home. We forgot- both of us!

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Day 125- Morning Playtime

It’s our last morning to wake up to the sounds of “Go, go, go!” from Henry and Miles’s stories of Bun-Bun (his favorite “lovey”- or what he calls- nominee).

Here is Henry watching an elk out the window- and both boys playing boat.

 

 

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