Family Picture

 

One of my goals this Christmas was to get all of E's family into one picture - something I've never been able to accomplish before! Well, I got some pictures that at least had every person in them, just not all looking at the camera a the same time. Maybe next Christmas.

I finally narrowed down my pictures from 400+ to about 60. I probably left some out by accident - in fact, I know I did because the above picture didn't make it into the set, for some reason. But, anyway, you can browse through them yourself here, or see the slideshow (recommended - less clicking and the pictures are bigger and look better against the black background) here. If you move your cursor to the upper right corner you will see the link for "Show Info" if you want to know what the heck it's a picture of :)

First Glimpse at Christmas Present

OMG! My family is awesome! My mom, dad, sister and her husband all chipped in to get me a 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens! This is awesome on so many levels:

• It shows they support the photography thing and understand why it's important to me
• It's super expensive so I'm not sure when I would have bought it for myself
• It's the lens i MOST WANTED
• I don't think they all even knew exactly what it was, they just knew I wanted it and bought it anyway!

I had over 400 pictures on my camera when I got back to Akron today, but I wanted to pull my favorite three from the new wide angle lens and post them up here so you can see the awesomeness that I can do now! Imagine what cool pictures I get when I actually get used to it!

 

 

 

Thanks everyone! Seriously. A lot.

Also. I bought myself Animal Crossing today, and am now regretting leaving the Wii with Randy and Elizabeth :)

(no worries, I also bought myself Banjo-Kazooie, and that's an XBox game, so I'm fine for a few days)

Oh look! I'm famous again!

The first pic on this article is mine!

This is the third time I've been picked as a "Friday Find", and the second time I've gotten top billing! It's very exciting.

Speaking of exciting, remember last year when I got that Innovation Award at work? I got another one this year. I'm the only person to have ever gotten two! That's not saying much, since this is only the second year they've done it. But still. Exciting, none the less. I nominated someone, too, and they got the award as well!

 

I don't think I've posted pictures of the kitties recently, so here's a new one of Myles that's such a classic look for him.

We had a great - but tiring - weekend. Darren was in town from Chicago, so I spent Friday night with him, and later John was able to catch up with us, too and played Trivial Pursuit with us, we stayed up late and laughed and played games, it was great.

Saturday night we had a Christmas party with John's friends from college up in Mentor so we drove up there for that and spent the night.

Sunday night, John had some of his friends from high school over to the house to play poker, so there was that. Needless to say, I'm exhausted, so I took a half day off work today (I had tons of comp time from my project, so it was about time I used some of it!) It was very much needed!

Happy Birthday, E!

That is all.

The Setup

This is the third time I've tried writing this entry, and my last attempt. So if this doesn't post, then forget it, you won't see the setup of my new office + the drobo up close.

 

 

NaNoWriMo Success!

So, there's this thing called NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, people all over the world participate and try to write a 50,000 word novel in the course of a month. I've known about it for a few years, but this is the first year I attempted it, and I'm happy to report that I successfully finished - with an entire day to spare, I ended with 50,412 words!

The novel is actually pretty horrible (no one every said you had to write a GOOD novel in a month), though I hope to one day go back through and edit it and turn it into something halfway decent. I'm not sure why, other than just for personal satisfaction. The book is a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of four different teenagers during their Sophomore year of High School.

In other not-as-exciting-news, John got injured at our hotel room when we ordered room service for breakfast and the jar of jelly he tried opening had a glass shard stuck to it and he sliced his thumb open. It was really pretty bad, and obviously ruined the meal. We're hoping to get compensated for the price of the room, but there was no manager on duty while we were there and apparently there won't be one until Tuesday. I found this pretty surprising, as when I worked retail there had to be some sort of manage on the premises at all time. *shrug*

I've also been slowing building up my equipment in the office, which is incredibly boring to you, I'm sure, but exciting for me. A while ago, I purchased a tablet/pen off of woot (easier to do photo editing with it). Then about a week ago, I found a good deal on a drobo (for the non-geeks: it's a box that I can put hard drives in will automatically back up everything I put on it onto other hard drives in the box - which means it's pretty useless if you don't have more than one hard drive, but if you DO then you have a pretty failsafe method of storing data), and a coworker showed me a great deal on 1 TB hard drives, so I got two of them.

Then, during Black Friday, I found a great deal online for a 22" LCD monitor that had all the specs I was looking for that they say you should have for photo editing, so I ordered that, too.

Finally, I got a second power cord for my personal laptop ($20 off of ebay instead of $100 directly from toshiba!), so that I can keep one up here in the office, and one down in the living room so it's easier to move around the house. yay.

Even though I found a lot of great deals, I've still spent a lot of money on this geekery, which is money I had been planning on putting towards the wide angle lens I really want, but that can wait until next year. It's really more important to me that I don't lose any of my photos than it is for me to be able to take wide angle shots.

There is, also, a great sense of satisfaction that every room in our house will now be used on a regular (perhaps even daily!) basis. Ok, so the guest room is only used as John's closet and the dining room is mainly used to make wine, but hey, at least they're being used, right?

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Happy Birthday (a little late)

Here's some pictures I took on my birthday, the one with the stick, I'm actually kicking leaves in the background to get it to look like that. I actually meant to focus on the leaves, but I actually liked the way it turned out focused on the stick instead! Hooray for beautiful mistakes! (the flowers are from John, he sent them to me at work for my birthday) (keep scrolling down for pictures of the NEW SOFA!)

 

 

 

Flowers from John

John sent me flowers at work for my birthday, these are them the next day after the lilies started blooming (now there's yellow and orange ones, too) (keep scrolling down to see my NEW SOFA!)

 

 

 

NEW SOFA!!!

I bought myself a birthday present (the money mom and dad gave me for my birthday went towards it, too)... the most amazingly awesome sectional sofa:

 

 

 

 

The only downside I've found so far is that with a sectional like this, you really only put a lamp on one side, and I alwasy alwasy complaining about how the dark the living room was even BEFORE. Now it's REALLY dark in here. A solution must be found at some point...

Fall at my house - Part 3

Been taking pictures around the house, since I love fall so much :) My favorite picture, I think, is the vine on the house (I belive it's in the Part 2? I'm not paying attention, really)

Work is CRAZY busy, so much to do and so little time. Can't wait to see the family and celebrate thanksgiving in a little over a week!

 

 

 

Fall at my house - Part 2

 

 

 

Fall at my House - Part 1

 

 

 

Pittsburgh Pumpkins '08

I am currently The Sick.

I had a slight sore throat yesterday, got a little worse this morning, but I headed off to Pittsburgh anyway to go to the pumpkin farm with E and her family. We left for the farm as soon as we got there, but by the time we got back all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and never get out again, so I got in my car as soon as we got back to the house so that I could get home, and I've been on the sofa ever since. I've been sucking on cough drops and taking generic day-quil, and John took me out to get a pumpkin milkshake (so yum), so hopefully I'll feel better soon.

Anywa, because of The Sick, I didn't edit this pictures as much as I may have otherwise, but you can see the full collection of photos from today here, my favorite shot of each kid is below.

 

 

 

Busy, busy weekend!

I took Friday off of work so that I could go with John to Alexis and Scott's wedding. Alexis is one of John's friends from high school, and Scott is someone he met in college. John actually introduced the two, and he was a Bridesman in the wedding (wore a tux, but stood on the Bride's side, not the Groom's). If you want to see pictures of the rehearsal/wedding/reception, you can see those here.

On Sunday, we went back to the same property John took me to the last time we were in Mingo (a friend of the family that has 200 acres), and I took tons of photos. My favorites were of some old tractors that were sitting in the field. You can see my favorite 30 pictures here. (different format, long story)

Just a few pics from OhioMart

I took a number of pictures there, but these three were probably my favorite. We had a nice time walking around, John had a great time in the beer tent, sampling different beers from a brewery, and we've both enjoyed the giant hunk of Amish baby swiss cheese that John bought:

 

 

 

You should come to Ohio around this time next year, mom.

It's really too bad you're not here this weekend, mom, because I'm thinking about going to this. It's an arts & crafts festival that's AT Stan Hywet. I know you loved Stan Hywet, and that you'd enjoy walking around and looking at all the booths. I'll think of you when I'm there.

Well, it's October, and you know what that means...

...My birthday is coming up!

In order to help you out, I've gone in and updated my wishlistr list, and you can see my current wish list here. I'm sure you're all shocked to see a large number of camera lenses and the like on there. I tried really hard to find some cheaper things I wanted, but let's face it, photography is an expensive hobby. There's two camera things on there for less than $100, though, and a few other non-camera things that are on the cheap side, too.

Mom - I'm still looking for the glasses online, but no luck yet. It's hard because I don't know what that design was called, so I have just browse through all the Lenox patterns I see places. I'm still hopeful to find them, though...

Outside the house

Don't miss the other entry (also with pictures) before this one!!!

As mentioned in the previous entry, I've been really trying to hone my editing skills. These are some typical everyday things around my house (the gate between my front and back yard, the hook on the screened top of the fire pit, and the rust on our charcoal grill), that I think I've really made look pretty... or at least more interesting! :)

 

 

 

Mary & Andrew

It's amazing how much I've learned about photography and photo editing this year, and it's all be self-taught, and very little reading, mostly just playing around - as well as following photographers I love online and getting inspired from them. While I probably could get better faster if I "trained", I want to keep it fun for me, which means "no work" for me.

Anyway, lately I've been focusing more on the editing side of the equation than the photography side. I remembered the pictures I took of E's family back in June and pulled out two photos and played around. I obviously made them both black & white, but I played with the curves and levels, as well, and cloned out a spot of drool on Mary's outfit: