It’s that time; you guessed it, our first dual post. Prince Charming and I gave a word and then came up with a photo that would describe that word. We are still working out all of the details, but so far our first word was Halloween. We had 1 week to come up with a photo that described that word and then we were going to post to see what the other came up with. This is exciting… we are ready to unveil our findings………
Nicole:
Isn’t it strange how life works? Going along in your own little world and everything just gets turned upside down in a very fast whirl wind. Sometimes you don’t even have time to stop and say huh??? Well that has happened to me this year, but I’m going to tell you… sometimes just hang along for the ride because it is well worth the end result! I was going along dating the same guy for over 5 years. People would ask so what’s the deal with that. I was like well I don’t know but I know eventually something will happen. Boy who knew when I made that comment my life would break loose and something would actually happen! Long story short, people who gossip can actually change a person’s life. At the time I thought it was a bad change but I finally was able to step back and take a closer look at the way things had unfolded and saw that something better was just around the corner. Breaking up with someone after 5 1/2 years is a Shocker to your system. I didn’t sleep very much for an entire month and I LOVE to sleep. What little sleep I actually did get was because I would pass out from exhaustion. This all started right around Father’s Day.
Once a month a group of friends get together and we go try new places for dinner. Saturday’s dinner happened to be at a place in Joplin called Mytho’s Euro Greek Cuisine. It was very good. Some of the specifications used when the restaurant is chosen is they aren’t chain restaurants and for the most part we pick restaurants where we can dress up (business casual or higher depending on the restaurant.) Not always do we dress up, we’ve been 3 places so far that has been jeans attire but still… we like to dress up (or at least the girls, the guys do it to humor us… LOL). This particular restaurant had cheese that they lit on fire at the table and you yelled “Opa”. Jason looked it up and it said it translated to “Your cheese is on fire.” This has been a tradition now for 10 months. Our first dinner out (January) was in Springfield at a place called Bijans. February was at Downstream Casino at Red Oak Steakhouse. March was in Joplin at Kinnaree. April was in Springfield at Avanzare. May was in Monett at Bayou. June was in Joplin at Wilder’s Steakhouse. July was in Springfield at Touch. August was in Webb City at Roswitha’s. September was in Springfield at Haruno’s and of course, this month went back to Joplin to Mytho’s. We have tried many fabulous cuisines… we’ve had Italian, American, Japanese, Euro-Greek, Cajun, Thai, and German. Luckily it has all been places (except for Kinnaree) that I’ve never been to.
So my grandma had her 60th class reunion. Could you imagine, 60 years!! Well, they needed a photographer and she asked me if I’d be willing to come in, take a class shot, and snap a few candid shots. No problem I thought. Boy did I come to a realization real fast… ASK what she wants beforehand. I called her 2 days before to double-check the time and place and she was like, “Now make sure you have packages for them to buy from.” What? YIKES… ok, so my mom and I spent 2 lunch hours at work finalizing packages, options, etc. So I knew I was ready to go. I walked into the Church where this was held shaking. My nerves took over. But I kept my cool the best I could and started walking around taking photos. Those seniors were awesome. Some avoided me, some smiled, some posed and some never knew I was there. I loved it because they couldn’t hear my camera take. They are a little hard of hearing and my camera is very quiet. Without a flash, they never saw me coming. My mom went with me to the job. She was the money taker and she also helped round them up when it came time to take the photos. After that came time to come home and edit. The fabulous boyfriend stepped up to the challenge. We used photoshop to touch up the photos and add writing. This was so far the best first shoot I could have asked for.
Everyone always chooses different things to focus spare time on. Well besides showing horses last year I took on Cake Decorating. It was cool but extremely stressful so I thought, hmmm what else could I try. I came up with photos. I love taking pictures… So I took a class on Photography with 2 of my friends. It was called Taking Better Pictures. It was interesting! I learned some techniques I might not have tried before and I got an awesome new camera… I am glad I took the class. The teacher would recommend different reading material for us and I signed up for one set of newsletters she recommended. In my quest to learn more, one of the topics that I read about was learning to teach others to pose. It said to teach others to pose, you first should learn to teach yourself. Then you know what works best with the camera, what looks horrible, and how to pose to get the “right” shot. So I have the most amazing boyfriend and he and I have been on this quest. Learning to teach ourselves and the other how to pose in front of the camera. We’ve also included his daughter. We’ve gotten some good shots, we’ve gotten some bad shots, and we’ve gotten some hilarious shots. Part of our quest is also to learn to enhance and edit them. He knows more than I do, but I really haven’t sat down yet to take the time and learn. I figure this winter when it is snowy and cold out, that will be how I spend my time. I have no idea where this will take me, but in the end, I will have better photos!!!
Ok so this is new to me, I haven’t totally figured out what direction I want to take with this but I know it will come with time and I think it will probably come a lot faster than I think. I have ideas ;). So don’t worry, stay tuned!