Tuesday in Texas - The Routine of Routine

from Kris B.

Like many, my “year” revolves more around the academic calendar than the yearly calendar.  The end of August/beginning of September is my January.  Every April, as the school year’s end finally seems within reach, I begin making grand plans for all that I will do during my summer break when I have lots of " free time.”  I must admit that during the final stretch of the school year, I tend to focus on the negatives of my rigid schedule from September to May, constantly repeating mantras like, “I’ll be glad when summer gets here and I finally have time for fill in the blank.” or “If I didn’t have to do this right now I could,” again, “fill in the blank.”  I make lists of all of the things that I want and need to do during those few summer months.  Perhaps this is all only a silly game that I play with myself, a kind of defense mechanism, a way to get myself sanely to that moment when all of my grades are submitted and academic obligations met, that moment when I can say with confidence, “I am done!”  Then what?  What really happens during June, July, and August?

I must start by saying that I had a good summer.  As soon as school ended in May, I had several weeks at home.  Those were the weeks where I was going to clean out drawers and closets.  Those were the weeks where I was going to sew on missing buttons and mend split seams.  Those were the weeks when I was going to try all of those recipes that I have clipped and pinned over that last nine months.  In my defense, I did some of those things, but not nearly as many as I thought I would.  

I was also going to read, for pleasure.  I was going to knit.  I was going to take more pictures and study and practice to improve my photography.  I was going to write more.  I love writing and it is one of those things with which school really does interfere.  (Lesson plans and lecture notes don’t count as writing!)  These are the things that I never did.  Yet, these were the things with which I filled in those above blanks.  Why didn't I do them?

During July we travelled…a lot.  First a week in Pittsburgh for a conference and then two weeks in England on a choir tour.  It was all good.  It’s not every week that I get to sing Evensong every night of the week in a beautiful cathedral dating from the 12th century.  I must have spent June recovering from May and preparing for July.  We returned home on August 1 and all of the sudden it was time to start planning for the 2016-2017 academic year.  The twenty-four hour days that come at the beginning of August as the first day of school approaches seem to pass twice as quickly as the twenty-four hour days at the beginning of May as the semester is coming to an end.  And now, here it is, the final week of August and I am back in school.  I should be looking ahead to all that this school year will bring, but I find myself looking backwards and asking myself why I didn’t do all of the things that I “really wanted to do” over the summer.  This morning as I was writing my morning pages, the answer to that question became crystal clear.

Let’s start with the morning pages themselves.  (If you are not familiar with Morning Pages, they are a discipline of free writing for 30 minutes first thing every morning presented by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way.)  I have written morning pages for many years.  It is in these pages where true self is revealed…all of me…the good the bad and the ugly and the beautiful.  I did not write regularly over the summer.  It was hit and miss and mostly miss.  I'm not sure how I managed to write nearly every day during the school year, even the days where I taught 7:30 am classes, but didn't manage to maintain the discipline on my leisurely summer mornings.  This morning, I found myself writing about how I was going to miss the freedom of the summer yet how I love the routine of the school year.  How is that for cognitive dissonance???   The truth for me is that I am like a toddler; I need to routine to function well.  I need to have a reliable template into which I can insert my day.  Then I can function well.  During the school year there is very little flexibility in my daily schedule.  I know that if I have one free hour in my schedule and if I want to go take photos it has to be done then, then I will go do it.  Without routine, I find myself saying, “I’ve got all day.  I’ll do it later.”   And then, you guessed it…later comes and goes and whatever I was going to do never happens.  I need the routine of routine.

This realization about myself isn’t new.  My left brain self and right brain self have been playing tug-o-war with one another for fifty years.  What may be new is my perception of this reality.  I am finally learning how to balance my desire for both routine with my desire for plenty of room for a creative spirit to move within me.

I don't live in a fantasy world; I know that I don’t have time for everything I want to do and choices, sometimes hard choices, must be made.  So, I am learning to prioritize…prioritize honestly.  What this means to me is that I am thinking deeply about what I absolutely have to do, primarily work related things, and what I need to do.  Work is self explanatory, but need is not.

I used to define the things that I needed to do as those things necessary to make and keep others happy.  As a parent, this is a natural thing.  I viewed doing things that made me happy as wants, not as needs.  We all grew up hearing, “You can’t have everything that you want.”  I bought into this wholeheartedly.  As an adult with a busy schedule, the pecking order of priorities was always have to’s, need to's, and then the want to's, with time and/or energy often running out before the want to's were even considered.

I haven’t figured out how to add more hours to my days, but I have learned that many things that I once considered wants are really needs and have thus been moved up on my priority list.  I need a creative outlet.  Creating makes me feel alive.  I need to spend time relaxing with family and friends.  Community may be my number one need.  And relaxing just feels good.  I need to sleep more.  I am not a very productive or a very nice person without healthy sleep.  I don’t need, nor do I have to, to have clean drawers and closets all the time.  I don’t need to wear the one or two shirts with the missing buttons.  I don’t need to always put the needs of others first.  I am not being lazy or totally egocentric here.  I am trying to be realistic.  

To summarize all of this thinking out loud…I absolutely require routine in my life.  That routine must include time for things that I believe deep down in my soul that I need.  I also know that my routine must be somewhat fluid so that it can change as my have to’s, need to’s, and want to’s change.  I’m glad for the structure of my days now, but I will miss the luxury of my "free" time at home.

Do you have a routine?  Do you need a routine?  Do you want a routine?  Is the routine that you have working for you?  Does your routine include what YOU need?  Are you open to your routine changing?

Ponder the routine in your routine.

Farewell, August.

Hello, September.

Tuesday in Texas - Reflections On Week 1 of Our Weight Loss Journey

I am no stranger to the weight loss routine.  Once I became a real adult with a family and a job, I stopped riding my bike a hundred plus miles a week; unfortunately, my appetite didn't didn't adjust to that more sedentary lifestyle and those numbers that once accumulated as miles ridden changed to pounds gained.  I first got serious about losing weight twelve years ago when I joined Weight Watchers.  I was diligent and it worked.  After letting the pounds again slowly find their way back, I again followed the WW plan in 2011 and again was successful in losing the extra weight.  So why am I here again?

The fact that I keep finding myself in the same undesireable place is not the fault of Weight Watchers.  I am fully responsible.  Basically, I can't multi-task.  I tend to focus all of my energy and interest in one direction.  If that one place is not making healthy choices about nourishing my body, I make mindless choices and find myself exactly where I am now - once again working to shed those pounds that I don't want.  As I mentioned in my Friday post, I am not using Weight Watchers this time.  It has changed and so have I, so something new it is.  The big difference this time is that I am counting actual calories rather than "points."  Wow!  Has that been an eye opener!

I walk home from school every day.  It is a 1.3 mile walk.  Thanks to the app Map My Walk, I know that I walk at a pace of four miles per hour and that 1.3 miles is covered in approximately 2600 steps. This is all good information to know.  My walk puts me a quarter of the way there to the recommended 10,000 steps a day.  The shocker came when the app told me that my walk only burned 118 calories.  I sent a message to Tracey saying that my attempt at exercise only earned me a banana, which is 110 calories.  Lol!  A cup of black coffee is 2 calories. The handful of peanuts that I often grab between classes is 130 calories.  The crackers that I snack on when I get home from school add another 200 calories to my daily intake.  Though none of these things in and of themselves has a particularly high caloric value, taken collectively and added to the calories from three meals a day, the number starts to soar.  Even on the days where I did not snack or have any extras, like bread with my meals, I have had no problem getting to my alloted number of calories (1200-1500) per day.  I don't even want to think about how many mindless calories I have been consuming for the past few years.  I can tell that it has been a lot now that I am tracking every little thing that I eat, even those mints that you pick up on the way out of the restaurant.  They count too!

I lost four pounds last week.  That is not a healthy loss.  I am shooting for 1-2 pounds per week.  I do know that the first week of any positive change in eating habits usually causes a higher than average loss.  With this same discipline, I look for things to level off this week to a healthier 1-2 pounds  As Tracey said, we'll be happy as long as there is no gain though at least minimal loss will be most welcome!

Once of the things that I have done this time around, that is suggested by Weight Watchers bit I have never done, is to take a "before" picture and body measurements.  FYI.  All of this documentation is securely hidden away in an undisclosed location!  I certainly don't want to look at these things on a daily basis, but I do think that they will help me to see improvement along the way that perhaps the scale doesn't show.  I also have a designated pair of jeans for "the pants test."  We all know when our jeans are getting too tight.  We also know when they start to feel better.  Once a month I'll try "the pants" on and see how they feel.  To me, that may be a better indicator of where I am than any number on the scale.

Here is another observation from this week:  Though cooking meals from scratch at home is certainly healthier, it makes calorie counting much more tedious.

The SparkPeople app is great in that it gives you the tools to enter your recipe inbformation ingredient by ingredient and it will then supply you with all of the pertinent nutritional information, which can be stored. This process is not hard, but it takes time and depending on the recipe's ingredient list can be considered tedious.  This is especially true when the app also contains a barcode scanner for packagaed food.  Hold your phone up to the product's barcode and "boom" the item and all of its detailed information are logged in for you.  You don't even have to push the button on your camera.  Once the scanner has a clear read it's done.  Scanning my prepared chicken and rice burrito is a whole lot easier than measuring out all the ingredients and then typing everything in.  Boy do I sound lazy!  Please don't answer that!  I prefer to think of it as being too busy, but I could be a bit lazy, too!

All in all, I'd say we are off to a good and positive start.  I've already learned a lot about my habits, both good and bad, and have made some positive changes to help eliminate the bad ones.  One mindful step at a time and we'll get there.

Bring on week two!

Tuesday In Texas: The Journey Toward New Jeans

The conversations that Tracey and I have with one another are definitely true to our blog title.  We spend a great deal of time talking about photography and food and laughing with each other.  Yes, admittedly sometimes the laughing is at our own photo and kitchen mishaps.  One of the best things about having a really good friend is that you can share stories about how an entire photo shoot went bad because you forgot to reset your camera settings from the previous day; or, about a recipe flop that you can’t even begin to explain but makes you wonder why you think that you have any credibility with which to write a food blog.  You can also talk with one another about the tough things, like the bright red number staring up at you from the ruthless bathroom scale.

Lately our food conversations have turned more serious because we have both gotten to a place where we are unhappy with our respective weights.  We have talked about how we got to this place of dissatisfaction, as well as about past weight loss successes, weight loss obstacles, and our shared genuine desire to get serious and remedy the situation.

I have been a member of Weight Watchers for many years and when I am faithful to the program, it has worked for me.  Before Tracey and I shared our similar plight of the pounds with one another, I had decided that I would once again start counting and logging those Weight Watchers points.  As I did this, I realized that the whole program has changed since I last was “serious” about it and I found it less inspiring and more difficult to follow.  Tracey shared that she is using an app called Spark People that has you count calories instead of points, gives you more concrete nutritional information, and is free!  So, I have cancelled my Weight Watchers membership and have switched my food logging to the Spark People app.  It is not, however, a program or an app that will most help me on this journey to shed the pounds.  The key to success is having a supportive and empathetic friend by my side.  A friend who understands when I say my jeans are too tight, but I refuse to buy a bigger size.  A friend with whom I am not embarrassed to share my actual weight or waist measurement.  A friend who will be there to share the small but meaningful milestones along the way and will also be there for encouragement when I encounter those inevitable setbacks.

We are sharing our journey with all of you here because our recipes over the next few months will reflect our efforts to make healthy lower calorie, but still tasty, food choices. 

In some ways it seems kind of strange for us to share such a personal struggle with someone we have never met face to face, yet it feels perfectly natural and comfortable.  We have been talking about setting realistic goals, knowing full well that it is going to take time to achieve our ultimate weight loss goals.  Yet we keep coming back to the fact that neither of us wants to buy new jeans unless we are buying them a size or two smaller!  That was the carrot that we were dangling in front of ourselves.  Then I thought, that perhaps a better carrot might be that once we both achieve our personal goals, we should plan an actual face to face meeting and go shopping for those new jeans together!

Tuesday in Texas - Give Me An "I," Give Me An "E," But Don't Give Me Both!

As I sit down to write this, it is a perfect sunny seventy-two degrees here in Dallas.  

These are both unedited phone photos taken at approximately the same time.

Tracey, on the other hand, is working against the odds to clear the snow from her car so that she can make her way  to the bus stop to pick up Harry.  In her world, it is a not so perfect twenty-one degrees and snowing!  

Needless to say, of the many commonalities that Tracey and I share, weather is not one of them.  LOL!  Frequent misspellings of our names, however, is.

I find it funny that, for most of us, our names are something over which we had no say yet we take great pride and ownership in them, even becoming quite protective of them…meaning that we want them pronounced and spelled correctly!!!  My “real” name is Kristin, though during my life the only people that have ever called me this are my maternal grandmother, my godmother, and, on the first day of school only, every teacher that I had.  Even my parents never called me Kristin.  So, why didn’t they just name me Kris?  Short, sweet, and to the point…and it would have saved me lots of trouble with random and unwanted i’s and e’s!

And we won’t even talk here about how many times in my fifty-four years that I have said, “It’s Kris with a K, not a C.”  That is occasionally met with, “Oh, so it’s Kh?” "No!  It is NOT KH!"  This is the icing in the i’s and e’s cake!

Here are all the ways that extraneous i’s and e’s have been added to my name, making it no longer my name:

Kristen

Kristine

Kersten

Kerstin

Kiersten

(Apparently my computer is smarter than many people; it tried to auto-correct all of those misspellings for me! :-))

Many of these permutations have appeared on meaningless junk mail, but just as many instances have been by people who should have gotten it correct, but just don’t care enough or aren’t willing to take the time to get it right.

Two i’s, no e’s; that’s all I ask for!  I will gladly give Tracey all of the unnecessary e’s that people ahve tried to give me, as they are often left out of her name!

It’s Tracey.  Not Tracy.  Really.  I will give her all of the e’s that she wants!  She needs them.  I don't.  And, she promised to give me any unnecessary i’s that come her way when her name is spelled Tracie.

Neither one of us needs both an i and an e.  No Tracie and no Kristine!  We are both pretty happy with one vowel each.  Well, Tracey is kind of pushing the limits here with that y, which in her case, really is a vowel. LOL!

While you are minding your p’s and q’s, also consider your e's and i’s.  They really do matter!

Since we both have a quiet sense about us, we consider it a compliment when we are told that we complement one another quite well.  :-)

Tuesday in Texas - Oh, Crop!

I often wonder how people got to "the photo," the one that they are willing to publish share.  For what it's worth, I'm going to share that process with one of my own recent images.  The reason that I am writing about this particular photo is because the journey from beginning to end was circuitous and not my normal process.

I do try to get my photos composed correctly in camera.  I really do!  But, sometimes, for various reasons, that doesn't happen.  

• I haven't thought through the shot that I really want.
• I have the wrong lens on my camera for the image I want
• I missed some distraction in the foreground or background
• My exposure was not spot on and I end up with areas that are blown out, too dark, or both

This list can probably go on in infinitude...  The bottom line is that sometimes we don't get what we want and we are forced to try and "save" the image, make it what we want it to be.

Beyond the basic adjustments like brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, clarity, and sharpening, I am not skilled at editing.  I know that LOTS of things are possible with Photoshop, but I don't know how to do most of them.  And the truth is, I am only interested in editing my photos for aesthetics's sake, not to alter the reality or the story of the image.  It would be nice to "get rid" of my wrinkles or my rough aged hands in my self portraits, but they are who I am (sadly); they are the story of today.  I do, however, crop photos. For some reason that I can't explain, I prefer an aspect ratio of 4:5 rather than 4:6, especially with portraits, but sometimes with other images as well.  So even with a photo that is well-composed in camera, I may still do this basic crop.

With the photo that I am about to share, there is more than a basic crop.  I missed the mark on what I wanted and I used "creative cropping" to save the shot.

The saga begins with the Capture Your 365 prompt from January 14, "Black and White."  I decided that I was going to photograph one of the buildings in our city's historical park.  Unfortunately, I could not get out to do this until about 5:00, leaving me only about 30 minutes to accomplish the shot before it got dark.  The historical park contains several buildings and I wasn't sure which one I wanted to photograph so I wasted a little time wandering around making that decision.  I finally settled on a little log cabin with a rocking chair on the porch.  It was this rocking chair to which I was drawn.  Now with only fifteen minutes, I started shooting...focusing on the chair, the window, the door, the porch, the surroundings...this was a case where I didn't not have a clear image of what I wanted.  I thought it was the chair, but maybe it was the window.  I tried a few different angles, not taking everything into consideration that I should have.  When I got home and started looking at the images on the computer, the results of my haphazard approach were revealed.  Straight out of the camera, not a single image was what I wanted compositionally.  I began trying to figure out some way to salvage one of the shots.

One thing I had done that was a good thing, was that I shot the photos in monochrome, so I did not have to consider what was going to happen when I did the conversion to black and white.  I find that I shoot differently, focusing more on lines and textures, when I shoot in monochrome rather than color.  Even that, though, didn't help me much here.

As I looked through all of the photos, I realized that what I wanted in my photograph was the window and the rocking chair.  I didn't have a single image that included those two things in a way that I liked.

Here I cut the window in a seriously bad way, centered the rocking chair, and blew out the sky.  This one went to the reject file almost immediately.

From the composition perspective, this is more what I wanted, but the blown out sky completely drew my eye away from the chair and the window.  I tried adding a sepia filter to tone it down a little, but again, it didn't work for me.

Back to the drawing board.  I didn't have a whole lot more from which to choose. At this point,  I was becoming frustrated and disappointed in myself for not doing a better job of thinking about what I was doing while I was behind the camera.  In the long run, being fully present then would have been a whole lot easier and less time consuming than trying to work some kind of post-processing magic.

My last hope was this image.

Initially I did a little bit of brightening and upped the contrast a little bit.  This one was definitely the best choice of the bunch, but it still was not what I now thought that I wanted.  

Here is where the serious cropping begins.  Because of what I felt was too much porch in the foreground,  I decided to see what would happen if I cropped this photo to landscape.

Things were now getting better, but the dark door added a heaviness to the left side of the frame that I didn't like.  On the plus side though, this angle got rid of the blown out sky on the right, leaving some nice lines and texture in the tree and fence.  For a brief moment, I felt that I could live with this being my final image for the day (with the initial brightening and contrast boost that are not seen in the above image).

However, the more I looked at it, I kept feeling like the balance was off.  Something about that dark, heavy door was making me unhappy.  I stared at the image for what felt like an eternity and then it hit me.  Crop it back to portrait.

Yes!  This is the composition that I wanted.  Finally.  And after a whole bunch more cropping than I ever do on a photo.    I saw no alternative with this one.  I now have the window and the rocker composed correctly and a nice, non-distacting, background.  I then added a slight warming filter as this photo was taken during the golden hour and the slightly brownish tone is reminiscent of the true tone of the cabin.  And just in case you are wondering...yes, I could have cropped the priginal portrait photo and gotten to this point more quickly, but I needed to go through this entire process to come to that realization.

This is not a process that I have the time or energy for on a regular basis, but I wanted to redeem the thirty minutes that I spent on this particular day's images.  I think I also needed to forgive myself for not being as attentive to the details as I should have been while I was actually shooting.

In the case of this image, I don't think that the crop altered the reality of the photo or its story.  For this reason, ethically I am OK with my solution.

For me personally, I always feel like I learn more from seeing a process rather than just the final product.  I hope this helps you to redeem a photo of your own one of these days.  Don't give up on a photo too quickly!

Happy shooting!

Tuesday (Not) in Texas - Planning to Achieve

by Tracey G

I discovered last year that in order for me to remember anything, I needed to write it down. Now, I know I've said before that I'm a list-aholic, so that's nothing new - grocery lists, chore lists, packing lists, dinner menu lists and so forth. But I now discovered with Harry's school schedule, my Creative Team important dates and just general appointments, I needed a planner. So, I scoured Amazon for a planner and bought this one, which by the way, I love. And it comes in lots of cute covers too!

Bloom Daily Planner Goal Organizer

But somehow, this year it just wasn't going to cut it. I had way more I wanted to do than just a few lines for a day and the monthly layout. Since I ordered it late in the year, I went with the academic year version - it runs from August to the end of July. But as I got to this year, as I said, it was just not "enough". It's the smaller size, so I may turn it into a purse model, yes, my purse is big enough and could probably accommodate it.

When Kris mentioned she was doing Ali Edwards' One Little Word project  I was intrigued. I'd seen the title before but was clueless as to just what it was about and what it entailed. Kris, kindly enlightened me! With the way I'd been wanting to shake things up this year and achieve certain goals for myself, big and small, I decided I was going for it. So, I signed  up and got my binder (and a pen, because, well, I just love pens!). My word is "Achieve" for the year. It's exactly what I'm hoping to do in all kinds of ways, once again - big and small. And since my word is Achieve, I needed some tools to help me do that. I figured the place to start, was a planner that could at least come close to what I wanted in one. I limited my search to Amazon because, I know myself, and, if I allowed myself to search everywhere - I'd likely still be looking! So, Amazon it was and even then, I had a hard time deciding. My list looks a lot like the one Kris came up with for her planner wishes:

ð A bigger size - I too went with an 8.5x11

ð Monthly Layout

ð Weekly/Daily Layout

ð Hourly Scheduling

ð  Place on the weekly/daily section for notes and goals of the day and of the week

ðPlace for things to be checked off  - because I just love checking things off!

ðSpace/Place for Monthly Goals to accomplish, both big and small

The planner I got for myself actually has all of that and MORE. It's almost intimidating! I told Kris when I got it, "I think my planner is mocking me!"! It's definitely a different push for myself to become a bit more CLEAR on my goals and things I want to accomplish. In the goal sections, it asks for your goal - then in the next space why it's important/it's value and in the 3rd space it wants details on how to make it happen. So, for example, instead of just "clean the kitchen" you have to state why: so I can cook in peace!  And what to do to get there: wash dishes, put dishes away, clean counters, clean stove etc etc etc. That's just an easy example I could easily come up with, lol. But you get the idea! 

This is the planner I bought for myself at Amazon - Tools4Wisdom Planner 2016 Calendar 4-in-1: Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly Organizer - Purpose Driven Goals Planning Book - Personal Life Progress Journal Notebook

I, so far, am really pleased with it, it's really forcing me to think not only WHAT I want to accomplish but WHY in addition to all my other scheduling needs. I am only on the 2nd day of my down-to-the-half-hour planning of my days, and yesterday was a bust because Harry was home on a Snow Day, that sort of derailed anything I wanted to accomplish and fill in that morning, so it was a Snow Day for me too! But I am confident it will a great tool. And to make it even more "fun" I bought some fun colored pens too!

I can totally relate though to what Kris stated about actually seeing just how many hours in the day there are, but how much we underestimate just the amount of time needed to accomplish the things I say I want to.

As I type this and finish it up - I'm already a behind an hour! Oh well. It's guide, not written in stone I suppose. That may prove to be a problem for me though, I tend to get rigid about schedules and start to get anxious if they aren't going the way they are supposed to - hopefully I can be easy on myself and try to plan in time into the next day for the things I didn't get done in the current one! 

Tuesday in Texas - Also, Me the Photographer

by Kris B.

In many ways it seems funny to be writing about being “a photographer”  I think of myself more as someone who loves taking pictures.  Photographer sound so professional and I definitely am not a professional, nor do I want to be.  For me, taking pictures is a hobby, something fun, a spiritual discipline, something that is far removed from what I do professionally.  Aside from all that, because I am legally blind, with vision that can not be corrected, photography may not even seem like a realistic hobby!

My first camera was a Kodak 110 Instamatic with those blue flash cubes.  I know some of you remember those.  Right?  Please, someone!  I was in the sixth grade and working on the Girl Scout photography merit badge.  I don’t know that I was particularly interested in photography, in that  I knew nothing about it.  I was primarily interested in accumulating as many merit badges as I could.  The dad of one of my troop members led the teaching.  I remember having a lot of fun and at the end of our time together, he said to me, “You have a good eye for photography.”  “Good” and “eye” were never words that were used about me; I had no idea at that time what he was really saying.  I did, however, continue to take pictures from that point on.  I always had some kind of camera and snapped pictures somewhat inconsistently while I was in high school and college.  I failed, however, to keep up with picture taking when my girls were little.  Looking back, that is one of my biggest regrets.

When the kids were in middle school and playing lots of sports, I decided to start taking pictures again.  My husband bought me an N60, my first Nikon camera, still film.  I took pictures, but I had no idea what I was doing.  I shot on Auto exclusively.  With lots of luck, I took some decent pictures, but luck was all I had.  Developing film was expensive so “practicing” with multiple shots was not practical for me.  Then came digital cameras!!  Because my now ex-husband was a technology geek, he was all for getting me a digital camera, a Nikon D70.  I thought I was in hog heaven, though I still had no idea what to do with all of the buttons.  I had, however, by this point been through many years of graduate school and learned the merits of reading the manual.  Still, I was working mostly by trial and error, a lot of error, but at least now they were cheap errors! Slowly I learned.  For our 25th anniversary, only months before we filed for divorce, lol, my husband gave me a D300.  The new camera and a time of transition in my life is when I became seriously interested in improving my photography skills.

The first serious picture taking I did was for a local theater company.  I took the promo shots for shows as well as stills of the actual productions.  That was a lot of valuable on the spot training!

Denton Community Theater - The Laramie Project May 2007

Denton Community Theater - The Laramie Project May 2007

Fast forward a few years and I discovered Capture Your 365.  In the fall of 2012 I took the Katrina Kennedy’s Capture Your life Through the Lens class; that was exactly what I needed.  I learned how to use most of the buttons on my camera and had some good knowledge to go along with my luck. In January of 2013, I joined the Capture Your 365 community and began taking a photo a day.  It is hard to believe that for 1100 days straight, I have a photo to document my life.  They are not all technically good, or interesting, or even particularly meaningful, but they are my life.  They are not all happy or pretty.  But again, neither is life.  As I look back, I am amazed at how vivid the memories are with each photo.  I can put myself right back on the day, in the moment in which they were taken.

I now shoot with a Nikon D600.  My “go-to” lens is a 24-70mm.  That said, right before Christmas, this lens and my tripod had a “falling out,“ literally.  I sent it back to Nikon for an expensive repair; however, the repair is less than replacing the lens.  So, I have been using other lenses lately, which is good thing.  I love my nifty-fifty and 105mm macro lenses.  I also have a 70-200 zoom, which I don’t use as often as I probably should. My newest lens is an 85mm lens that I really like for portraits.

105mm macro lens

Speaking of portraits, I never thought that I would enjoy taking portraits.  There was a time when I didn’t want any people in any of my photos.  Yes, I am an introvert, but even I know that this is taking the whole introvert thing way too far!  Even in scenes where people were a perfectly natural entity, I would wait until I could shoot and not include a single human being.  Now, I enjoy taking portraits, thanks in a large part to having taken Katrina’s Portraits class during 2015. 

50mm lens

I have even gotten better over the last three years about the dreaded self portrait.  Though in most situations I am not a control freak, I do like being in total control of the photos of me.  If they are self portraits and I am both in front of and technically behind the camera, I can execute them my way.  I can take as much time as I need; I can delete the awful shots before anyone else sees them; and, I can try different things without feeling self conscious.  This is the only way that any photos of me get taken.

January 1, 2014

I also never thought that I would be taking photos of food.  I love to cook and I love to eat, but the thought of photographing food never crossed my mind.  To me, bad food photography is some of the worst bad photography there is.  I was not sure that I was up to the challenge of making food look good.  Tracey and I have a joke about the “brown food photos.”  Should we ever write a cookbook, there will definitely be some discussion about brown food, possibly in the title. lol!  Once you get beyond vegetables, think about how much food is brown!  Now think about how to make it look appealing in a photo.  It is harder than you might imagine.  Add to that the fact that my kitchen is awesome for cooking and terrible for photography.  There really is no good light source at all!

My dark kitchen! - this was taken mid afternoon!

 I have been known to travel all over the house with plates of food in my hand trying to find the best light at any given time of day.  Outside is not off limits either!

Because I was a writer before I became seriously interested in photography, I sometimes have a hard time letting my photos speak for themselves.  I enjoy fitting images and words together.  Many of my photos contain quotes.  With regard to my Photo of the Day images, the text that I choose to include has something to do with my thoughts or feelings on that day.

I am lucky that my husband and my girls are supportive and cooperative when it comes to me and photography.  

Weber - January 2013
CY365 Practice Class

Erin - July 2015
24-70mm lens at 50mm lol!

Brooke - December 2015
85mm lens

There are times when they have had enough and then I turn to the animals and my ever cooperative collection of Lego minifigures.  

So tomorrow will be day 1101 of a photo a day.  I now enjoy photographing both people and food.  And, I have a wonderful friend in Tracey thanks to photography.  I am still struggling to figure out what my personal "style" is with regard to my photography.  I am happy to say that this, however, is one of the best struggles of my life!

105mm macro

Thanks for coming along with us on our journey of food, friendship, and photography!