The Daily Shoot- Break the Rules

 Today's assignment at The Daily Shoot was actually kind of hard for me, as I'm only a baby photographer and don't know tons of "rules" of composition and whatnot. I took a class a few years ago, but I've forgotten a lot in the time my photo taking has been stagnant.

September 30, 2011 (Day 684), Assignment:
"Rules" can be stifling if taken to extremes. Break the rules today with focus, composition, etc, and see what happens

Here's my homework...

I didn't go full blown rebel on this one. I played with composition a bit, mostly just that the object is slightly out of the frame. My photography teacher always said you want to be really careful when you cut something off in a photo- it either needs to be dramatic or not at all, basically. There needs to be a point in cutting something off. I only cut off a bit at the edge, and I also did the focus a bit differently with the parts closest to the camera out of focus and the bottom right in focus, which is the part of the object that's further away. This isn't really rule breaking, just a bit different from what I'd normally do. I'm not sure if it's a big success as the assignment, but I like it.

Not much news- it's been unseasonably warm, I'm told. I have no other English Autumns to compare it to, but it's in the mid-high seventies farenheit this week. Mick said it shouldn't be freezing yet, but it should be a lot cooler. The back of the house where the tv room and kitchen are catch the sun all day. This is also where I spend most of my time. Our bedroom/Mick's office is also on the back of the house. These rooms are really hot and stuffy and uncomfortable when it's warm. We've both retreated to the front sitting room which stays nice and cool all day.

Feeling less homesick, which is good.
Mick bought me some spicy candles that I can burn in the house, which reminds me of home, because mom always had spicy candles in autumn and winter.

Later guys :)

The Daily Shoot- Cucumbers and Crackers

My husband is a pusher- sometimes the good kind, sometimes the bad kind. Just what kind he is mostly depends on my mood. You see, I am not a pusher. I'm one of those people that needs to be pushed. I like to think of him as a little cattle dog biting at my ankles, trying to get me to go, go, go! Because, I'm a bit slow out of the gate. Once I get started with something and force myself to do it for a while, it eventually becomes habit, and I do well with it. But starting is always the hard part, and that's why it's a good thing I married Mick.

Lately he's been pushing me to do more with my photography. Homesickness is pretty ugly right now, and his sage advice is to do the things I can do that make me happy. And since I'm far from the people I love and miss, this means hobbies. I've always had a creative streak, going back to 4th grade when I wrote my first short story because my awesome teacher really pushed (see? pushing) us to write. We had a glorious silent half hour every morning where we could write anything we wanted. I took advantage of this, and my first story was a scattered conglomeration of the macabre- mummies, werewolves, spiderwebs, etc. Then I wrote my first poem at age 10, something that I've tried to stick with. But as I mentioned the other day, photography makes me feel really good about myself, and that's something I really need right now.

So this afternoon I sat down to my laptop and started looking for photography groups online. I found one called The Daily Shoot. Basically, this guy gives you an assignment every day and you take your photos and then share them on twitter to @dailyshoot. Now, I include my twitter feed on this page, so you should be able to see my name. If not, it's @aindrealm. I think this is a great idea, and today I completed my first assignment. It was technically yesterday's assignment, but it's okay if I'm a bit late, right? Like I said. I'm slow out of the gates.

September 28th, 2011(Day 682) Assignment-

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Make a photograph of a yummy part of one of your meals today.

My selection- snack of cucumber and Cracked Pepper Ryvita cracker. I love the way the sun shines through the skin of the cucumber on the left, the texture of the cracker, and the way you can even see where the serrations on the knife left indentations on the flesh of the cucumber.

So there you have it. I may not do this every single day, but I plan to do it several times a week and I'll try to share them all with you. If I forget to, just check my twitter feed on the right side of this page and you should be able see if I've done any.

See you soon :)

I promise to...

Spend more time doing the things that I love. This includes taking pictures.

I've been really homesick lately, the worst since I've been here. I guess that's to be expected though, but it doesn't mean it's easy. I don't want to dwell on that though, what I've come to say today is that I'm going to start doing things I love because that's what life is for, isn't it? I like the way I see things when I hold the camera, how I notice things that you'd never expect to make an interesting photo. But they do. Today I focused on the dog, Sasha. She sat still, not because she wanted to be my model but because she'd found a warm sunny spot to park it. Here you are.

Ahhh, off center and relatively shallow depth of field. I've missed this stuff.

Don't you just love the texture? The deserty, cracked nose and the fine hairs.

Such pretty paws.

And extreme angles.

I'm going to try to take pictures nearly every day and share them with you as often. I hope you'll enjoy seeing them.

Honeymoon

 Sorry I've been gone for so long, but I have a good reason- Mick and I just got back from our honeymoon on Saturday. We spent a week in England's Lake District in Cumbria, which is in Northern England. We had a great time, and apart from the three days of rain we had, it was beautiful. Everything was so green, but unfortunately I wasn't able to capture how green that green was, because cameras just don't do the color justice. It's literally like a florescent green. We visited various yummy restaurants, went fishing and visited Hadrian's Wall, built in the second century AD to act as a sort of border between The Roman Empire (England) and Barbarian Lands (Scotland). It was pretty cool and we both learned a lot, like Romans were very literal dudes.

So, we had a great week, but it's really good to be home. Here are some pictures.

Here's our hotel- it was really cool and old and even had one of those old fashioned elevators with cage doors. Legit.

Bullying the husband into a photo op on our fishing trip. It was cold!

Lake Windermere, the lake our hotel looked over.

Birthday Boy!

I think it's safe to say that Mick had a very nice 25th birthday yesterday. I snuck out of bed before him, made him a cup of tea and put a birthday banner on our bedroom door and crept in with his tea. I wanted to make him breakfast in bed, but he's one of those people who doesn't like to eat right when he gets up. So tea was all I could really do, but he was happy with this. He hadn't slept very good because it was really windy and all night we could hear it whipping around the house. He had his tea and I gave him his card and one gift- a little stuffed Gizmo from Gremlins, because he reminds me of Mick's dog. The rest of the gifts were saved for the evening.

We got up and I made breakfast- French toast and bacon. Kind of bacon. Did you know you could melt bacon? Well, you can. I've never cooked bacon over a gas stove before, and apparently I made it too hot. I looked one second at crispy, slightly burntish bacon, and turned around and it was literally just a sizzling pile of gooey carbon. I sustained a nasty burn  on my knuckle trying to not set the house on fire, and the smoke alarm went off twice. The kitchen still smells of burnt bacon. I salvaged what I could and Mick still had a nice birthday breakfast. We ate at the table- something that's not common around here. I grew up always eating at the table, and lately we've been trying to do this together because I think meal time is talk time, social time with one another. We usually eat in front of the tv and then everyone just ends up shushing one another.

I hopped in the shower and we caught the bus into Chichester. I found a pair of boots for winter and to take on our honeymoon in the Lake District (rainnnnny. why do you think there are so many lakes?). Turns out I don't really like them and will take them back.... We met Mick's mum for lunch and I snuck off to book the table for dinner and buy a cake to leave with the restaurant. Mick hates any kind of public attention, and loads of strangers singing to you in a restaurant counts. I went back to the cafe and avoided his interrogation and we had our lunch. We walked down to the snooker club and played for a good two hours. Snooker is a pool type game, but with different balls, rules, and a massive table. Then we saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was actually really really good. We went back home and Laura was waiting for us. We all went out to dinner and yes, Mick was surprised with that cake, although when he saw the waitresses bringing it out, he mumbled some very ungentlemanly words that I will not repeat here.

Then we came back to the house and played Apples to Apples which meant many laughs were had by all. Mostly me and Laura.

Here are some pics of the day. 

Didn't you know I married Osama? Getting dressed after I woke him up with tea.

French Toast (or eggy bread as they call it here!)

Playing snooker.

And avoiding the camera at dinner. As always.

Happy Birthday, babe! I love you and hope the coming year brings you (and us) everything you hope for.

And I'll leave everyone with an amusing quote on birthdays:

There is nothing better than birthday cake. It's like a slice of concentrated love with buttercream frosting.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005

Go Fish

We had another nice day around here. Mick and I slept in late again, had a quick breakfast of cereal and decided to walk down to the beach. It was really windy all day, and the water was incredibly choppy. I couldn't believe how high the tide was, and with the choppy waves rolling in... the water was way higher than normal.

 

We wandered around town for a bit, then decided to have Mick's favorite meal in the world- a fry up at the little cafe up the road. The rest of the day was spent doing simple, enjoyable things

like mowing the garden

Watching the dog eat the grass that the mower didn't pick up (doesn't she look like Gizmo from The Gremlins in this picture? Sometimes she holds her ears in a certain way where she looks like him. Cracks me up!)

And playing card games in bed. Do you have any threes?

Tomorrow is Mick's 25th birthday. I have a very special day planned for him- most of which he already knows about because I'm no good at keeping surprises secrets. I will write about it tomorrow. Have a nice Monday-- as nice as you can.

Rainy day

What a nice Saturday. Mick and I slept in until 10:30, sharing cuddles for a good half hour and being silly. We had a late breakfast and did some cleaning around the house before the in-laws went out to lunch. We had warm lunches while the rain fell softly on the wooden deck out back and landed in speckles on grey windows. Hours on the couch, laptops and tvs, video games. I finally decided to take a shower while Mick sat on the bed with Harley and Truffles. Harley was just "fixed" so we have to keep them in separate levels of the hutch for a few days while he heals. They miss each other so much, though, so we let them out for some supervised sibling time. After my shower I walked into the bedroom to find a very sweet sight- Mick on the bed reading his book, while happy bunnies ran around him. There is nothing so sweet in this world as my lovely husband and bunnies playing in soft, weak milky sunshine.