Photo shoot

If you’ve been a follower of my websites over the years, you know I’m trying to get the best pictures ever. I’m trying to be patient and learn what I’m doing. I’m reading websites and manuals. I’m looking at photos online and trying to figure out how to make them better. I take a gazillion photos of my own just hoping for that one perfect picture. I try to get that perfect picture without editing them. I think that might be where I go wrong.

My editing usually consists of a little bit of cropping, fixing red eyes or just deleting bad pictures. I’m trying to find that perfect editing software that’s easy to use. I’ve been told to try Picasa and I just don’t love it.  Mostly because when I synced my pictures with it the program found all of Jimmy’s movies, books, comic books, games and album covers.  When I tried to find my pictures I spent 10 minutes trying to scroll through everything  just to find one picture.  When I finished that one I had to go through it all just to find what I was looking for.  I thought about uninstalling it and reinstalling it but then I just decided it wasn’t for me.  I’d have to upload to photobucket just to upload it here.  I’m wondering if I just need to suck it up and love photobucket, especially since I already know how to use it!

I’m going to post my pictures here just to show off how cute my girls are.  There are one or two really good ones, the rest, crap.  Don’t be too harsh on me.  I’m learning.

Oh and hit up the new playground at Highland Park.  AWESOME!!!  Really wishing I lived closer to Endwell to utilize the great playgrounds in the area, including Homer Brink Elementary School.

*look, I figured out how to do side by side photos on photobucket. Maybe I don’t have to learn a new program afterall. (ETA:: as soon as I type this, the program doesn’t load anymore. I’ve checked, everything is updated but the damn thing won’t work for me. I’m now trying to figure it out in photofiltre. This post should have been done two hours ago.)

Part of the problem is our communication. I talk, the girls don’t listen. They hear what I say but don’t understand simple directions. That sounds harsh but in reality it’s true. When I say “Sonyea don’t run, you’ll slip in the mud,” she hears “run run as fast as you can.” They also get distracted easily. Part of my problem here is I was trying to use the sun as that natural lighting but it was shining right in their faces. I was trying to crouch down low and even went so far as lay down in the damp ground but they weren’t having it. The girls are not going to be happy to hear this, but we are going to start practicing, er pretending to pose for the camera.

I changed my wording to “pretending” because on our way home we stopped at the library to drop off the due books. Being a good Mommy, after they begged for 5 minutes, we went inside to play for a short bit. They have a kitchen set and blocks and puzzles to play with along with the books. There were two other little girls there, probably around Sonyea’s age and they were playing nicely together. One was the Mom, Sonyea was the baby and she listened to every word that “mom” said. “Eat your veggies, take a nap, and ssshhhhh!” I asked how come you listen to that mom but you won’t listen to this mom? The care giver of the little girl said it was much easier to pretend to do things than actually do things. That got me thinking. We are going to pretend to listen, pretend to clean up our toys and pretend to have nice manners. I wonder how that will go over…

Here’s what just took me basically two hours to figure out.

I’m ok with the way it looks, not the actual photos but the “merging” of the two photos. Esh, I should have gone to bed two hours ago. This is not the stuff I can do with the kids around though. I think I’m so cranky all the time can be explained by the late nights. I digress, this is supposed to be about our photo shoots.

I don’t know how this happened, but I think this is a fabulous photo. I was eyeballing the hill while thinking I take my best photos from far away and the camera zooms in. Then it blurs the background.

This was the first picture I took and the next show them fighting at the top of the hill. I swear, I can’t imagine I was “this” bad as a kid. My mom keeps talking about paybacks but I must have some bad karma or something to have to referee these girls as much as I have to.

My action photos are usually pretty decent too. These are a little “off” but pretty cool if you ask me.

And yes, they are screaming as loud as they can. My Zia is such a sweet little peanut, when Sonyea is around… she’s loud and oh so obnoxious. These girls feed off of each other like no other!!

I think they were now done with the shoot. I tried a new setting on the camera and I’m just not happy with it. I did try tweaking it a bit in photobucket to fix it but I think there’s no fixing them at this point. I’m staying away from the continuous sports setting on the camera. The color of the original pictures is off.

Their favorite game to play at the parks with “windows” like this is “ice cream sales.” Ice cream is very expensive when you buy from them. The last cone I got from Miss Sonyea was $6!!! It wasn’t very good.

After we changed out of the costumes into comfy clothes, I had to put everything back in the bag. It took a little while to get it all squared away and get the camera put away. I came around the tree to find Zia more than halfway up the climbing wall. I about fell over trying to get to her fast enough to make sure she didn’t fall. She didn’t even slip though. This wall is the best one I’ve seen around since it’s built on an angle and not straight up and down.

Sometimes, these two are just the sweetest can be and they do listen, sometimes. I love these next few.

I had them angled because I was trying to “cut” out the background. Instead, they made nice pictures weird.

How can you not love those faces? There was actually a time today when I told Sonyea I didn’t like her very much at that moment. Not one of my finer mommy minutes.