Photo-a-Day days 4, 5 and 6

So I'm way behind on posting this, we've been really busy lately and then we've had some issues arise (which I'm being vague about on purpose)... so anyway, here's days 4, 5 and 6 now.

Day 4: joyous (totally cheated and took a photo of a canvas on my wall as both boys are sick now and aren't in the best joyous moods)

Day 5: the temp today (34 degrees)

Day 6: shopping (a package bought for a friend's son's birthday)

Photo Days 2 & 3

So I meant to post this yesterday but ran out of time somehow. Day 2 of the Photo-A-Day Challenge is Your Favorite Holiday Movie. I don't really have one. I LOVE all holiday movies. Some of my favorites are: Elf, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated version), Charlie Brown's version of course, and National Lampoon's. I do still love Home Alone, Jingle all the Way, and Santa Clause. But my favorite movie of all is the experience: just sharing it with my boys:

Focused on the Grinch

 

 

Day 3 of the Challenge is red. We decorated our house for Christmas this past weekend so we have lots of reds and greens, but I went outside for my inspiration. There's these red berries on a bush next to where I park my car and they make a wonderful contrast to the snow we're getting today.

 

Yes, I know it says a photo a day, but I couldn't decide between the two of the "red" photos, so you get both.

You Capture - Fall

This week's You Capture over at I Should Be Folding Laundry is fall. Fall is my absolutely favorite time of the year. Fall to me means the smell of wood burning, beautiful fall foliage, hot cocoa and warm snuggles. I love fall. Here's some of my favorite fall shots from this past week. The fall here in Germany was absolutely stunning and it was such a joy capturing it. Hope you enjoy it too!

You Capture - Halloween

This week's You Capture challenge is Halloween. I only took about two hundred photos on the day we went trick or treating so this was an easy challenge for me. Here are a few of my favorites:

Linking up to You Capture at I Should be Folding Laundry

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 14

This week's challenge hosted by A Step in the Journey is sunsets. Unfortunately, sunsets around here are often lackluster. I didn't manage to snap the one decent sunset this week due to the fact that my camera wasn't in the car with me, so I'm re-using an old one that I snapped a couple of months back. It really was stunning, so posting it twice is hopefully okay. Enjoy!

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 13

This week's challenge hosted by A Step in the Journey is silhouette. This should be easy since I have two cute little guys that I love to photograph, but again, life happened. I've been so busy that I've barely managed to pick up my camera, except for the times when I'm teaching photography to the kids at my workplace. That's really sad because my kiddoes are at such a fun stage that I don't want to miss capturing the memories we're making. So I'm resolving to be better about that. Anyway, here's two shots which maybe, kinda, hopefully count as silhouettes:

First bike ride! Check out the cool shadow.

These black birds were so dark that it's almost like they're a silhouette, right?

check out some fun silhouettes (and most likely better) over at A Step in the Journey

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 12

This week's challenge over at A Step in the Journey is bokeh. One of my favoritest things to capture! I love setting up my camera to blur my background and sometimes even adding in more bokeh on my processed images. Unfortunately, I just have not had much time to get anything done. I would feel like such a slacker, except for I'm incredibly busy with other things, just non-bloggy things. Here's my single lonely capture of bokeh for this week.

Check out more bokeh in all its glory over at A Step in the Journey

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 11

This week's (ELEVEN!) challenge of the 20 Week Photography Challenge is orange. Again, I had such high ambitions of getting things done around here and then having plenty of time to snap away til my heart's content. It didn't happen. I did manage to snap two orange items for you...

Some orange popsicle sticks, and red, and purple, and..

These circus signs are showing up everywhere around here. They're kinda creepy.

So there you have it. My pitiful attempts at orange. But maybe this weekend I'll finally get to the pumpkin patch or the castle at the top of our city to shoot some lovely fall foliage.  Linking up to the challenge HERE.

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 10

This week's photography challenged hosted by A Step in the Journey is Hands. We have plenty of cute little hands around here. Hands that get into trouble, hands that get messy, hands that explore their world, and hands that give hugs and caresses. Here's some of my favorite hands shots this week:

Linking up to http://www.astepinthejourney.com/. Cheers!

You Capture - Green

This week's theme over at You Capture hosted by Beth is green. I had such high ambitions for this capture, but alas, life intervened. I've been incredibly busy with my new job, my old job, being a wife, being a mom, and just generally being. So I snapped very few photos of green, but here's what I've got:

Love the intense stare of my oldest boy while he practices soccer

Drake always has fun at soccer, here he's practicing with Daddy

Night glow sticks for bedtime as an incentive for going to bed

Spider web in the grass with morning dew

There's a bit of green still about, look closely in the fog

Linking up to http://www.ishouldbefoldinglaundry.com/. Check out all the other greenness on Thursday!

You Capture - Industrial

This week's You Capture was Industrial. I really thought that this challenge was going to be hard. I live in a typical German village, we don't have any industrial plants or anything like that. I certainly didn't feel like driving to the big city just to snap a few photos, so I decided to take a walk after work one morning and see what I could find. It turns out that tokens of our industrialized life are everywhere.

Take for example telephone and cable poles (above shot taken in foggy morning conditions, same pole below during bright sunny conditions).

 

I also found this adorable car. I don't know if it counts as industrial, but I'm sooo using it. It was too cute not to snap. Linking up to Beth's blog over at I Should Be Folding Laundry

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 9

This week's 20 Week Photography Challenge is "A Mess." Wow. That's so incredibly easy to capture around here. I have two children, aged 3 and 2. My house is always a mess. I guess maybe the hard part is finding a bit of the mess to photograph that's visually captivating.

Here's some of this week's messes:

Linking up to A Step in the Journey. Go check out some other lovely messes on Thursday!

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 8

This week's challenge is black and white. I love shooting in color and then adjusting my files to be black and white (always saving the color versions of course in case I want to go back). I find that the best subjects in black and white are usually people. I'm not a big fan of landscapes in black and white (think Ansel Adams) though of course there are exceptions. Unfortunately since I've been really sick this week with a bug I haven't had much energy to take some photos. I took one which I'm submitting here:

This is my littlest guy. We were on the floor finger painting. The smudges on him are bright pops of paint. It was a messy but fun experience. Here's the color version, just so you can compare:

I think I actually prefer the color version. It gives a better narration I think. But since I'm sick and slacking on my photography challenge, that's all you get. But I will leave you with my all-time favorite photo that I took in black and white. I just absolutely love this photo of my father (Papa) with his oldest grandson (who is now almost four years old).

I love the tenderness of the pose, and the casualness of it. The juxtaposition of old life and new life. The way my dad looks to be breathing in this new baby smell of his first grandson. I think it's actually a better photo because they aren't looking at the camera. What do you think?

Linking up over at A Step in the Journey.

You Capture - Apple

This week's challenge over at I Should be Folding Laundry is apple. It'll be interesting to see everyone's take on this. Past challenges have been more open-ended (like a color or vague subject) but this one leaves little to the imagination. I can't wait to see everyone's take on the apple. Beth encouraged us all to be creative..hmm. Here's my creative and humble submissions for this week:

Check out all the great apple submissions tomorrow at Beth's blog.

20 Week Photography Challenge Week 7

This week's photography challenge hosted over at A Step in the Journey is What I Wore Today. As I may or may not have mentioned previously, I'm not a fan of self-portraits. I'm usually the one behind the camera. So I may have gotten a little crafty and shown you only one piece of what I wore today.

These are my favoritest heels that I currently own right now. Though there are a pair of ADORABLE shoes at the base exchange that I covet. Secretly and without hope. They're $158. I would never ever spend that much on shoes. There's so many ways to spend $158 and getting a single pair of shoes for that much seems like such an exorbitant waste to me.

I also have to admit that I was tempted to pull a Joey on you all. You know, "Could I BE wearing any more clothes?"

Alas, that was way too much work. Linking up to http://www.astepinthejourney.blogspot.com/

You Capture - Summer Sunsets

This week's theme over at I Should Be Folding Laundry is summer sunsets, or back to school. Since I don't have children old enough to go to school and I'd feel like a real creeper taking photos of other people's children, I did the summer sunset challenge. I just have one shot for you. Sunsets in Germany (atleast in my part of it) aren't that impressive. This was a real rare treat. You can check out more beautiful photos tomorrow (Thursday) over at Beth's blog

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20 Week Photography Challenge Week 6

This week's photography challenge hosted by A Step in the Journey is "from a low angle."
I took a ton of photos for this week's challenge as it proved to be an easy one (grab camera, lie on stomach, take shots) but am only showing three. I've been a bit of a digital hoarder (okay, a big time digital hoarder). I have so many photos that I'm reluctant to throw away, even if they're grainy, out of focus, or hopelessly overexposed. I'm trying to be better about this and so I've tossed most of my shots from this week into my trash bin on my pc. Here's what remains:

Linking up at: