House of Estrogen

Top Ten Photos of 2010

 
My friend Tracy over at Sellabit Mum posted her top ten photos of 2010. I loved her post, so I decided to do the same. I am linking up with all the top ten photo posts over at You Capture. Some of these are my favorites from an emotional side... the time, person, feeling, or event captured. Others are my favorites from a technical photography point of view. It was an interesting exercise going through all my photos from the year and trying to choose ten. There were a few that jumped in my head the minute I decided to do this post. For others, I had to comb through all my photos, weighing all the contenders. I chose about eight and felt done. I wanted to do the challenge right though, so ten it is.

  

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Emerald Isle 2010: One Last Photo Post... Out and About

Although the majority of our vacation was spent enjoying the beach, the pool, and the beach house, we did go out occassionally to explore the rest of the island.

We had a couple of great bike outings. You should have seen our crew... 4 adults on bikes, 3 kids on bikes, one kid on a trail-a-bike, and two toddlers in the trailer! We formed a pretty impressive train.

 

 

On one of the cloudy mornings, we hit the NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores which we always enjoy.

 

 

Everybody loved playing a round of putt-putt.

 

 

 

 

Along with cooking some great meals at the house, we always enjoy going out for seafood a few times too. We hit our perennial favorite, Sanitary Fish Market, for lunch one day. Mmmmm... hush puppies!  Nina's pose is... uhh... lovely, huh?

 

We also hit Whidden Landing one night which is so nice because you can eat out on the dock, right on the water. It was such a pleasant night for dining outside, and their chocolate silk pie melts in your mouth.

 

So, this concludes this year's beach photo posts. I love having the photos out on the blog where I can relive our trip any time. I wish I could actually go to the beach several times per year, but for now, the pictures will have to hold me over until next year. Sigh...

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

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

Those Eyes!

Our friends S and N have been down here at the beach with us, and I've become a bit obsessed with photographing their daughter S. Look at those eyes! Just look at them!  Tell me they don't melt your heart just a little.