Inversion

Hi Everyone!

This is going to be a picture heavy post.  I hope everyone's internet providers can handle it.

My photography bug has been going strong this week so after my semi-successful 35mm roll, I pulled out the digital camera set up the tripod for some indoor shots in the living room.  Winter photography at home sure is tough.  There is zero natural light before work and after Artificial fluorescent bulbs give off the most horrible tint for digital photos.  If you mix fluorescent and incandescent bulbs the result is even worse.  There's hardly a WB setting that makes the photo look good.  Anyhow, enough tech talk and let's get to those photos, shall we?

This whole week Bend has had the weirdest freezing fog causing a dusting of what almost looks like snow on the ground every morning.  This morning there was an inversion layer of clouds hanging low to the ground creating the most interesting sunrise.







Photos taken from the deck showed the peaks of the mountains in the distance popping up over the clouds.  It looked so enchanting!  I took a close-up of the fog as it crystallized creating long tendrils of ice.




Claire had a pretty good week.  Since Russell has gone back to work on night shift, she's been getting up with me to have breakfast.  I then take her with me to work and trade her to Russell and he takes her home. She probably wonders why she has to get up early to go with me in to work only to then just turn around and go back home!  Heh.  This works about best for us since sometimes Russell has to say a bit late, which would make me late in coming to work.

Here she is having breakfast with me:





When I get home from work I spend a couple hours playing on the floor with Claire and reading to her.







The photo below shows how strong Claire is getting.  She can stand unassisted now for up to 30 seconds and sometimes even longer.  I have  feeling walking is just around the corner!









She is so fun and is growing up so fast!  I know I'm going to wake up one day and wonder where all the time went.

I hope everyone is doing well.  Thanks for reading!

Love,
Jane

35mm

I recently have rekindled my interest in photography, but in a whole new way.  About a year ago I asked Dad if I could borrow his old Pentax 35mm film SLR cameras after seeing a blogger who shoots with vintage film cameras.  I was really taken with the natural colors and the softer almost dreamy nature of the film shots.  There is something about them I can't quite put my finger on.  They have a warmth that it seems like it's harder to capture in digital shots. I suppose it is the same analog quality that draws many an audiophile to still listen to an old collection of records while MP3s and music downloads are more ubiquitous than ever.




I look at a lot of photography online through photo sharing sites looking for inspirations and getting ideas. Something I've noticed over the years, and have tried to achieve in my own shots is sharpness in a image.  Digital cameras have moved up in leaps and bounds with 20MP and larger sensors becoming more and more mainstream.  It really seems to be the most sought after qualities are high megapixels and sensor sizes.  Professional photographers have pretty much left film in the dust finally.  They were the last holdouts and even they have moved away from film.  It's true that in most digital shots in 21st century it seems the picture quality is much sharper than in film shots.  This is especially true of lower quality films at higher ISO ratings.  But recently it seems like things have changed a bit.  There is an emergence of instant photo share thorough forums like Instagram and Twitter.  You take a perfect sharp digital image and then you process it through a series of filters to give it a vintage or Holga look sometimes even adding borders to make it look like film.

What I'm realizing, though, is that if the trend in photography is to transform digital images a filter them to make them look more "vintage" or "retro" why not go back to the original analog medium itself?

And this brings me back to Dad's old cameras.  I bought some inexpensive 35mm film and after a few wasted rolls due my own ignorance on film loading I've got a few film images to share.


These are all completely unprocessed straight from the negative scans.  I feel like they have sort of a warm and enchanting quality.  Claire's skin tones look natural and not washed out.  I love how you get a sense of the lighting in our dark house during the long winter nights.

What I'm appreciating also about photographing with film is how it's making me so much choosier before depressing that shutter button. There's no "hip shooting" or burst shots.  I have to be patient and wait for just the right face or wait for a smile and then depress that shutter and hope it all worked out.  I can't check the shot instantly and see how it turned out.  It's such a strange feeling.

Another thing that's making me really enjoy film photography is the relative simplicity of it all.  I don't have to worry about auto focus settings, white balance, memory cards, files sizes, and shooting modes.  I look at my light meter, adjust my focus, compose my shot, squeeze the shutter and that's that!  No instant upload to Facebook, though and I can't tag my friends!




So what do you think?  Am I crazy, weird, and eccentric for getting back in to a technology that is becoming more and more obsolete as the years pass or is there really something special about film photography?  Perhaps film is now becoming the medium for artists, hipsters and eccentrics.  I've got about 5 more rolls to play with so we'll see how everything turns out.

Thanks for reading my ramblings on photography.  I hope you enjoyed the photos and I promise, in the next post I'll talk more about the pedestrian things going on in Claire's life.

Love,

Jane

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I have been very lax about posting during the holidays.  I got so caught up in a frenzy of knitting gifts for everyone I just didn't have the time or energy to update the blog.

I did manage to get 4 hand-knits completed for the holidays, but it sure took some effort and dedication.  I basically had to set all other projects aside and focus solely on knitting.  I would knit in the evening, on lunch break at work, and throughout much of the weekends.  (And knitting and knitting and knitting!)  I did a basic striped hat for Grandpa Darrel, a pair of slippers for Grandma Darlene (I actually started these in 2012 for Christmas that year), mittens for Tami to match her scarf from last year, and finger-less mitts for Lisa.  I felt a lot of accomplishment and pride in my work when I got all this done. It's actually a lot of fun to knit gifts for Christmas.  I  had such momentum going with knitting that I've actually started this years gifts, but what they are will remain a secret until December!

Tami's cabled mittens and Lisa's fingerless mitts.

For Thanksgiving we went up to Washington to see Mom and Dad. It was a great time with lots of great food.  Mom and Dad had just gotten a new black lab puppy that they named Arrow.  We debated all weekend what would be the best name for this new little guy and it was actually Marsha's idea based on Oblio's dog in the movie The Point.  What a fantastic choice and just perfect for this little guy.  Dad better teach him how to play triangle toss!

Self portrait using remote and Dad's tripod.

Puppy kisses from Arrow.  (He was actually "No Name" dog when this snap was taken.)

Claire gets her first Thanksgiving Turkey.

Sitting with Grandpa.

In December we got some sub-zero temps and lots of snow.  I think -20F was the lowest I saw at our house.   It was so cold we stayed inside most of the time.  I did a few runs on the cold days and it was so hard on my sinuses and face that I had to take some time off.

Sunset on a -15F day.

About 6" of snow in the back yard.

Family portrait in the snow.

So what's going on now in January?  Well, Russell started a new job at the same place I work.  He's working night shift while I work days.  This is our second week doing this and it's going okay.  We still have a few scheduling issues to work out.  He's not getting a ton of sleep and neither am I, so we spent last weekend catching up on that.  I'm hopeful we can get in a routine.

I signed up for a 10 mile trail race in April.  I've been getting mileage in after work before I head home.  I skip my lunch break to have the time for this.  Ha!  That also means I haven't been knitting at work.

I also have started on a new sewing project to make a coat for Russell.  It's the Albion Coat from Colette patterns.  They are hosting a contest and the grand prize is a fantastic sewing machine.  I would love to win that so I've been working hard the past week or so getting materials and things going for this project.  I love Colette patterns and this is a great challenge for me.  In the coming weeks I'll post some things about how the project is going.

Claire is getting bigger and stronger everyday.  She'll be 10 months next week and she is so close to walking.  I'm pretty certain she'll be walking before a year.  My heart just swells with pride whenever I see her.  Children are so very special.

And that's pretty much the past few months in a nutshell.  I'm going to endeavour to get back in the habit of posting regularly.  I have much to say and I compose a lot of posts in my head that then never make it to the blog.  I need to make my thoughts  a reality.

What's going with you?  Let me know in the comments.  Thanks for reading!

Love, Jane

Changes

Something happens to a baby around 5 or 6 months old where the start to outgrow the infant look and start to look like the person they are going to become.  

I'm noticing it a lot when I look back at pictures of Claire from the first few days at home until now.  Her head seems so big to me now and her hair has thinned and lightened.  

I know everyone says time goes by fast and babies grow up quickly and it really is the truth.  

It's hard to believe how fast these changes are happening!