Family Photo Shoot

Our good friends met us at the school behind our house for a family photo shoot. We had a gorgeous, sunny day to take pictures. We took turns taking pictures of each other's family and ended up with a LOT of photos. A few turned out well, many did not. There were some lessons learned, but over all it was a good experience.

I know that a lot of what the professional photographers do to make their photos look, well, "professional," is in the editing. Since I have a snazzy professional software package to play with, I did some editing of my own.

Here are some before and afters:

A little cropping, brightening, sharpening, leveling, etc. goes a long way!

I think we will try this again in the spring. Some of our lessons learned were:

1. Time of day. We had time restraints due to evening activities, so we had to shoot in early afternoon and deal with some sharp shadows on faces. Next time we'll come at dusk.
2. Photographer. We had two cameras going at the same time. Next time, we'll have the more experienced photographer take pictures, and the other parent focus on getting kids to smile and watch out for weird hands, straight clothes and getting kids to smile. Did I mention we need to make sure the kids are smiling? :)
3. Wind. It was windy. A lot of good shots were ruined by hair flying into faces. 

Fall is fun!

Click here to view some family photos and commentary. It's fall-tastic.

A Pumpkin Story

This was my first year of growing pumpkins.

It all started with a few seeds:

April 7, 2012

They grew nicely indoors:

May 7, 2012

And were successfully transplanted outside to the pumpkin patch:

Throughout June, July and August, I watered it faithfully and watched the vines grow wild and massive. But no pumpkins showed up until September!

Sept. 30, 2012

This one was the biggest of the initial three. We dubbed it "Big Al"

This one, Little Al, grew outside the fence. But he proved to outgrow Big Al! The third pumpkin broke off the vine and quickly rotted into nothing.

 This is Baby BooBoo who was very cute, but showed no promise of being edible.

Fast forward to the end of October and the vines had mostly died off from the frosts. Big Al was still rippening, however, and I wanted him to get as orange as possible!

Oct. 14, 2012

Baby BooBoo wasn't going to grow any bigger, but he hung in there.

Little Al didn't make it. He looked huge and ripe, but a close inspection revealed his stem had cracked away from the vine and a stream of bugs was crawling in and out of him.

I thought we could at least carve him as our jack-o-lantern. However, his insides were liquidy and rotten. He only lasted a couple days before he caved in on himself completely.

As for Big Al? He made it all the way.

October 20. 2012

From farm to freezer:

I admit that I did feel some pangs of sadness. Not unlike what I imagine a farmer would feel when slaughtering his first pig. So, I thanked Al for the joy of watching him grow and develop and for the wonderful nutritious food he would provide for us. Then I stabbed away with my knife and gutted him out. :) I think the moral of this story is to never name your pumpkin!

Twick or Tweet!

That, my friends, is what an Angry Bird says on Halloween. :)

I made costumes this year from a great tutorial found online by Dragonfly Designs. Angry Birds want candy!!!

Read more about our Halloween here.

Happy Halloween!!!