Missing Out on Sunrises

Every time I see a sunrise or sunset, I kick myself in the teeth if I don’t have my camera with me.  I’m learning that if there are clouds out it is going to be even more spectacular.  This morning I biked over to Discovery park so I could get some sort of a view.  That’s another thing I don’t like about sunrise and sunset.  If I’m at home or in a neighborhood running, I can’t see a horizon line.  Someday, I’ll build a crows nest that gets me up above all the houses and let’s me have the mountains as my horizon line.  This morning I decided to take some shots that would allow me to play around with the panorama stitch tool in Photoshop.  Here is my favorite panorama shot I stitched together.

And here are some single shots I just thought were awesome.  I love the colors.

I can’t wait to get my screens calibrated.  Right now, colors look different on every screen I own.  Once I get calibrated and do some test print with a print shop, I’ll feel much more comfortable adjusting the colors for my pictures.  I just finished some training on digital cameras explaining how it captures colors  saturation separate from hues and illumination.  I don’t want to worry about dialing in the white balance every time I take a photo, and we know I’m still learning to get things exposed optimally.  I guess I’ll just adjust and fit into a groove as I grow.

Savannah Asks for the Cameras Attention

Besides me, Savannah is probably the most excited about photography in our family.  She’s got a great eye and has already started her own blog (http://savvysmiling.blogspot.com/).  I can totally see us doing photography together.  Not only does she like to take pictures, she is always a willing to model too.  At soccer practice the other day, I went off to the end of the field to try and take pictures of the sunset.  Savannah steps right up in the direction I had the camera pointed and started posing and flashing her smile without asking me to take her picture.  She just knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist having her in the pictures.  She was right.  I’m excited to have her on the photography train. 

Day 2 of Just Me and the Boys

I’m not sure how this is going to work out in blog format.  It was a long day.  I very fun day, but a very long day.  I have 47 out of 288 pictures to share and prove it.  Christi is in San Diego with the other girls and it’s me and the boys for the weekend.  We miss you Christi!  So, here is what happened so that you don’t feel like you missed it all.

After the usual Saturday morning crawl out of bed, we sped off to look for yard sales.  We got a little side tracked though and spent about an hour exploring before we finally made it to Vincenz park for soccer games.  Really, I was the one that got side tracked looking for good spots to do some upcoming outdoor senior portrait sessions.  But the boys ended up thinking it was fun to see some cool stuff too.  Anyways, back to the soccer games.

There are many styles of playing soccer, and Josh and Jonah showed two of them today.  See if you can tell what styles they each have.  Here is Josh:

I love the determination in his face in this last one.  And here is Jonah:

So there you have it.  Which one are you more like when playing soccer?  Josh?  Or Jonah?  They both did a great job and had fun.  I’m afraid Josh came away feeling a little disappointed though because he was on defense most of the time and they had scored on him.  He needed a lot of words to help him see that all we can do is our best.  Which he did.  Then we just enjoy the ride.  Like Jonah did the whole time.

After Soccer, we headed over to Good Will (50% off day today) to try and snag an bright orange chair that Christi and I saw the other night.  Sorry Christi, it was gone :(  Good thing though.  The check out line was huge.  So, we headed over to one of my kids favorite restaurant.  The Golden Corral.

I added a little gold to the “Golden” on the sign just so you’d know how Golden it was.  I was shocked that the boys only had two ice cream cones each.  Golden Corral must be losing some of it’s magic.  Next on the agenda came a power nap for me.  15 minutes always does me wonders.  I was surprised to find that the kids had finished most of the chores and were still working when I got up.

What good kids I have.  Christi had left a box of peaches that she was going to bottle, but had run out of time to do.  What a great thing for the boys to experience… right?  There are no guarantees tied to these peaches, but at least they didn’t rot.  Yet.
 

    

Personally, I don’t like peaches, but Christi had already bottled the pears.  I like pears!  So, it was the least we could do to preserve the peaches which she likes more.  While Simon was still napping, the boys did a little of this

while I started working on some of these pictures.  Lightroom has me hooked.

Since we had just bottled peaches, we had to go prove our manhood by pounding a few balls at the range.  There were some great hits!  And some not so great ones too.  But we all left happy and committed to becoming pro golfers.

Look at those faces!  :)  I love it.  They all tried so hard and would hoot and holler every time they made it past the white rope.  I’m excited to take them out again.  They each now want a set of clubs for Christmas or their birthday.  Santa?

On the way back we stopped of at the one of the spots we had found while exploring earlier.  Here are some of the results:

Next, we snagged some Little Ceasars’ pizza on the way home.  About this time, I was getting the “We love you Dad, oh yes we do” song, and reminders that this has been the best day in the world.  We even decided to let Simon sit up at the table with us instead of in his high chair.  That was a mistake…  The neighbor boys rang the front door bell to see if our boys wanted to play.  While I was at the door letting them know that we had a boys day going on, Simon decided to see if his face really was flexible enough to recover from falling head first off of the bench.  Scroll down to see the results of his well executed, but not very well though out, plan.

The poor little guy had a bloody nose, bloody swollen lip, and small goose egg on his forehead (Sorry Christi.  I guess it’s good that this isn’t my day job).  After a bath, another round of Agent Cody Banks 2, and some ice and orange soda though, he was back to normal and all smiles and grins as I put him down for the night.  The other boys and I finished the movie, said prayers, and they tromped off to bed to battle each other over nothing. 

Overall, a pretty good day.  But it we miss our girls.  Hurry home!