A year in pictures...

I've not always been the best blogger this year but I vow to improve - heck, I'll have a brand new subject to take photos of come March!

As a response to a posted challenge on the photography board I frequent, I've assembled my year in review photo set.  It was a bit tricky because there were a few months in there where we had only one folder of photos!

Here goes nothing:

January - Hiking in Shenandoah National Park

February - Baby Shower #1 for my cousin-in-law, Jessica

March -My pasty white feet on their first foray in flip flops after a long winter.  Shot while in Miami, FL.

April - Washington D.C. Cherry Blossom festival

May - My first foray into TTV.  This was the lavender outside in my garden.

June - Trip to Germany and Switzerland.  Two weeks in the most amazing settings!

July - Surprise! We're expecting!

August - Macie, our Vizsla, was having a good time this day.

September - Last backpack trip for a while (18 weeks pg) to Yosemite National Park.  Fletcher Lake in the picture.

October - Jesse and Jessica's wedding (cousin and cousin in law).  Great pic of the family (yes, we're that strange)

November - Nephew B hamming it up for the camera

December - 30 weeks pregnant, home made maternity shots done in our foyer.

Summer Fun...

It's that time again...summer is upon us! Over the weekend we spent the day at Mark's parents place just relaxing and spending time with our various cousins. This was a great opportunity to try out the new camera and learn all the controls before our trip.

Plus it gave me more opportunities to try out some of the cool presets that I have for LightRoom! I'd downloaded a bundle a few weeks ago and have been itching to try them out on something. Little M girl above was having a field day with her ice cream.

Since we were taking pictures pretty much at noon time, the lighting was tough. However, Little K was lying on the swing under the pergola so it was a little easier to shoot her. I love the soft and squishy preset that I applied to her pic.

Bubbles were a theme of the day and after a while they figured out that slower was better when trying to make huge bubbles. N was watching little K run around in the above shot. I like the old skool preset - it's just a little boy and his bubbles!

A few of their bubbles were picked up by the breeze and sent soaring - much to amazement of N and K. All in all a very relaxing day spent with family and friends. Now if every weekend could be like that I might just say I'm in heaven!

Uncle Mark...

This past weekend Mark and I drove up to eastern PA to visit with the fam again and see our awesome little nephews. We lucked out and caught a break in the rainy weather and were able to spend the afternoon outside playing in the grass. Uncle Mark is just a riot apparently since B could not stop cracking up at him the whole time.

I think it helps that Uncle Mark is a jungle gym and amusement park all wrapped up in one. These shots took little retouching, just a little exposure control and some vignetting to pull your eye to the center of the photo.

This one of little K I decided to play with a little more. He was not cooperating and did NOT want his picture take but I did manage to get this one of him all sullen on the rock. It wasn't much to look at out of the camera but is kind of neat with an antiqued look to it.

Egg hunting...

The weekend before Easter we had an egg hunt for our nephews. Aunt Inzy was the Easter Bunny and planted all the eggs across our front yard. The boys had a blast I think and so did I. Taking pictures of their expressions was so much fun. They could hardly contain themselves as they opened up each egg to find out what was in it.

The two photos featured here took some retouching because of an awkward lighting situation. At that time of day our house casts a huge shadow on the front lawn, however everything beyond it is bright sun. It made for a few tricky shots that I had to fix in post processing. The above shot was totally under exposed and lacked any pop. Lightroom is great about bring back under exposed things and allowing you to tool with the saturation just a bit to make that egg stand out. It's not perfect but I like it!

This one was a little tricky too and I think I could probably use a little more work but I thought I'd throw it up here anyways. I adjusted the saturation of the grass and tried to remove some dirty stuff from B's face (he was covered in dirt and chocolate!) and did a little work to lighten up his face. Again, not perfect but I like it:)

Babies abound...

Well it's been a month of showers - baby showers that is. Unfortunately I only took the camera to one of them - my cousin Jesse's fiancee, Jessica's shower. They have a baby boy due in late March.

Jessica has a very large and supportive family which made gift opening one of epic proportions! She and Jesse are very blessed to have a great group of friends and family.

This event also gave me the opportunity to try out Adobe Lightroom 2 which was a Christmas gift from mom and dad. I have to say, once you get used to it, it's great to quick processing pics! Combined with Adobe Photoshop you've got a very powerful set of tools for photo editing. Things that would take me hours in PS alone are now super easy in LR!

Anyways, it's always good to have more babies in the family. I'm biased but I think our family makes the cutest ones!

Meet Tucker...

I'm proud to introduce Tom Tucker Ginger Ale (aka Tuck or Tucker)! Tuck is my parents new miniature schnauzer puppy who came home to live with them a few weeks ago.

Tuck is (was) 8 weeks old and just the cutest and cuddliest little critter. He was overwhelmed with Macie at first but begin to assert his dominance by the time we were leaving that weekend.

Mom said he'd doing well and exactly what she was looking for in RC's absence. Her favorite time of day is after she brings him back in after his morning break and he dives into bed with my dad and nuzzles into his neck (often times wet and covered in snow!)

The tradition in my family is to name dogs after soda pop. We've had Pepsi, Faygo, Shasta, Ginger and RC. Mark and I broke that tradition with Macie but my parents carried on.

Tom Tucker Ginger Ale is a staple of my childhood. Any time we were sick my mom would stir a glass of that stuff until it was flat and feed it to us to calm our stomachs. That was perhaps my most favorite part of being sick.

Father and Son...

Mass apologies to all 4 of you that read this thing:) I've been a bad bad blogger these days. Life has gotten the best of me that's for sure but with the new year is a new leaf. I will endeavor to blog at least weekly! I also endeavor to take more pictures. My poor camera is feeling very neglected sitting in the corner only to come out to play for the monthly portrait obligation for PMI (I'm the chapter photographer with a local project management group in D.C. My "job" is to take a photo of the monthly speaker with the president. Then they post it on the website..how exciting.) But I digress. Where was I? Oh ya - bad bad blogger.

I was sorting through all the non PMI images I taken (actually - we've taken as the Hubby is also a photo bug) and found this gem. We were taking family photos right before turkey day and my brother in law was trying to get his youngest to smile for the camera. I think the look on his face is so sweet!

Kids and summer...

There's something about watermelon, bugs, and dirt during the summer that makes kids happy.

At a recent house warming party for one of our relatives the gaggle of children were gathered around the lone tree in the backyard. Every so often one would squeal trumphantly and hold up a worm or a cicada shell. They were on the hunt!

That is, until the watermelon appeared on the tables!

From there it was a mix of watermelon juice, dirt and bugs that kept these tikes entertained!

Waiting for Baby...

So these are a little out of order but I was going back thru some of my pics and found these from my cousins shower a few weeks ago. The theme of the nursery was farming which makes sense since she's a vet and they own a 365 acre farm with cows!

It's funny to go thru the pictures especially since he was just born a few weeks ago (which means this shower was more than a few months ago -gah! where has the summer gone!)

They have the most amazing little farm house that her husband put alot of work into and made beautiful! What I love most is their wrap around porch (see above). It goes like this along all 4 sides of the house and served as a great shelter for all 60 people when the rain started.

Phew...

This weekend we had the pleasure of hosting my brother and his girlfriend and their dog, Buckley. You've seen Buckley before on here and I thought I'd show you all what our weekend was like with two adolescent dogs.

This play fighting continued most of the weekend - I don't know that either of them slept more than 10 min at a stretch, even at night!

Their crates had to be separated because they refused to stop talking to one another in the middle of the night (2am guys...not cool!)

Birthday boy...

So, this is the birthday boy! I thought I'd turn the weekend photo shoot into a weeks worth of entries because I'm lazy:)

I was trying out my new reflector in the first one (the one I bought because we're doing a wedding next weekend!) and then the rest of the shots were just candids as Beckett enjoyed his day.


He spent a good deal of time on Grandma's lap and I was able to catch a number of amazing shots! This one is my favorite, although it was soo hard to pick!



Now, the hat was a funny set of photos. He really enjoyed having the hat on and just giggled and laughed as we took it off and put it back on over and over and over!

I think I shot over 300 images that day. Of that about 218 made it thru the first cuts. Then about 50 made it to the final proof set. That doesnt make those other 168 images any less special! I go back periodically and browse thru them and laugh all over again at how cute he is!