How I See Life

My niece, amused by the other baby in the window (her reflection.) :-)

Kari — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:46:30 +0000

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

Kari — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:14:57 +0000

Graduation 007, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.

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!! :-)

A couple more Easter pics

Kari — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 05:38:57 +0000

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.

I absolutely love the lighting in this one.

More Annie pics

Kari — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:32:35 +0000

Once upon a time in a car seat…

What's that I see down there at my feet?

OMG this thing is SO cool!!

To taste or not to taste, that is the question.

Stay tuned for another thrilling episode of The Annie Chronicles later this week!

Back seat perspective

Kari — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:18:02 +0000

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.

Annie collage

Kari — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:10:28 +0000

Annie collage, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.

Picasa makes some wicked awesome collages. Seriously, I couldn’t resist making this. :-D

I made a collage!

Kari — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:44:23 +0000

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

Kari — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:33:29 +0000

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

I did say she was irresistible...

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

: Three generations: Annie’s mom, Annie’s great-grandma, and Annie

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]

Annie and me

Kari — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:04:47 +0000

Pics from Dad’s 018, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.

Me and my niece today at my Dad’s house. :-)

Annie’s baptism pics

Kari — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:47:55 +0000

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

I baptize you in the name of the Father...

Time for bed again

Click here for a link to the Flickr gallery.