Monthly Archives: November 2011

In The Shadows

by Adel Posted on November 30, 2011

I didn’t do much damage this year on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I did however pick up an Ebook on sale at the Clickin Moms site. It’s called Shooting From The Shadows.

I’m one of those guilty moms who usually puts her camera away after the sun goes down. Since I only use natural light, I’ve shied away from situations where my light is gone.

The book is pretty cool. It gives me many perspectives on the technical details I already know about shooting in low light. And it’s filled with beautiful imagery and examples of the settings for each shot.

I thought I’d try out some of the exercises on my only subject that wasn’t in bed yet.

These were all taken on a tripod with about a 6-10 second exposure and an ISO of about 640.

In this shot I wanted everything that was still in my shot to be perfectly in focus. So I told Grizz to make some movements. He was working on setting up our media center (bye-bye Directv!) so the only light was from the TV. It still makes me laugh.

In this one I wanted to make his arms disappear. So he flapped them like a bird up and down. LOL I love that he barely took his eyes off the TV the whole time he was trying to fly.

In this one I wanted to try to make his fingers disappear. So I had him sit perfectly still and told him to just move his fingers like he was typing. It didn’t work quite as well to make them disappear, but I like how they look like they’re flying over the keyboard (You like how I brought in a bottle to show you how sharp everything is with just the light from the TV?)

Yeah this is how we entertain ourselves after our kids go to bed. It gets pretty wild in our house.

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Fall Colors In Wine Country

by Adel Posted on November 29, 2011

After our Thanksgiving festivities with the B family, we decided to go play in their beautiful rows of burnt red and orange vines and leaves the next morning.

The vibrant colors were everywhere. Just stepping out the front door and you were engulfed in the rich textures all around

This was our gorgeous view when we woke. It was covered in the damp fog and possibly even more beautiful than when the sun was setting on it the evening before

So of course we couldn’t wait to go run and play in it!

The grass was long and the ground was wet. But it was just too beautiful for even my children to complain for long

Oh and did I mention they had a well manicured labyrinth too? We strolled slowly on the gravelled road toward it.

The little one would stop to pick up random rocks while I admired the beauty in dried grapes

By the way, I love these shots of her tiny hand in mine. Rex’s are those of a little boy already. And even though he sometimes still holds my hand, I’m reminded every time I hold my Jack-Jack’s how fast time flies and how they are little and innocent for way too short a time

The kids found the gated garden on our little stroll. The big one as usual sees it as an opportunity to lock the babe in *sigh*

Not to worry though. The child is VERY USED to her big brother’s antics. She is quite the resourceful (and resilient) little thing. Not much can keep her out or down

I get one posed shot for the album from them. Yay!

Because it was all downhill after that. We got to the labyrinth and they rushed to run in it

My baby girl always has to do what her big brother is doing. He jumps a step up on to the stage in the center. She of course doesn’t realize the bush isn’t an actual step and falls right into it. I mean when I ran over to save her, all that was sticking out of the bush was one leg and a tiny hand. The rest of her body had been eaten by the bush! Is it bad that I giggled just the tiniest bit at the sight? Or that for one split second I actually though of taking a picture before rescuing her??

I didn’t do either. Ok maybe I suppressed a small laugh. But no, no pictures. She was scared and I quickly fished her out

We tried to get a shot in the middle of the beautiful labyrinth, but Rex apparently had a choke-hold on her. He says it was a hug. She screamed bloody murder. You tell me.

I squeezed in one last shot with my baby girl in the labyrinth and then we called it a day

We headed to the car and were on our way back to the city

We did stop for a couple more photo ops though before hitting the freeways.

Some cheesy ones. This one was just too irresistible

The kids were pretty much done with photos, so Grizz and I used each other as subjects!

He’s not as precocious or cheeky as my little ones, but he sure was much easier to direct!

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Thanksgiving Recap

by Adel Posted on November 28, 2011

Hello Monday-after-a-super-long-and-tiring-weekend! We barely traveled anywhere over the Thanksgiving but I’m still exhausted from all our fun activities. We packed those 5 days we had off full to the brim.

I took a ton of shots over the last 5 days. I’m starting to realize that I’m way too trigger-happy with my photography. I’m always afraid I’ll miss my shot so I tend to snap 3 or 4 of the same pose instead of just taking the time to get it right and take ONE shot. It makes my post-processing time extremely tedious as I have to sort through and delete a bunch of duplicates. Yes, this is one of the things I need to put on the top of my list to work on.

Anyway, since I’m so exhausted from editing I’ll just share my favorite moments over the last 5 days here. The full albums are on my Flickr feed.

Just before Thanksgiving, the God-siblings came to visit. It was a short one but I’m so happy we got to spend some time with them. The little ones are 2 weeks apart and totally look alike don’t they?

The older kids may not look as alike but had similar senses of humor…

We didn’t have time for much but we did get them out to the neighborhood playground for some sand, swinging and sliding
 

The other highlight of our holidays was getting to spend Thanksgiving dinner with our fabulous friends at their winery in Healdsburg again.

The food was fabulous
 

And everything was set up just gorgeous for the festivities

The kids as always loved the bright open spaces with lots of room to explore

 

It was a fun evening for our family with good food and fabulous company


The adults got their pool on post-turkey dinner

And my little boy even found a few friends who kept him well entertained for most of the evening

We spent one night there and it was 364 nights too little. Thank you as always to our gracious hosts, the B Family

I’ll try and post our shots from our run in their vineyard and labyrinth tomorrow or Wednesday. Have a fabulous Cyber Monday ;)

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Photo Session And A Playdate

by Adel Posted on November 22, 2011

Over our wet weekend in SF, we had a few hours break in the rain. We capitalized on it by squeezing in a couple of activities back-to-back during those precious sunny hours

I had scheduled a photo session swap with another photographer mom I had met on the ClickinMoms forums. We got up early, dressed appropriately, and headed to our favorite summer haunt – AT&T Park. It’s pretty deserted here in the off-season so it worked well for our family shoot

I can’t wait to see the shots she got. I know it couldn’t have been easy photographing all four of us. My kids are very quickly and easily distracted these days. We almost made it to an hour. I consider that a win in my books. I get to photograph her family next weekend. I’m super excited about that!

After that we met up with another mom-photographer and her kids for a playdate at a very colorful playground in the Mission.

Our kids go to the same school so it was nice to chat about school stuff as well as geeky photography topics. And since she shoots with a D7000 too we were happily exchanging notes and trying out each other’s lenses! Now this is my kind of playdate!!

The kids got to draw, chase and play while we talked ISOs, aperture and exposure. Good times :)

After running around we took the kids for some doughnut treats. I love that she has a little boy with the same little boy humor as mine. I can totally relate to having to deal with stunts like these on a daily basis! :)

It’s was a busy but totally fun morning. And later that evening the hubs and I even braved the rain and went out on a sushi/sake/pool date.

Yeah this would fall under the category of what a happy day for me is like :)

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Our Thankful Tree

by Adel Posted on November 21, 2011

It’s going to be a short week for us. School is closed for the Thanksgiving holidays Wednesday onwards. I’m pretty sure I’ll shut this blog down for those days too. I may share some random shots over that time but for the most part I’ll take a break from blogging for the long holiday weekend

I did want to share our Thankful Tree with you all before that though. I’ve seen these all over Pinterest and blogs I follow. Now that Rex is 5, he is old enough to understand that we have so many things in our lives we should be thankful for. I’m one of those parents who tends to spoil and give in to his requests for treats and toys a lot more than I care to admit. As a result, I’ve notice that my 5yo has not learned to truly understand the value of the dollar or that he has more than most children in our world.

Enter our Thankful Tree this Thanksgiving. I figured that at least once a year (if not more) we should all take the time to be think of everything good in our lives that we have, material or not, that we are thankful to have

Our tree is made with everything I already had in our home, so it didn’t cost a cent to put together.

I started with some scrap paper, I tried to find colors as close to fall as possible. This was the best I found in my stash

We have a plum tree in our backyard whose leaves had pretty much all fallen off. I asked Grizz to cut me a couple of small branches. I specifically said that I only needed enough to fit in a small jar. Here’s what he cut down for me

What the?? Someone got a little clipper-happy

Next I cut out leaves free-hand. Since I just did them free-hand, there were some pretty weird looking leaves in my pile. It’s ok, I was going for the natural look. No leaf punch was used here that’s for sure.

Next I punched the holes and found a spool of ribbon I could use. This was the same ribbon I used to embellish items I had made for our wedding! Yeah I may have a tiny hoarding problem

I found a random bag of small stones in one of my craft drawers (I have no idea why I had it or even what I had bought it for originally) and filled a mason jar with it and stuck a few branches in

Now our tree was ready for some leaves. I explained the purpose of this tree to Rex. He was a little skeptical about the whole project at first since it didn’t seem very exciting, but he has just started to read and write so he got into it pretty quickly.

I tied them on to random branches as he wrote down things he was thankful for

Even my littlest wanted in on all the action so I set her up with a pencil and leaf as I punched out more for them to write on

It’s been a pretty wet weekend so it was a great way for us to keep busy indoors

Even though my light wasn’t that great…

It’s only been a few days, but our tree already has more than what I have photographed here. I have it set in the middle of our dining table and we write a leaf or three whenever we sit down for meals together.

It melts my heart to see the little writings on each leaf every time I stop and look at them.

I have so many things to be thankful for in my life. And a lot of them are often the simplest things like a scribbled leaf on our Thankful Tree

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Friday Faces

by Adel Posted on November 18, 2011

Happy Friday all. I’ve got some cute faces for you. Some cuter than others ;)

She’s waiting very impatiently for me to finish sweeping the deck. She’s mad because I won’t let her have a turn with the broom

I found her standing on the chest under the TV. I’m guessing she wanted to try and poke Dora’s eye’s out. Just like she does with her family

My little family. They absolutely cannot hear a word I say even when I’m right in front of them when they are watching TV

Found him a BBQ pork bun at SFO of all places

Wondering why her iPhone doesn’t work in the hotel room. Yes sweetie, I wondered the same thing too

Bored and waiting

Burger Queen on the computer in the lobby

This face is new. I blame the older one. He does this mad face when he doesn’t get his way. And this is EXACTLY what it looks like. Girlfriend’s got it down I tell ya

No high chairs for Jack-Jack

My sis-in-law and her son playing in the fall leaves

Fixing the grandfather clock at his grandpa’s

Barely ate any twigs at all this trip

This is what happens when you try and feed her nowadays. She thinks it’s a game

Sneaking in some play time with her brother’s toys when he wasn’t looking

I don’t remember why she had tears in her eyes here… :(

Lunch!

If you’re in SF, stay dry this weekend folks. I’ll be taking the camera out in the rain if I can. We’ll see :)

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Family Time In The Country

by Adel Posted on November 17, 2011

So after many hours in front of the computer, I’ve finally finished working on the photos from our trip.

Over the long weekend, we went up to visit family in Brush/Fort Morgan Colorado. It’s a small town about an hour or so outside of Denver. A place where no one uses AT&T for obvious reasons. Yep I was pretty disconnected from the digital world. Not a bad thing mind you. I had that one spot in our motel lobby where their wi-fi worked and it was plenty good for me. And my burger queen Jack-Jack

The plane ride and drive to and from our destination took up almost a full day each. And man, travelling with little ones is no fun. Especially if one of them is Jack-Jack. Let’s just say there was lots of screaming and struggling on the plane and in the car.

Rex on the other hand is a pretty seasoned traveller. Nevertheless he still does not like his photo taken when he is not in the mood

We spent most of our first day just relaxing and hanging out in the motel waiting for the rest of the family to get in. When there is no internet or cell service, you tend to read a lot. Like I said, not a bad thing

While Grizz read, I took one of the two rascals outside the motel see if I could get some interesting shots. It’s not the prettiest of places to photograph, but I did enjoy the change of backgrounds from my usual city streets and sidewalks with trash cans I’m constantly avoiding or photoshopping out!

The next day was the big reunion lunch. We got to kick off the day at church where I got to hold the sweetest smelling little newborn. Oh boy did I question my decision to make Jack-Jack our last

We spent the rest of the day with the family at Grizz’s grandparents’. They are in their mid-nineties and still hold hands when they sit or walk. It melts my heart

And guess what? We even got some family shots taken by my pro-photographer sis-in-law!! Why oh why didn’t I put more thought into what we were wearing?? These are probably going to be the best we’ll get this year….

I just adore this one. This is so us whenever we try and get out picture taken as a family nowadays

Rex and his cousin were in heaven playing non-stop for the 5 days they saw each other. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two boys get along better. Barely any fights.

They did get a little rambunctious at times and had to be sent to have their grandpa read to them to settle down. You can see they’re itching to move on

The weather was just gorgeous while we were there. Sunny but cool. There were times when we got some strong gusts of wind but for the most part it was perfect

We spent just as much time indoors playing on the piano…

…and reading

As we did outdoors chasing the kids around the rocky dunes

Trying to keep Jack-Jack from falling and eating dirt and twigs

Which by the way, she also found a little partner in crime just her size. They were adorable to watch

It was one of those happy carefree days that only comes around when you’re with family


And where was Grizz while we were catching the last of the sun outdoors? Well he was busy helping his grandpa fix a computer and a clock. Yeah my husband can fix anything

We stayed out till the sun completely disappeared

It takes lots of planning to bring this many people together from all over the country (there were about 40 of us total). I’m grateful to have had the few days we did with everyone. I’m worn out but in a really good way :)

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Sneak Peek Over At My 365

by Adel Posted on November 16, 2011

I’m exhausted from our all-day travels yesterday. I did get caught up on my 365 blog last night though. However that’s all the energy I had for the day. My Jack-Jack does not travel well and I was just too spent to give my blog much love last night :(

So…. How about I just point you over to my 365 today? I posted about 5 or 6 shots from our travels. I’ll have more time to work on the rest today or tomorrow.

For those of you that are not familiar with it, you can link to it here. It’s where I post one photo every day for 365 days. I started a few months ago and boy do I see a difference already from day one. It’s pretty fun to watch my photography change and evolve over the course of one year… :)

Here’s a peek at what I posted there last night

You can check back at 365adel.wordpress.com for more every day :)

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