Mom Snaps

I grew up in a small town and have lived in other places but recently moved back here. There’s not much to do, and I miss our ‘big’ city.

One thing we do have plenty of is local parks and playgrounds. I noticed this one and so we stopped. It was a lot of fun to play in(hey I had to keep an eye on the baby! yeah..that’s it) and one photo doesn’t nearly do it justice. The decor is castle-inspired, so it makes me miss the Ren Faire.

I was so glad to see something so cool and special in my small hometown. Having options like this is making it easier to adjust to the simple life once again.

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One of the moms in our local playgroup found a great deal on butterfly houses and caterpillars. We ordered four caterpillars since the success rate of them becoming caterpillars is 50% or something like that. So, maybe with four, we will have at least one butterfly. Rae loves butterflies.

We got them yesterday and they have already grown some. I had read that the more they eat, the more they grow. We need to think of some names for them. Any suggestions?

I love this sundial located in the front of the library. Too bad I’m not tall enough to get a good angle from above it.

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I have been reading a few lessons on photography and feel like I am learning something. So the past couple of days I have been using the ‘M’ (manual) setting on my Canon. It’s an exercise in learning what settings work in what situation. I have horrible reading comprehension skills and learn a lot better by doing than reading.

My first challenge is to take pictures outdoors. As you can see from these two pictures, I am making some progress.

It’s hard to see the bottle tree at all. Way too much light coming in. So I did some adjustments and the next picture turned out much better.

Maybe one of these day I will actually get the hang of the M setting. I take 20 shots and only have 3 that are worth anything. Still it’s fun to practice especially when I have such a cute subject.

Here is a ’sign’ I saw at the Ren Fest taken at the Washing Well Wenches show. I didn’t get to see the show but hope to next time we go as it looked like everyone was having a good time.

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The playgroup toured one of the city’s fire stations last week. Rae enjoyed getting the ‘fireman’, ie fireman helmet, best of all. In my Canon classes, I’m up to the one that deals with exposure. I noticed that this photo was a little bright, so I actually took it into a program and added shadow to it.

I seldom touch up photos. I just forget that this ‘digital darkroom’ can enhance pictures. So I’m slowly learning and trying new things.

Last week I ordered a portable hard drive to store all my digital photos. It arrived two days later! I can’t wait to start transferring all of my photos onto it.

I do plan to organize my photos as I go instead of just dumping them to it like I have been doing to my hard drive. Once I thin out some, I will probably have a lot less but at least those will be the photos I want to keep and won’t be taking up space.

Once I get them sorted, I plan to back them up to a CD/DVD just in case something happens to the hard drive. It feels good to have a plan to organize. Once I’ve accomplished my goal, it will be even better.

We’ve had some windy days in April, which makes it perfect for kite flying. My husband has this dragon kite that he has tried for weeks to get off the ground good. He finally succeeded.

I’ve enrolled in a free online class through Sony Backstage 101. It has to do with all the settings on a digital camera. While my camera is not a Sony, I’m hoping that I can find it useful. There are a bunch of other classes, too. I’m hoping to learn more about photography and begin to take my camera off auto a little more often.

Looking at this photo I can tell I should have taken it closer so that you can really see how odd it is. The bottom limbs go all the way to the ground. In fact, some even look buried, almost like smaller magnolia trees branching off from it. It’s definitely odd looking and am surprised I haven’t noticed it before. I wondered if they recently trimmed it up since I never recall seeing it look so strange before.

For this week’s theme of twist(ed), I went with Rae’s favorite slide at the park. Of course it’s the tallest one there, and she wanted me to slide with her. That was a tight fit to get through that small space. Makes me realize just how out of shape I really am!

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