Gone fishing

The weather was crisp and cool, fall-like, in fact.  A nice reprieve from the sultry August temps we've been having.  Doug was actually home on a Saturday.  The first in a few weeks.  We wanted to go do something fun as a family.  Instead we loaded up our gear and went fishing.

We went to a local lake where we don't usually have much luck catching anything, but it is close by.  

And we didn't catch anything.

Although Doug did catch one little bluegill.

The rest of us mostly just caught this ...

Seaweed and algae.  This was the pretty lore I was using until one cast thrust it out into the lake never to be seen again.  

Shortly after that I lost interest in fishing.

So I picked up my camera and searched for other things to photograph.

Nick eventually got tired of not catching any fish and decided to catch snails instead.

I joined in on the fun.  Besides snails are much easier to catch than fish.

Once we caught about 40 snails (that now reside in a container on our front porch), we headed to the other side of the lake.  Perhaps all the fish were hanging out over there.

But, alas, no fish to be caught on that side either.  We did see some geese though.

And some HUGE snails.  Nick decided he needed to bring one of these big guys home also.  He also lives in the container on the porch with all the other little snails.  Who, by the way, are about to multiply into hundreds of snails.  There are tiny egg sacks on the backs of a few.  Oh boy.

Alex ventured too far out and got stuck in the mud, so Keira was nice enough to help him get out.  I think Nick was supervising.

As much as he and Alex fight, Nick really watches out for his little brother.

I was telling the kids that Alex getting stuck reminded me of when I was a kid.  We had a swamp on our farm where we would go catch frogs and tadpoles and whatever else we could catch.  I walked out in it one time in my boots and also got stuck.  My dad had to lift me up out, leaving the boots behind.  I don't know if we ever got my boots out.  

It was fun growing up on a farm.

          

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Random Wordless Wednesday

As you may or may not know, I am in my third (and last!) year of Project 365.  Because of that, there are some days when I only take a few pictures and other days I take a ton.  As you can well imagine, there are many, many photos that don't make the cut for the photo of the day.  Here are some that didn't make it ...

Keira and I were able to attend my mother-in-law's Mother-Daughter banquet this year.  This was what our plate looked like before we ate.  A jar of sugar scrub placed on this very cool folded napkin.

One day after a good rain I stepped outside to see what I might capture.  These rain drops were on my gladiolus leaves.

And this bug was making a snack of another bug.

When I went along with Doug and the boys on their first fishing outing of the year, I couldn't fish because I don't have my license yet.  Instead I took pictures.  I tried and tried to capture some fish jumping out of the water.  There was one in particular that I watched jump out over and over again, but I was never fast enough to capture him.  Somehow I did manage to capture these two although I didn't have time to adjust my camera settings which resulted in a very noisy, underexposed photo.  But I got them jumping!  And I think that might be a turtle poking his head out there too.

We have summer phlox growing all over the place this year.  Nick was sweet enough to go out and bring back a huge bouquet of it for me.

Lastly, I bought myself a bouquet of roses a couple weeks ago.  But I enjoyed photographing the baby's breath more than the roses themselves.

          

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Week 19 in Pictures

Hello there!  I took an unexpected and unintentional week away from blogging.  I hadn't planned to take time off, it just sort of happened that way.  I was able to get several things accomplished which makes me feel good.  I hate it when things start to pile up around here.

We had lots of activity going on here last week also.  Our kitchen counter top was installed, Doug got new tires on my van, our dining room set came in so we picked it up, and Doug sold his truck.  And that all happened just on Friday!  

Last week I also attended a Tea and a Mother/Daughter luncheon.  I helped a friend with a crafty project, which put me in the mood to dig out my scrapbook stuff and do some scrapping (didn't actually happen though).  Alex went on his first field trip without me (my name didn't get picked in the drawing) and had a really good time.  And I had a photo shoot postponed twice - once because of weather and once because the little boy wasn't feeling well.  :(  We are rescheduled for this week, so here's hoping!

This week will also be pretty busy as we are preparing for our ladies' luncheon coming up this Saturday.  It is going to be fun!  I'm so looking forward to it!  Anyway, on to last week's pictures ...

{Sunday}

I had bought these hydrangeas a few days before and just got around to photographing them.

{Monday}

Rainy day.  So I took advantage and photographed some rain drops.  I love that you can see my purple Lupine flowers in the reflection.  Oh, and we saw a double rainbow today, but I didn't have my camera with me to capture it.  Darn!  I knew I should have grabbed it before we left the house.  :)

{Tuesday}

Alex had been wiggling and wiggling a bottom tooth all morning and it looked really ready to come out.  But he wanted to wait until he was at school to pull it out because the kids get this sweet little treasure box from the nurse when they lose a tooth at school.  Gotta love it when they know what they want and make it happen.  :)

{Wednesday}

Two double rainbows in one week!  Amazing!  The outer one is very faint, but it is definitely there.  And I was glad to have my camera on me this time.

{Thursday}

The reflector set I ordered came today so Keira helped me try it out.  I really need practice with indoor portraits.

{Friday}

As I said, Friday was a crazy, busy day.  The kids didn't have school, which I didn't realize when I scheduled the counter top installation.  It was all good though.  They stayed out of the way of the counter top guys.  And shortly after Doug sold his truck, the store where we ordered our dining room table and chairs from called to tell us they were in.  Thankfully we were able to get one more use out of the truck and go pick the set up.

{Saturday}

Keira and I spent the morning/early afternoon at my mother-in-law's Mother-Daughter banquet.  Then Doug and the boys wanted to go fishing in the evening since Doug got his license today.  I didn't get my license yet, so all I did was take pictures.  Doug caught all the fish, much to Nick's dismay.  Oh, and three Great Blue Herons flew over our heads before I had my camera out and ready.  :(

     

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Photo of the Day: September 16

ISO 400, f/5.3, 1/400s, 18-105mm lens on Nikon D40

I'm back!  After our weekend away, I'm scrambling to try to get caught up, but it's just not going to happen.  I'm beat.  But I thought I would at least share my POTD for Friday and Saturday.

Friday we just checked out the area near where we were staying.  We came across this lake in one of the state parks so Doug decided to fish for a bit.  I would have fished also except my fishing license, which had been in my car all summer long, was no where to be found.  So even though there was no one else around except for one older gentleman at the other end of the lake, Doug fished and I explored and took pictures.  He didn't catch anything anyway.  :)

Doug greatly dislikes having his picture taken, so I told him I was photographing the weeds alongside the lake.  But, oops, I managed to get him in the photo also.  :)

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Water ... Edited

Welcome back to Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW!  Earlier this week you saw my SOOC shots.  Today I show you my edits.

If you've been around here for any time at all, you already know that I don't like to spend a great deal of time editing.  So I keep things pretty simple most of the time.  That's what I did this week.  Kept things simple.  Besides, since the kids started school yesterday, I have a LOT of homework to do!  Somehow that doesn't seem fair!  :)

Anyway, without further ado ... here are my water photos ...
{mouse over to see SOOC}

Just simple edits.  In ACR I increased the recovery a bit since the original was a bit overexposed.  I also increased the blacks, clarity, and vibrancy.

I decided to add a solid mauvish-colored layer to warm this photo up a bit - turned the opacity down to about 50%.  Mouse over to see the above edited version vs. the warmer version.

{mouse over to see SOOC}

Increased blacks a little, increased clarity and vibrancy.  And cropped.

Since these photos are different sizes, I couldn't do the mouse over thing.  So you'll just have to see them this way.  Here's the SOOC one.

And the edit.  

I really didn't do much with it - increased blacks slightly and increased clarity and vibrancy, as usual.

{mouse over to see SOOC}

Same simple edits on this one.  And I believe I cropped it slightly.

So that's it for me.  Be sure to head over to Ashley's to see more great water edits.  (still can't get that darn button to work)

Next week's theme is Back to School - in case you'd like to play along.

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Water ... SOOC

This week's Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW! theme is Ocean/Pool/Lake/River (aka water!).  :)  We link up our SOOC shots on Monday (yeah, I'm a day late) with Jill, then on Thursday we will link up our edits with Ashley.  Jill always has great advice on how to get the best shots IN camera so not much editing is needed; Ashley is an editing guru and shows us some wonderful ways to take our photos from good to WOW!  So here are a few of my SOOC shots ...

The kids and I went hiking on Friday at McConnell's Mills.  There is a creek that borders the hiking trail we were on and I managed to snap a few photos (like 80) while we were there.  Fortunately for you, I'm only going to post two.  :)  For now anyway.

Keira posed for me by the covered bridge.  The boys wouldn't cooperate.

We stopped along the creek several times on our hike.  The kids were looking for snails or fish or frogs or whatever.  They didn't find any.  :)

Then today to celebrate the last day of summer vacation (for them, not me - my vacation starts tomorrow!)  :) ... we went fishing at a local pond.

We had fun even though Keira was the only one to catch a fish.  And a frog.  :)


These geese always hang around this pond during the summer.  Keira counted 50 geese!

So those are my SOOC water shots.  Stop back on Thursday to see my edits.  And be sure to stop over at Jill's to see more great SOOC shots!

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 6.12.11

Time again for another Scavenger Hunt.  This week's items are long exposure, shape(s), green, fruit, and childhood memory.

{long exposure}

This one is from the archives.  Fireworks from last summer.

{shape(s)}

The sun is a gorgeous orange circle.  Okay, so maybe that is a stretch for this category, but I'm sticking with it.  :)

{green}

A blue jay in a tree of green leaves.

{fruit}

A neighboring greenhouse had fresh-picked strawberries this week, so the boys and I walked over the other day and came home with two quarts.  And boy are they yummy!  If I would have let them, the boys probably would have eaten all of them that day.

{childhood memory}

Making memories with our kids.  Big, fun vacations are great, but my kids remember the every day things, like fishing, the most.

Next week's items are:

1. Emotion
2. From a Flower's Point of View (Exploring with a Camera theme - check out post here)
3. Natural Frame (Miriam's suggestion)
4. Letters (Chelsea's suggestion)
5. Bliss (Chelsea's suggestion)

Have a great week everyone!

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