My niece, amused by the other baby in the window (her reflection.) :-)
My niece, amused by the other baby in the window (her reflection.) :-), originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.
I took this yesterday on Christmas, when I was playing with my niece. I loved watching her fascination with the “other baby”–she was giving it big, sloppy kisses on the glass! I missed getting a picture of that, but at least I did get a nice reflection shot. I love how her hands look like they’re glowing–that’s just how the light was reflecting. So neat. :-)
Getting back into the swing of things
I’ve neglected this blog far too long. Some of it’s been laziness, some of it’s been the sad demise of my old laptop and the fact that my new laptop is hideously slow at processing pictures. I have a desktop, but my setup right now really isn’t conducive to long periods of time photo-editing–it’s physically uncomfortable to do so. I need to come up with a better setup!
But in any case, those are still lousy excuses… so I’m going to make the effort to post more, since I really do enjoy this.
So here’s my first post in a few months–it’s my sister, brother, and me after my brother received his masters in teaching from University of Washington. He’s got a job now teaching math at a school in Renton, and couldn’t be more proud of him!! :-)
Easter trees
We’ve all heard of Christmas trees–anyone ever heard of an Easter tree? My grandma had a couple that were quite pretty. :-)
Easter egg, spotted with rain and backlit by the sun.
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Charlie Brown's Easter tree, the "before" version.
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Charlie Brown's Easter tree, the "after" version.
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A couple more Easter pics
Adding yet still more Easter pictures of my niece. As always, there are more of this batch available on my Flickr. I’ll put the last bit on here tomorrow, I promise. :-)
Kristie loves this pensive look on her.
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I absolutely love the lighting in this one.
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More Annie pics
Once upon a time in a car seat…
What's that I see down there at my feet?
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OMG this thing is SO cool!!
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To taste or not to taste, that is the question.
Stay tuned for another thrilling episode of The Annie Chronicles later this week!
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Back seat perspective
I took these on the way to my sister’s house on Friday, after she picked me up from the airport. My niece faces backwards in her car seat right now (she’s not old enough to face it forward) and so my sister put up a mirror on the seat so that she can look in the rear-view mirror and see what my niece is up to. I had fun with the perspective on this, although it was a lot harder to get these pictures than it looks (moving car+me stuck in a seatbelt+baby behind the driver’s seat=hard to get a picture.)
Annie in her car seat.
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Another favorite thing
So it’s pretty apparent from yesterday’s post that I have a slight issue with collecting books. I have a similar issue with only one other item–scarves. Someday when it’s sunny and I have decent lighting, I’ll get out my scarf collection and take some pictures of all of their loveliness, but that can wait for another day. This post is about the newest (and quite lovely!) addition to my collection. :-)
Yesterday in the mail I received a scarf and hat that my stepmom knitted for me. Thanks so much, Kathy–they are beautiful!!
Scarf and hat.
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The hat--soft, fuzzy goodness!!
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I love the ends on the scarf--they have this fluted sort of knit. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's really pretty.
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Macro (extreme close-up) shot of the scarf yarn. Click the picture for a larger version--it's even neater when it's bigger! The yarn is so soft, and looking at this picture makes me want to dive into a big pile of it. :-)
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Annie collage
Picasa makes some wicked awesome collages. Seriously, I couldn’t resist making this. :-D
I made a collage!
Dad’s collage, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.
I know, this may not sound like much… After spending time in Photoshop and getting irritated because (a) it’s hideously slow (on my laptop) and (b) I couldn’t get everything to line up right, I realized Picasa does the job quite efficiently. :facepalm:
Oh well, I love how this turned out. :-) It’s my dad meeting his granddaughter for the first time.
My favorite portrait subject
I’m visiting my dad in Southern California for the weekend, and my sister and BIL are down here with my niece. Because she’s totally irresistible, I just *had* to take more pictures of her. Such a burden, I know.
Annie meets a balloon
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I did say she was irresistible...
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My cousin lost his two front teeth. He’s incredibly proud of this, and as gap-toothed smiles are one of the cutest kinds (on kids, anyway!) I had to take a picture. :-)
Kenny, minus his front teeth
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- Three generations: Annie’s mom, Annie’s great-grandma, and Annie
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Annie was majorly cute in her jammies this morning, so I had to take some pictures, of course.
- Annie in her jammies
[Click here for a gallery of all of the pictures]
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Annie and me
Me and my niece today at my Dad’s house. :-)
Annie’s baptism pics
I hate to say it, but overall I’m really not thrilled with how these turned out – a lack of forethought as to how to set the shots up really came back to bite me in the butt. The main problem was that when I set up the shot beforehand (before church started) all the sanctuary lights were on, and the spotlights over the baptismal font were off… In fact, I didn’t even realize those spots were there. Whoops. So I put it on, ummm… I think ISO400, set the aperture wide open at f1.4, and stopped down by one, figuring I’d get a bit faster of a shot that way and could just push it up in post-processing (it had been metering at about 1/30.) This is more or less what I do for kickball, and those pics come out fairly well.
Well, when it came time for the baptism, the church lights were dimmed and the spots turned on over the font. Since I’d handed off the camera to Colin’s dad Roger to take the pics so that I could play godmom, I didn’t get a chance to adjust, and frankly, it didn’t occur to me to make adjustments. If I’d been taking the pics, I would have looked at the first one and known immediately what the problem was. However, even if I had, I don’t know that I would have been able to fix it. The shots during the baptism really needed a flash, and I don’t know if I would have wanted to use one at such a solemn moment. So… eh.
I took down the contrast on these as much as I could without graying them out (I also had to bump down the saturation quite a bit!) but they still are really shadowy and contrasty. All I can say is thank goodness for RAW, or these would have… Well, I can’t say for sure, but I have a hard time seeing how they would have been anything but a total loss.
After the service was over and we took more pictures, I still wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t use the flash until the very end, when it dawned on me that that would help. Go easy on me here, I’m still learning this stuff – aside from kickball, I rarely ever shoot indoors, and with kickball, not only is the lighting better, but I can’t use the flash anyway because of factors like distance and speed.
Anyway, enough berating myself for blowing the pictures – here are a few.
Sleeping girl
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I baptize you in the name of the Father...
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Time for bed again
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Click here for a link to the Flickr gallery.
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Annie in a Basket
Annie-in-a-basket 002, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.
I am an evil, evil person. I stuck my niece in a laundry basket and took pictures… Click here for a few more. :-D
