House of Estrogen

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 13 {The End}: Smile

I am sad to see Creativity Boot Camp come to an end. It has been a great exercise for the creative side of my brain. I have really enjoyed pushing myself to take photos I normally wouldn't take, trying new things in Photoshop, and finding inspiration from the prompts. Some days were certainly more challenging than others, I skipped a few days, and some of my photos were better than others. Overall though, it has been a great experience, and I want to say thank you to Maegan of Madeline Bea Photography for hosting it. She is starting a new feature called the Sunday Creative, so I hope to keep up the creative spirit through that.

Today's word was "Smile" - what a great way to conclude Boot Camp... with lots of smiles. I had a few ideas I was tossing around in my head all day, but as we were driving home from dinner, I looked in the rearview mirror and spotted Elise's shirt. At that point, any other ideas were tossed out the window. It was like the creativity gods were sending me a message that Elise needed to be my subject today. We got out of the car, and the light was perfect. I barked out orders, "J.C., put the baby to bed!", "Elise, go brush your hair!", "The light is perfect! GO, GO, GO!!!" I grabbed my camera and captured the shot just before the sun disappeared behind the trees. That made me smile.

SMILE!

 
  
85 mm, f/2.5, 1/640, ISO 100

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 11: Hush

My poor Nina has a craptastical ear infection right now. She has looked about like this for the past three days, so she was my subject for "hush".

 
  
50 mm, f/2.0, 1/40, ISO 800

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 10: Full Bodied

What's more full bodied than a cutie-patootie toddler belly?

50 mm, f/2.0, 1/100, ISO 1250

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 9: Drizzle

Drizzle was the word of the day today at Creativity Boot Camp. As so often seems the case, I couldn't execute the art in my head. Sigh. My idea involved a photo of maple syrup drizzling out of the container with the cool label from the bottle applied as a subtle texture to the background. Sounds kinda cool, right? Easier said than done, sadly. My label pictures were nice, the drizzle ones, not so much. When I was all done taking pictures, I set the jug down and noticed this drip drizzling down the side. Ah ha! Whipping the camera back into action, I captured the drizzle, and here we have my day 9 entry. I kinda like it.

50 mm, f/1.4, 1/200, ISO 800

Speaking of Flying...

Today's Creativity Boot Camp word was "fly", and as if on cue, my husband just sent me this video from Snowshoe. The first half is filmed from his helmet cam. The second half is from a friend filming him. Guess his knee injury isn't bothering him too much, huh?

(if you're in an RSS reader, click here to watch the video.)

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 7: Fly

Yes, I realize I skipped days 4, 5 and 6 of Creativity Boot Camp, but I had predicted I would miss a few days with hosting parties, kids starting back to school, and husband going out of town. The last few days have been all about survival, and not so much about creativity. Anyway, I'm back and hope to finish the rest of the workshop. Today's prompt is "Fly". We had half the neighborhood over this morning on the slip n' slide, so I asked them to show me how they could "fly" down it.

   
85 mm, f/2.8, 1/1600, ISO 100

I'm not loving the composition on this shot for some reason. I haven't figured out how I would do it differently, but if we are slip n' sliding later this weekend, I may try this again. Perhaps a different angle? Different lens? I think part of creativity is trying different ideas until you find what speaks to you. I liked today's word prompt, but I may have to try it again.

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 3: Multilayered

"Multilayered" is today's word prompt for Creativity Boot Camp. As I pondered "multilayered" all day, I kept coming back to this :

Shrek: Ogres are like onions.

Donkey: They stink?

Shrek: Yes. No.

Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.

Shrek: No.

Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs.

Shrek: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.

Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions.

My creativity was going nowhere. All I could think about was Shrek and onions. Shrek is multilayered. Onions are multilayered. Surely I could move past that. I thought about layers of clothing worn in winter and layered cakes, but basically I was feeling completely uninspired. Then, I glanced across the kitchen and saw this...

 
50 mm, f/2.5, 1/1000, ISO 100

My husband made that cutting board for me by hand a few years ago, meticulously measuring, cutting, and piecing each type of wood together. Maple, red oak, jatoba, mahogany, and purpleheart all join together for a perfect representation of "multilayered." What better way to exercise my creativity than to creatively photograph my husband's creativity? I went outside to the setting sun, captured the sun flares, and the result is my day 3 Creativity Boot Camp photo.

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 2: Picnic

Today's word prompt for Creativity Boot Camp is "picnic." I had to brainstorm this for a while... picnics at the park on a picnic table, "pizza picnics" in front of the TV on Friday nights, red and white checked picnic blankets, ants feasting on picnic scraps, and all sorts of picnic foods. I wasn't quite sure what direction I wanted to go in for this photo. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, I remembered the sweet miniature picnic basket that my mom had handed down to the girls. It is tiny but would be the perfect subject!  It looked plain on its own, so I had to come up with something to put in it. I found a split of champagne in the fridge from who knows what occassion... perfection! Fourth of July and Memorial Day are such popular picnic dates that I decided to go with red, white, and blue. When I got done lying on the hot pavement taking pictures and came in to download them, I realized I had a lovely Korbel champagne ad. Ugh - not what I was going for! In the spirit of creativity boot camp, I replaced "Korbel" with "Picnic". Voila.

 
85 mm, f/2.0, 1/500, ISO 100

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 1: Ivory

My friend Ali introduced me to the Creativity Boot Camp course running from today through June 18. I've been wanting to work on my photography skills, and I thought the exercises in Creativity Boot Camp might be just the thing to get me thinking creatively behind the camera and stretch my skills beyond my comfort zone. There is an assignment each day. This week is insanely busy for me, so I suspect I will miss at least a couple days, but I'm hoping to do the assignments every day next week. Today's assignment was "Ivory".  I was wishing I had a piano for this one. I had all sorts of visions in my head for how to creatively photograph the keys. Sadly, we have no piano, and I was too chicken to go ask my neighbors if I could photograph theirs. Instead, I decided to try for some ivory flowers.  Several of my attempts that looked great in my head didn't look at all like my vision when I pulled them off the camera. That is one of the things I'm hoping to improve through this class... how to actually take a photo and have it turn out the way I envisioned it. Anyway, I was fairly happy with this picture. I know I could have done better, but I have two weeks to improve, right?  I liked the sun light shining on the petals and the pretty bokeh in the background.

85 mm, f/1.8, 1/1600, ISO 100