We’d been talking about taking Natalie to the Zoo, or to Holiday World, or to the Children’s Museum, all summer. Her birthday seemed like a good time to do that, and since the Children’s Museum was indoors and air-conditioned and Natalie’s birthday falls at a time notorious for its heat and humidity, we thought it was probably the best choice. We rounded up the crew (both of my parents, Tim’s mom, Andrew and Tina, and of course Natalie and Tim and myself) and headed up on Sunday morning.

It had been a very long time since I’d been. Mom and Dad used to take us to the museum quite a bit; it used to be free admission, so it was something very affordable besides being fun and educational. I have fond (if fuzzy) memories of hours spent running from exhibit to exhibit, playing and learning. As far as I can tell, it’s only gotten better over the years.

We started at the bottom and worked our way up, only leaving when Natalie started showing signs of being overtired (not that she napped in the car on the way home). There’s so much to do that we didn’t get to see everything we would’ve liked, but we still managed to pack a lot in. Natalie wasn’t fond of the loud noises in the Dinosphere and All Aboard! on the lower level, but I’m sure she could’ve stayed in the Barbie exhibit or in the preschooler-focused Playscape all day if we’d been able to. I think we all could’ve spent a long time with Fireworks of Glass, the permanent Dale Chihuly installation. Especially those of us with cameras. (Interestingly enough, as art I’m sort of so-so on it — I’m not big on abstract sculpture — but I could’ve photographed it all day. BTW, you should totally go here and watch the time-lapse video of it being installed.)

And yes, cameras. Of course there are photos. I will someday blog something else again, now that photoblogging month is over. (The image of Natalie in the Barbie exhibit also got added to her public gallery.)

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Here are the final few photos from my month-long photoblogging project. I don’t have much to say about the last three days, being as it was only three days.

Except for the last one, of Tim in the dark. The light is coming from his iPad (out of frame). This was not the photo I intended, but that’s not my point here; see the rejected photo from this session for more on that. As the month has progressed, I’ve noticed more and more that I dislike relying on the automatic shutter speed and f/stop settings (which seem never to be quite right), but this little portrait session really emphasized that for me. I let the camera do its own thing for the first attempt at the shot, and it decided I needed a ten-second exposure. Which was hugely overexposed, when I previewed it. Tim waited very patiently while I stepped the exposure down manually, eventually landing on only two seconds as the ideal.

That experience also made me really, really glad that I was using a digital camera. I couldn’t have done this with film. No preview. I probably would’ve run up quite a bill with film bracketing exposures to ensure that I got the shot I wanted, at the very least, and in this particular case I might still not have gotten the effect I was looking for.

The final three photos: Libby, fair ribbons, and Tim.

OK, so, wrapping up. I think the month-long project was useful in very much the same way NaNoWriMo is useful. It pushes me to actually do something and not just sit around dithering about a lack of inspiration or whatever… And then go with the results, even if they’re not terribly inspiring, and figure I can worry about cleaning up my mess later. (In the case of NaNo, that means writing; in the case of this project, it means learning from my mistakes.)

It’s also, as I mentioned above, gotten more much more comfortable with my equipment. I have a better feel for the controls on the EOS and the Powershot, and a better feel for what I can do with them technically within those limits. The latter goes for my iPhone as well. (There just aren’t many controls, with that one; it’s all about “OK, now what can I do with what I’ve got?”)

As the artistic merit portion of the program goes, I don’t know. I still took a lot of photos of my usual subjects, especially Natalie and food. (Sometimes even Natalie with food.) The limits I placed on myself did force me to look at more things outside my usual comfort zone, but it didn’t stop me from still constantly turning to those subjects. (Although I didn’t do as much with flowers as I’d thought I would. Which is good, because there are only so many “it’s a flower!” photos that can exist in this world before they get boring, anyway.) I just had to reject photos of those subjects in favor of others. Maybe the lesson here is as much editing as anything, though, because I don’t think it was a bad thing to have taken the photos in the first place…

You can view the rejects, with reasons for rejection listed, here.

A few of the rejects also made it into Natalie’s public gallery:

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This has not been the best week for photoblogging. Oh, I got my shot every day, but the shots themselves suffer from all sorts of problems. In Saturday’s, the light was too strong. On Sunday, I forgot to bring a “real” camera with me when we celebrated Andrew’s birthday and the iPhone just didn’t quite cut it for a lot of shots. Tuesday I had an idea at the last second and pulled it off with no time to spare for coming up with something else… and it didn’t turn out all that well. Wednesday, I just sort of lost the motivation again and once again wound up with a simple snapshot — better than nothing, but not anything special either. (This one particularly frustrates me, this morning. I’d been holding off on using photos of Natalie, even though I’ve gotten some good ones this month, because I’d set a max of two and wanted to save one for her birthday. Then I realized that I won’t probably actually see her on her birthday; I’ll be gone to work before she gets up and then she’s going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. So I finally decided to use another one of her, and… it’s not as good as some of the others that I didn’t use earlier.)

The Tuesday photo (in the dark garage) wound up being my first major correction of the month. Other than giving a few shots the monochrome treatment or adjusting exposure a little bit here or there, I’ve tried to leave the photos alone and just let them show what they show. In that one, though, there was an LED or something near the center of the photo creating a horrible green corona that I didn’t notice until I started processing. The best solution seemed to be to “heal” it out.

Friday’s self-portrait also had a problem, the usual noise that creeps into iPhone photos in low light, but I did not correct it (though I have in other photos this month) and… D’ya know, I kind of like how it came out. It gives the photo a little bit of a grainy texture that I think looks good with the stark black and white. I’m not going to start modeling all my pictures after that (it’s sort of a little artsy and pretentious, really), but for a one-off I think it’s one of the better ones this week. Best of week for me is tied between that one and the Thursday shot from the doctor’s office, which I like the composition of.

Photos: A doctor’s visit, me, shopping, bowling, tomatoes, a bright monitor in a dark garage, and Natalie.

Just a few more days to go, and then I’ll post a wrap-up and the rejects gallery.

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Right, so, I referenced our Hermann trip in my photoblogging entry and then realized that I hadn’t actually said anything about the trip here, so very few people probably had any idea what I was talking about. Or had seen the other photos, or even realized there were other photos. Oops. So here it is. I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet; it might get a little compressed and I may leave some stuff out.

Hermann, Missouri is a little town in Missouri wine country. (Didn’t know Missouri had a wine country? Well, they do, and it makes delicious wine.) Mom and Dad have visited there several times, and for our tenth wedding anniversary they gave Tim and me a rather generous gift certificate (thank you again!) to their favorite bed-and-breakfast: Hermann Hill.

We opted to stay in the cottages rather than the Inn, which meant that we had more privacy but less pampering. For the most part, we enjoyed having that privacy and didn’t mind not having the pampering. In fact, we preferred having greater freedom to set our own schedule; if we’d been staying at the Inn, we couldn’t have gotten a hot breakfast until 9-ish, whereas we ate both mornings around 6-7. Our evening cookies and ice cream would also have been delivered at 9:30pm, and we were falling asleep by that time on Saturday. The hot breakfasts (reheated out of the fridge) would have better served fresh, but that’s the price we pay for greater privacy and flexibility. The other major draw of the cottages, the private hot tub on the deck, was unfortunately of no use to us on this trip because it was just. Too. Hot. The jacuzzi tub built for two inside, on the other hand, was wonderful. As was the steam shower.

Our favorite dining experience by far while we were there was The Cottage just outside of town. It’s a humble little place set up in an old house tucked away in the woods that focuses on building a menu around what they can find at the Farmers Market and other local sources. There is obviously a little bit of supplementing going on (I don’t think shrimp are native to Missouri), but I don’t think it’s much. Because ingredient availability can change so quickly, the menu is always changing. In fact, the new one was still being printed up as we arrived. It’s local, it’s a bit on the fancy side but not so much so that they’re above serving fried chicken (“just like your grandma made…if she was a good cook”), and everything was very well prepared. So, in other words, tailor-made to attract us, really. Plus, the surroundings are just gorgeous.

We couldn’t very well visit Missouri wine country without visiting a couple of wineries. Two nights and only one full day meant we didn’t have a lot of time to try to go everywhere, but we did see a few. Our favorite overall experience was Adam Puchta, a sort of homey down-on-the-farm operation complete with wandering cats and dogs. We were served by a friendly, talkative older gentleman who expressed great surprise that we were celebrating our tenth anniversary and not our first or second. (Flatterer.) Many of the samples came with a bite of this or that to draw out the best flavors of the wine. Hermannhof was pretty, and the wines were decent and the staff at least cordial, but it didn’t impress us as much. At Stone Hill, our “official” tasting experience was fairly bad; the person pouring clearly did not want to be there, almost completely ignored us, and didn’t bother giving us any information on what we were tasting at all. However, that was balanced out by the tour.

Stone Hill offers tours of their winery multiple times daily, but once a month they also offer a “Grapes to Glass” tour. Mom and Dad had suggested that we take it if we could, and it happened to be the weekend we were there, so we thought we’d give it a go. The senior winemaker took us through the winemaking process, answering questions and pouring tastes (including some straight from the barrel, still aging) along the way. It was extremely informative. I’m familiar with the general process of winemaking and have done a winery tour once or twice before, but having the guy who actually makes the wine there allowed for a great deal more in-depth discussion of the topic. Even without the tastings (sufficient, even over the course of 2-2.5 hours, to get us a bit tipsy) and the souvenier glass, it was well worth the $25 each we paid for it.

Sunday we woke up wondering what to do and how quickly we should leave town to go back home. The weather made the decision for us. Just as we were packing up, the skies opened up and downpour ensued. We left in a bit of a hurry, and we were both soaked when we got into the car. The storm just sort of seemed to follow us home. At least it let up after a while, and it only hailed for a little bit… It was stormclouds all the way back to Bloomington, though. And it’s been raining ever since.

Photos, by both Tim and myself:
Private Gallery
Public Gallery

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This week was easier than others because it began with our trip to Hermann. Between packing and three days of travel, about half the week came with ready-made subjects. The rest of the week was really difficult. I’m finding it harder and harder to do something new every single day, especially as I hit my limits on certain subjects. (Although I haven’t actually used any flower pictures at all. If only I had some flowers…) The things around my house are just not that interesting! I think a month was a good time limit on this, really.

The funny thing is, it’s not always that I have trouble pulling out the camera and taking a picture. It’s just that I don’t think the subject is anything interesting at all, sometimes. (I’ll post some of them in that “rejects” gallery at the end of the month and you can tell me what you think. Is a picture of a plastic building block in a sunbeam “interesting”?)

On the other hand, I have also found myself more consciously editing toward the stated goal of making a record of what’s going on and not just taking a picture. For example, take a look at Saturday’s picture from Hermann, the one in the wine cellars. There were better shots to choose from; some of them were even mine and not Tim’s. They weren’t as good at representing the day, though, so I chose this one instead.

Photos! Packing followed by three days of trip, some eggs, a sleepy day, and a rainy day.

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I have managed not to miss a day this week, either, and thus I still consider this a successful challenge. Not all the shots I’m getting are wonderful. I’m trying not to freak out about that too much. After all, the point is to do, not to sit around until the perfect inspiration happens to drop by. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, practice makes perfect, insert your own cliche here.

I think honestly so far my most successful shot has been the one of the dirty dishes last week. It wasn’t the best photo, but it’s the one that most embodies the spirit of the whole enterprise: To find a shot and do something halfway interesting with it, even when there doesn’t seem to be one handy and I really would like to just say “fuck it, not today” and go to bed already.

I’m finding that the rules I set, particularly the limits on certain subjects, are pretty difficult. Forcing myself to look for pictures has resulted in my naturally seeing more shots to take — but most of them involve either Natalie or food. I’ve gotten some decent photos that I ultimately rejected because I didn’t want to use up my quotas too quickly. (I’m trying not to do another one of Natalie specifically until the end of the month, for example, because her birthday is at the end of the month and that seems like a logical day to use her as a subject. I’ve only allowed myself two of her this month, and I’ve already used one…)

I also have a small pile of rejects that were simply rejected because I got another shot that was better. Maybe at the end of the month I’ll do a “rejects” gallery.

Of this week’s shots, I’m best-pleased with the blueberry jam and least happy with the candle. The latter was not at all the shot I wanted, but I hadn’t shot anything else for the day and the rest of the group were far worse. I’m thinking I might experiment more with candlelight later in the month and see if I can’t do something better.

Photos! The disappearing sunlight, a cat, do-it-yourself science, home canning, a picture of pictures, your standard candle-flame shot, and… buttons?

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Week one, and… I suppose well enough begun. I managed not to miss a day, which is a good start. I found it difficult, some days, to find the photograph. I wasn’t inspired, I didn’t know what to take a picture of, I wasn’t feeling it. That’s the point, though, to push through a lack of inspiration and do something, anything. As a result, some of these are significantly less exciting than others, but at least they’re something, I guess. It also became apparent, though, that I need to work on making those less-inspired pictures interesting. I think I started to think more about that late in the week — with the picture of the dishes, I at least tried some different angles and didn’t just go for the obvious straight-on shot, which is more than I can say for the picture of Natalie for example.

I had two sort of big experiments this week. One was a portrait session with Jen, who wanted photos of her new haircut; the other was attempting photos of fireworks on the Fourth of July. I’ve talked about the fireworks in a previous post, so I won’t repeat that here. The portraits were an experiment because I typically just snap candid photos; I don’t usually even like for my subjects to realize their picture’s being taken. (The exception is Natalie, but somehow her being only almost-three makes a difference there.) I found myself very self-conscious about giving any kind of direction, even though there were times when I should have. I also think I got too focused on “get a good picture of Jen” and lost the idea of specifically showcasing her new haircut. So while I do think I wound up with some pretty decent images, I think there were things I could have done to improve the session itself and the results.

In other news, I discovered that although the Zenfolio iPhone app is handy for uploading photos directly from my phone, it truncates the EXIF information. I get dimensions, file size, image type, color space, and date modified, but all the info about camera settings (and date taken) is missing. Which I suppose is not as important to me personally when dealing with cameraphone photos, but it would still be nice to have intact. Especially the date taken (vs. date modified), for the purposes of this project. I still have the images on my phone, though, so I may be able to re-upload via the computer and restore the missing data that way.

And now the photos: three portraits, the sun, a sparkler, dirty dishes, and tea. Click on thumbnails to see the full image.

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I didn’t actually intend for this to turn into a month of only blogging photography. Well. Eventually I’ll get around to something else, but for now, more photos!

We were over at Mom and Dad’s for the Fourth of July, and I decided to bring the camera along. Photoblogging aside, it’s the sort of event I like to just have a camera around for. It’s good practice. Of course, half the time I forget to focus on documenting the event and start just taking pictures of anything and everything, and this time was no exception. I also was a very naughty photographer who forgot to check her camera settings before beginning, so unfortunately most of the pictures of the garden I took had to be thrown out. The shutter was open too long; they were overexposed and blurred.

I did have a specific experiment in mind for photoblogging, though. When it got dark, I got out the tripod, set up the camera for long exposures, and started attempting to photograph the fireworks. The ones in the sky were a bit tricky. Mostly, I got lines of light rather than accurate representations of the pretty explodey things I was seeing. I suspect this is because the shutter was open too long and caught the light as trails rather than points. If I try this again, I’ve got to work on my timing, so that I can try to capture the points rather than the lines.

The sparklers came out really nicely, though.

Public Gallery: Fourth of July 2010
Private Gallery: Fourth of July 2010 (Private)
Added to Natalie’s Public Gallery: Feather, Duet

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The promised Natalie non-photoblogging photos are up. These cover a range from April until now (and one or two I could use as my photoblog for today if I need to, though I have other plans for that). The private gallery includes a few random pictures of Natalie having fun, a “fashion show” to try on some dresses that Great Ma-Maw sent over, play food, family history, something EVEN BETTER THAN TV, and of course the requisite cheesy grins.

Private Gallery: Pretty Things
New public photos:
The Rainbow Dress (I posted this one on Facebook, so if you’re following me there you’ve already seen it)
Coy
Sunshine Girl
Who Needs TV?

There’s also one lone new photo in my random-shots gallery, which didn’t qualify for photoblogging because I took it weeks ago:
Clover

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…that Zenfolio offers RSS feeds for individual galleries. So if you’d like to just follow along with the photoblogging thing as I post photos, rather than waiting for me to blog them here, you can subscribe to the feed here:
http://qnarf.zenfolio.com/p1026707255/recent.rss

One day down, thirty to go. This weekend, a couple of experiments are on the slate: Jen’s expressed an interest in getting some pictures of her new haircut, which will be new for me because I’ve not really done posed portraits before, and I have designs on attempting to photograph some of the fireworks Dad was talking about setting off at the house on the Fourth of July. We’ll see how that works out.

I also have some photos of Natalie that I need to upload, unrelated to the photoblogging project…

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