Orange

Texture Tuesday is all about "Orange" this week. Originally I had a photo of an orange dahlia in mind, so the petals looked like flames. Well I bought one at the farmers market yesterday and this morning it looked like a sorry mess. Luckily I had also picked some Zinnia on Friday for flowers on the table for a dinner party. One of the ones that was still fresh was orange so it all worked out in the end.
I enjoyed playing with the storyboard that Kim gave us last week. I used several textures on this to get the look I was after "canvasback", "KK2" and "luminious". The tutorial for putting the colors in the swatches was very easy to follow. Fun project. I am sure we will see more than one storyboard used this week. Texture Tuesday keeps me creative, thank you Kim. Join us over at the Cafe`.http://www.kimklassencafe.com/

Weddings, Senior Pics and Camping.

Which brings me to camping. It has been a couple of years since we have been able to get out camping and this summer we made plans to go in mid August. It seemed summer had finally arrived and we were having sunny days and lucky for us the sunny weather held out and we had 4 beautiful day camping and hiking in the gorge. I have to admit I have not even edited the photos from that trip so this post will be continued later. I will say that Brandon, my youngest grandson, Jacqui, my good friend and Harry, my boyfriend and I had a wonderful time camping. More to come later with photos of the gorgeous waterfalls we saw on our hike and a few stories from camp. Although, it might be that what happens in camp stays in camp. LOL.

Weddings, Senior Pics, Camping

                                                                     
The next thing on the list was my promise to do Senior photos for my grandson Tyler. The post above this one explains the story but to summarize, he asked me to help out a friend too so one afternoon we all had time and set out to photograph.
The boys were troopers, and seemed to really get into the spirit, that made it easy for me. I had been afraid they might be a bit shy and not want to try poses but that was not the case, they even came up with a few of their own. It was not the best time of day for shooting and the sun was very bright so we will be going out again this week later in the afternoon to try again. I cannot believe that Tyler is going into his last year of high school. I am very proud of him, he is on the honor roll and works very hard at his studies. He is also an awesome football player and I am looking forward to seeing more of his games this year. As a senior he will get to play more.                                                                                    

Weddings, Senior Pics and Camping.

This has been a very busy month of August and it seems to have gone by way too fast. To start the month off I headed home to the farm for the wedding reception of my niece Shelby. As a gift to her and her new husband Dillon I told her I would cover doing the photos for the reception. I had help with this project, there were 3 of us and between all of us we came up with some pretty good photo memories of the day. Shelby and Dillon were married April 1st in El Paso TX, at least that is where they were supposed to get married. Dillon is in the Army stationed in El Paso. The day before the wedding Dillon was supposed to go get the marriage license but everyone was detained on the base for some reason and he didn't get it. Soooooo, the only place they could get the license and get married on the same day was several counties away. It took a drive of several hrs. and barely making it before 5, they found the Justice of the Peace and were married on the day they had chosen. Since Dillon didn't have a leave coming till August they planned the reception at home in Washington so all their friends and family could attend. It was a fun event and Harry, Jacqui and I had a good time doing the shooting for them. CONGRATULATION SHELBY AND DILLON, MANY HAPPY YEARS.

                                                       

         

It is Texture Tuesday once again, boy the week goes by fast. This week the theme is "Back To School" and we had to use two of Kim's textures on the photo. I volunteered to do Senior photos for my grandson Tyler and he asked if I could help his friend Austin out and do some for him. Of course, I was happy to do this plus I figured if Tyler had a friend along he might be more comfortable. My youngest grandson Brandon was my equipment and set up man, he handled getting the stuff out of the car and keeping track of props and handling the diffuser and reflectors. What started out to be the perfect day for shooting, overcast and not sunny, turned into a brighter than bright sunny day. It was not the best circumstances for trying to shoot portrait work. Most of the shots will need to be redone but we had a great time and I got some good experience at posing them for the photos. The photo of Tyler is one that is way too bright but I wanted to use it, poor guy is trying so hard not to squint but the sun was so bright that it was impossible. I used two of Kim's magic textures, Feb. Magic, I believe and Magic Scratches. I am taking the boys out again this week, in the evening, this time to do some of the shots over and I have ideas for some other locations. They came home after the shoot and were on the computer looking up ways to pose for Senior photos, I had to laugh at that. I expected them both to be way too uncomfortable to relax but they did a great job.
It will be fun to see all the ways everyone has interpreted Back to School. Check out the web site and see for yourself.
 http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe/

Pat Mark's photostream

Pat Mark's photostream .

The Way We Were

The theme for texture Tuesday this week was "Movies". Pick a favorite movie and have the photo depict that movie in some way. I have many favorite movies but putting a photo together to give a sense of the movie was the hard part. First I thought of "Love Story" an all time fav, and that would of been pretty easy since I just shot photos for my niece's wedding reception, but I wanted more of a challenge. After much thought I came up with "The Way We Were". I have many old 35mm slides that my mother took during our growing up years, that have been put on disc, so I went thru them and picked out a few of my family from my childhood. I love the old photos of moms, they always stir wonderful memories of growing up. So check out the theme for this week to see what all of our favorite movies are. http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe/

It's The Little Things

The theme for Texture Tuesday this week is "It's The Small Things". While it is hard to tell just how small this little teacup and saucer are, they are almost miniature.  The little cup is 2.5 inches across the the saucer is 4.5 and barely 3" tall overall. I loved it when I spotted it at a flea market sale down the road from my house. I also found an amazing old chair, all painted shabby chic white and suitably worn, just perfect for photos. The little cup is sitting on some of the old barn wood that I was lucky enough to be able to salvage from an old barn being torn down. I have plans for the chair too, hope to do some of my grandsons senior photos this week and I can just see him sitting in a wheat field in that chair or in a field of queen anne's lace out in the country somewhere. So join the gang over at the Cafe`, check out all the amazing photos for the weeks theme and see how we all interpreted "Its the little things".
http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe

Butterfly

French Kiss texture website is giving away some textures. This is my edit for the contest. We were asked to use the texture Purple Prose, which was so generously given as a freebie. Thanks Leslie Nichole. I love the textures with the script on them

The Beach

Anyone who knows me knows that the beach is where I love to be. Listening to the waves crashing and the shore birds calling is just next to Heaven for me. Soothes my soul. Not to say I don't love the solitude of the forest at times also, I do but the beach is where I revive. Living where I do in Oregon I am lucky to say that I have the best of both worlds, the shore or the forest are less than an hour away from home. For the last 8 yrs. or so, when my grandkids were old enough to feel comfortable away from home for an extended stay, we have stayed at the beach for a week. These trips are always such a joy for me. Seeing them just being kids and enjoying time together has been every grandma's dream. The last few yrs. we have only been able to go for a few days but it is still worth it. Now that they are older, 17 & 14 time with Grams is more limited, too many activities but this last week my youngest grandson and I took off on a very warm and sunny day and headed to the beach for one night. We packed as much stuff in that one day as we could. We have traditions that we follow, one is to stop at our favorite clam chowder place, Camp 18, on the way to the beach. Brandon said it was even better this time than last time.  It was sunny but a bit windy at the beach but not uncomfortable. Off to the store for wood to make a fire and sand toys, forks for roasting marshmallows and all the stuff for S'mores later on the beach. One other tradition we have is going to Mo's restaurant in Cannon Beach for steamer clams, and for Brandon more chowder. YUMM YUMM. Spent the evening on the beach, the wind died down and we had a great time. A bit of fog so we didn't see the sunset. The next day was spent looking in shops while we waited for the bumper cars to open. We have to ride them and see who can hit the other more. It was a draw this time. Spent most of the next day, after the bumper cars on the beach playing in the sand and soaking up the sun. My favorite thing to do is fly the kite, usually I can't get the kids to do it but this time Brandon wanted to be the retriever, the wind the first day was blowing pretty good so the kite was doing lots of loops and crashing before I could get it up into the air. Finally got it to really fly, makes my heart soar. We rented one of the pedi-cabs to petal around town, boy let me tell you, they are a lot of work, but we managed to use up almost the whole hour before we were out of steam.

In The Sky

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