Photography | Midwestern At Heart

#PhotoadayJuly

So I did better this month with the daily photo challenge, but I still missed one. Whatever. Actually, I just didn’t take the photo. Now… a couple of them were taken a couple days out of order, hey, life happens sometimes. :).

Here is this month’s list of words.

Self Portrait – Kind of self explanatory, don’tcha ya think?
Busy – Typing away….
Best part of my day – Don’t you think quality husband time qualifies there?!?!
Fun – on the 4th!
On the floor – I was at my parents house… here is the view of their floor.
Chair – I got my photos out of order btw, but this is where my butt sits for 8 hrs 5 days/week.
Garden – Ok so I didn’t see a garden, but lettuce comes out of a garden.
Lunch – with parents at Maria’s
Big – Big Brutus – ‘Nuff Said!

10. Your {my}favorite color – can you guess??
11. Letter – Ok so this is a bit of a stretch, whatever
12. Texture – I think you get that with this pizza!
13. Open – just before starting a load of wash.
14. Building – At a friends for their 4th Party.
15. Finger – Or thumb… it works…
16. Sign – Hangs above my computer monitor…
17. My Addiction – Definitely photography right now.
18. Plate – I kind of forgot so you get my empty dirty plate… sorry.

19. Animal/Insect/Pet – Marlie 🙂
20. Eyes – or eye… whichever. btw, look at his pretty eyelashes!
21. 9 o’clock – We were at the Farm show.
22. Upside Down – Muddy thought he’d get a belly rub.
23. Mirror – My parents needed me to do chores, but I forgot clothes so I used my dads :).
24. a Stranger – Hubby said to take a photo of him and say “Stranger than me”… I didn’t do it.
25. Heart – see it? Our rings are even in it 🙂
26. Sunshine – Don’t let the picture fool you, it was 95 as a high via weather.com…
27. On the road – No I wasn’t paying attn to the picture I was taking… I was watching the road!

28. Cup – Chocolate Milkshake, YUM!
29. Last thing I bought – technically my mommy bought it for me, but it’s the dress, the belt & the shoes.
30. Calm – This was my birthday and this was my calm. Snuggling up to hubby before bed.
31. Toothbrush – doing what it does best 🙂

Linking up with Emmymom & Janette of the Johanson Journey

And also…. Sharing here

I Clicked it Up a Notch – July 2012

Oh my I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I am :).

About about 2 weeks ago I stumbled across a blog called Click It Up a Notch. Holy friggin cow! Things started making sense to me! I read through her posts, they are in layman’s terms that I understood. After 2 days of reading, I went home, put my camera on Manual, told my husband I wanted to take photos, and I have yet to take it back of Manual. I’m not going to say I ALWAYS get good photos… heck no, but I have surprised myself still. They’re even better than what I thought! Now I wasn’t on “auto” persay, I was on P. If you own a Nikon, you’ll understand. I’m not sure if Canon’s have that option or not. It was like the Manual auto, because it didn’t kick the flash on unless you wanted it to.

Anyway I saw they are having a photography contest. Crazy me is sharing a photo. Oy! I’m a bit nervous. This was done in Manual. It was from the very first night I had my camera on manual. I LOVE this photo. I have it in color & black & white. I’m not sure which I like better, so I’m just choosing this one.

This is my entry :).

Photography Lesson – dSLR's

So I have been wanting to write one of these posts for a long time. But really, who am I to try and teach someone else about photography? So if you know more than me, please share some tips for me 🙂

So let’s start with the camera history, shall we? I know I’ve already shared the history of all the camera’s I have owned however, why did I buy a dSLR? That’s a REALLY good question!

In early 2009 a couple friends and I started shooting photos. As the year progressed the other two decided to start up a photography business; I didn’t know about any of this at the time. One evening I overheard them talking about taking a photography class together. I like pictures, I like photography, I wanted to take better photos, so I wanted to join in. So Evelyn asked me if I would be willing to buy a dSLR for the class. Ok, I must confess, at the time I had no clue what a dSLR was; that’s when google became my friend. So just what does dSLR stand for? Digital Single Lens Reflex. What the heck does that mean?

A single-lens reflex (SLR) camera is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence “reflex”, from the mirror’s reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and hence see exactly what will be captured, contrary to viewfinder cameras where the image could be significantly different from what will be captured. (Found here in more detail)

WOW! She wanted me to buy a “big girl” camera? When I got to looking at the class, I saw I could use my point & shoot I had which had “big girl camera” settings on it, plus you actually could buy changeable lenses for it, even though it wasn’t a true dSLR.

I decided to start with my P&S before spending that much money on something I might not even like. After the first night of class I wanted a dSLR so bad I couldn’t stand myself, so I started researching camera’s in my price range and asking friends who had them what they had, what they liked, what they didn’t, etc. The Professional photographer at work recommended I get the Canon Rebel XS. I figured if that’s what he recommended, that’s what I’d get. That camera and I became really good friends until a year later when hubby convinced me to switch to a Nikon D5000; I haven’t looked back, yet :).

Both camera’s came with an 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 kit lens. The 3.5-5.6 are your F-stops but we’ll discuss that in another post. It’s a good little lens and it has taken some wonderful pictures for me, but with my canon I also had a telephoto lens.

Generally Nikon and Canon lenses won’t interchange between the two brands, therefore when I sold my Canon I sold it as a whole package selling the kit lens that came with it as well as the telephoto lens that I had acquired for it. When we switched to the Nikon we saved our money and bought a 50-200mm 1:4-5.6G telephoto lens.

Since the purchase of the first Nikon, we’ve saved up our money for a second Nikon, the hubby and I don’t share so well; so I would say that we are a Nikon family. So let’s ask the ever controversial question (kind of like saying Ford vs Chevy or PC vs Mac… LOL), Do you like Nikon or Canon or something else better?

#Photoadayjune Recap

So do you instagram? I do.
Do you follow me? I’m boomerbear.
Do I follow you? I’m not sure your name {insert here}
Have you ever done one of the challenges @Fatmumslim Photoaday? I tried 🙂

Now is a linkup from Emmy Mom and Janette of the Johanson Journey

And now, on to the challenge.

Here are the challenge words/phrases for June.

1. Morning – This is what my mornings look like…
2. Empty – At a horse show, they were changing the cattle out.
3. On Your Plate – Dinner
4. Close-up – Yikes 🙂
5. Sign – This is the detour sign I’ll be looking at until at least October… blech!
6. Hat – I look cute eh?
7. Drink – This was right after getting home from my trip and being addicted to Coffee
8. Six o’clock – ha
9. Your View Today – Tire shop for a tractor tire. yey :).

10. Best Bit of Your Weekend – Sitting on the couch with hubby
11. Door – The doors I stare at all day long.
12. From a low angle – Squirty during feeding time.
13. Art – That is a drawing, I swear!
14. Time – Time to edit photos
15. Yellow – Stress Hard hat
16. Out and About – Moving farm machinery
17. In your bag – my camera bag… it was surprisingly empty
18. Something we don’t know about you – I had 6 moles removed as a freshman because they were afraid they might be cancerous. They weren’t luckily. 2 on my forehead (right side), in my hair line on my left side of my head, on the back of my neck, on my back (in picture – scar) and on my waist.

19. Imperfect – My house is imperfect but it’s mine!
20. Fave Photo You’ve ever taken – it’s way better than this picture shows!!
21. Where you slept
22. From a high angle – sitting on the hill in the hayfield
23. Movement – Cookies
24. On your mind – The tv show I was watching
25. Something cute – Aren’t they!?!?
26. Where you shop – I didn’t go anywhere that day.
27. Bathroom – I don’t like those… haha
28. On the shelf – ran out of time I guess… I didn’t get this one done either.
29. Soft – The bed is definitely soft!
30. A Friend – or two! I actually had a Lab as a lap dog for a bit too.

I think I’m going to attempt July as well. Wish me luck!

~~Stolen~~ Borrowed from CA Girl b/c I was lazy to upload mine 🙂

Run, Do Not Walk – Do Not Pass Go – Do Not Collect $200

I get teased a lot about being the Queen of Random.
Yesterday at work probably was no different!

I walked into one of my co-worker’s office’s and asked her if she had photos of her with her grandkids.

To most people, that’s totally random and out of the blue. Heck if someone walked up and asked me that I’m not so sure I wouldn’t look at them like they had flipped their lid. BUT… It might not be random to them.
Let me walk you through how I got there… Shall we?

Sometimes the joke in our office is my boss is the phantom. He’s in his office one minute and the next, he’s gone. Almost like he vanished into thin air. So our big boss, R, came by to talk to him, D, and of course D wasn’t in his office. He walked off for a few minutes. In fact, sometimes I’m surprised they don’t run into each other in the hallway. So eventually D came back to his office. I got up and was walking down the hallway and I saw R. I looked at him and said, “He’s in his office. Run!” And of course R laughed at me. In my head I was thinking, Run don’t walk. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Get to his office now or he’ll be gone. {I hope you realize that do not pass go, do not collect $200 is in reference to Monopoly.} So I continued on my way down the hallway.

But that got me to thinking about playing Rummy. I love that card game. I used to play it all the time with my Grandma S. And now I’ve taught hubby to play it. So I was thinking that we need to play it again, soon! We’ve talked about playing it with Tbug but he’s not sure she has the patience to learn it. I point out to him that I was playing that at her age, but he thinks we should start with Go Fish first. But back to the story at hand… thinking about my Grandma S. And me, being the picture person I am remembered this picture.

And Sadly, I got to thinking about how few photos exist of me and my grandparents. All 4 of them. I still have one grandma left, and probably out of all my grandparents, I have the most photos with the two of us together, partially because we share a birthday so there are a lot of birthday photos of us. And truthfully there are very few photos that exist of my grandparents in general.

Then I got to thinking about Tbug. My mother HATES having her photo taken. Really, there are very few photos around of her. I took this recent one of her, and she’d probably disown me if she knew I took it, but sometimes, you have to sneak them in on her.

So when I asked my co-worker if she had many photos of her with her grandkids, that is how I got there. Very strategically.

So I guess my point to this whole post is, even if you don’t like having your photo taken, Sometimes you need to suck it up so that your kids and grandkids and great-grandkids can all know who you were.

Remember Trisha Yearwood’s uncle said it best, “Pictures aren’t for today, they are for tomorrow.” I agree Uncle Wilson!

Another Walk…

…down Facebook Memory Lane

Right before his first show.

Before Dinner Club

Goofing Around

Our first Thanksgiving together

Playing around with the camera

On our way to Ft. Worth (for the first time)

Brunch at Joe T Garcias in Ft. Worth

Our first trip to KC

Our First Christmas together.

I’m not going to lie, sometimes I question why I used some of the photos I did, but whatever, I did so let’s all laugh now 🙂

Wow….

The other day I was gandering through my facebook profile pictures. Wow, they’ve changed during the years, but at the same time… they haven’t. I’m not sure if this was the very first FB picture, but this is the oldest profile photo I can find on there.

That’s my Mo-dawg when he was a puppy. It was soon followed by this one.

He wasn’t real sure he wanted his picture taken. In fact, he hated having his picture taken. Still does for that matter.

Loved this pic. It was a quick one I grabbed of myself oh circa 2006… give or take but I was on my way out the door for work. So probably circa 2007.

This was Chicago. I think my mom and I made a quick trip there to see the Musical, Wicked. OMG speaking of that, if you’ve never seen it and get the chance… please do. It’s awesome!

Kenny Chesney Concert, Atlanta GA. Yes, I flew all the way down there. It was a whirlwind of a trip too.

New York City with my mom December 2008. We went to see the Rockettes. Here we were killing time to meet one of my mom’s friends for brunch before we flew home.

This was April 2009. My friends and I were starting to play around with cameras and getting “good” photos. btw, no I’m not laying on a bed. I’m actually laying on a really uncomfortable trunk. There is a sheet on the wall because we were going to try and photoshop so we wanted a blank canvas to work with.

Same here.

July 2009. The night I went on the first date with my husband. We went out with Dinner Club and then wound up at my friends house until the wee hours of the morning.

This was just after I bought my first dSLR (Canon Rebel XS) and we were killing time before my friends Showerception. (they eloped so it was a wedding shower/reception for them….)

And this was in October right before heading out for a friend’s birthday dinner.

Why Do You Take Photos

Have you ever asked yourself why you take photos?

Do you take them to be annoying?

Sorry Hunny, I love you!

Do you take them to be obnoxious?

Circa Easter 2012 when my dad was giving me fits about taking photos of food. Yes I emailed him this picture 🙂

Do you take them to try to tell someone about something you like?

I still like them….

Do you take them to try and tell a story?

Do you take them to try and remember a time/place/or event?

Hawaii Sept 4, 2011

Do you take them to try and be artsy?

Do you have them to remember family?

Grandma J {still alive}, Grandma S, me, Grandpa S, Grandpa J – July 2007

Truthfully, we all take pictures for lots of different reasons. And we don’t always take a photo for the same reason. But the next time you take a picture, ask yourself before you snap that camera, why am I taking this picture? It just might help you get a little bit better photo to capture that special event :).

Happy Friday!

This is Deep

Weekend via Instagram & Camera+

Sometimes I love Love LOVE my iPhone. I get some easy shots that I might not have gotten otherwise, for whatever reason.

Ok so the quality might not be even as good as some point and shoots, but heck, I still like it!

So today’s post is brought to you by my new favorite app Camera+ and by my old love Instagram.

A relaxing Friday night once we finally made it home. We were watching Sweet Home Alabama on CMT (the Reality show)

Helping Tbug and myself not get pinched on Saturday, you know St. Patty’s Day

Saturday we headed to the yearly buffalo sale. (2010, 2011)

Uh oh… I’ve created a monster! haha

Our Yearly Buffalo Sale photo 🙂

Driving home after we left the sale, we stopped in Nevada and ate lunch at Iguana Azul. OMG it was good Mexican food! My great grandfather used to have a hardware store up on the square also, just a random side note.

I’m starting to learn to live with the fact, windows down & my hair just don’t play nice.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to Lucky J to watch the cutting going on.

She looks happy eh?

Later my mother in law called us and said she’d like to take us to dinner. She chose Habatchi.

Then we went with her to Atwoods and helped her load up something she was buying… and I fell in love with these boots. They are so out of the norm for me and my taste but aren’t they sexy?!?! Ok so I’m a shoe person but I absolutely LOVE boots! Just saying!