My life...just not on the road I expected (but it's still dang good).

The Upside & the Downside

As with everything in life, you can look at the upside or the downside.

The downside of my current busyness is that I'm experiencing frequent heart-palpatations and lightheadedness, my husband had to take the kids out of town by himself the last two weekends in a row while I stayed home to work and I haven't brushed my hair in three days.

The upside is that I'm taking a nice little trip down Memory Lane, looking for old images to use in lessons...

I'm just trying to keep my eyes fixed on the upside.

Alive

I took a few photos this morning just so you'd all know that I'm alive...

Things will probably be pretty quiet here until my busy gets a little less busy.

I know some of you will come back no matter how long it takes for my busy to get less busy - and without getting too sappy, I hope you know how much that means.

The Winner(s)

I was torn...

Go with a random number generator like I normally do, or go with one of the moms whose husband is deployed??? 

So I went with both. (That's one of the upsides of being my own boss. Oh, and wearing pajamas all day at work.)

So Christine and Nikki, just email me at karen@snapshotsofagoodlife.com and we'll get all the details worked out - excited to have you guys onboard for the September workshop! (I'll probably leave the registration open for auditors through the end of next week for anyone else who wants to join.)

And thanks all of you who listened to the Paperclipping Roundtable yesterday (and those of you who emailed me afterwards to tell me that I didn't sound like a complete buffoon.) I was sick at my stomach for about the first 30 minutes of it, but once that died down, it was pretty fun.

And don't give up on me quite yet. I really will pick up on the blogging soon. Just need to unbury myself from all these deadlines.

And a few photos from the beach back in March...

Yes, I really am that behind on photos.

Some Business Stuff.

Business isn't my favorite topic (photography is), but there's some exciting stuff going on for me and I wanted to share:

1. I'm teaching my first, four-day Hometown Workshop to a group of past students in just a few weeks. It's something I've wanted to do for years now, but could never find the time. And honestly, I probably never would have done it if this group of students hadn't been so persistent in their request for me to teach one - so thanks guys for pushing me and this little dream of mine outside of my comfort zone and into reality. Will share more details later. (For now, this is something I'm just offering to past students and much to my surprise, the workshops are already booked full through 2013.)

2. I've got an article in the premiere issue of Click that is coming out in October from Clickin Moms and am prettty dang excited about it.

3. I'm going to be on The Paperclipping Roundtable along with Tracey Clark (the founder of Shutter Sisters) and Katrina Kennedy (who does Capture Your 365) tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific Time and I wasn't all that nervous about it until I heard that they're expecting about 4,000 listeners. (When I get nervous, I typically either clam up or say lots of stupid things - should be interesting.)

4. I've been doing some crafty stuff in my scrapbook room in preparation for the Hometown Workshop (Had to dust the cobwebs out of there first.) and I had forgotten how much I love having paint and ink and glue all over my hands. I swear I'm going to start scrapbooking again. Honest-engine.

5. I'm embarrassingly behind on emails and culling photos, so my apologies to all of you that have been waiting weeks (possibly months) on an email from me and to my family who is waiting for me to post all the photos from my Aunt Kelly's visit. Not sure when I'm going to get caught up on either. (Blame it on those girls that talked me into teaching The Hometown Workshop - they're the reason I'm so busy.)

6. My next online workshop is starting in three weeks. All the regular seats are sold out, but I'll open back up the registration for anyone who wants to audit. The ONLY difference between regular students and auditing students is that I do not evaluate assignments for auditing students, but auditing is typically ideal for students who want to work at their own pace. (Note that this will be my last online workhop in 2012.) Hope you gals in the September class are looking forward to it as much as I am.

And I think I'll do a drawing for one of those auditing seats...

So if you'd like to audit the upcoming, online Photographers' Workshop, just leave a comment in the comment section under this post and I'll draw a winner sometime on Wednesday.

And a photo, because I could never post without one...

The Summer of '08

Had planned to post a whole bunch of photos, but then the week just kind of got away from me.

Working on a project though and stumbled across this shot from the summer of '08 that made me smile really (really) big.

Crazy to think that in another four years, these guys will be 10, 14 and 15.

Lord help me.

Tent-City

My mom must have spent a week or more getting everything ready for my Aunt Kelly and her girls to come visit.

She even set up "Tent-City" for all of us to sleep in.

Martha Stewart style tents with vases full of fresh-cut flowers sitting on top of bedside tables, hand-made quilts and ruffled pillow shams laying on air mattresses, baskets full of magazines and books to read, cute rugs, and hanging lanterns. (I meant to get pictures of Tent City, but I kept waiting for prettier light - and then I forgot.)

It was lovely though.

And it was peaceful too until my uncle showed up with an air horn.

And the company was great.

That's my aunt Kelly, who drove all the way from Utah to visit.

And that's my cousin, Beth with the girls.

And that's my grandpa.

And my friend Coral. (My mom is on the right.)

We even had live music. (Courtesy of Ross, who drove home from Seattle to spend the week with us.)

And comedy. (My Uncle Donnie always provides the comedy.)

And a professional photo-crasher. (Nice Ross.)

And cute girlies.

And there were crawdads, fresh from the creek to scare grandmas with. (That's my littlest cousin, Lee Lee with the crawdad.)

And good food.

And good conversation.

And lots of big cousins to carry you around if you didn't feel like walking.

And a creek to play in. (That's my friend Coral's son, Josiah.)

And some more music.

And walks.

And lots of goofing off.

And a late night game of cards.

And then we all stayed up late talking to our tent-mates in Tent-City before calling it a night. (Thanks for making it so wonderful mom.)

My Aunt Kelly

My Aunt Kelly and two of her girls drove out from Utah last week.

So I've got a bazillion photos to share, but need to finish sorting through them and editing them first, so I figured I'd just share my favorite one (of Annie and my aunt) for now...

Also, I've been getting a lot of emails and comments asking about my lens selection and camera settings in the last few weeks and wanted to mention that I do NOT block the shooting information on my images because I want students and readers to be able to view that information.

So, anytime you want to know what lens I was using or what camera settings I was using, all you have to do is:

1. Double-click on the image you want to view info. for.

2. Copy the URL provided for that image.

3. Go to Jeffrey's EXIF viewer.

4. Paste the URL into the box that says "Image URL."

5. Click on the button that says "View image at URL" and it will pull up all of the info. you need (and a whole bunch of info. you'll never need too.)

Most of the info. you'll need can be found in the first box that says "Basic Image Information." For example, the information below corresponds with the photo I posted of Annie and my aunt and tells you that I was shooting with a Nikon D700 and an 85mm f1.4 lens and that my camera settings were f1.4, 1/125th of a second and ISO 640. It also tells you that I was shooting in Manual Mode and my exposure was set -1 darker than my cameras recommended exposure. It also goes on to share details about my camera to subject distance and my depth of field in the 'focus' section, telling you that I was 2.7m (almost 9 ft.) away from my subjects and based on that distance (along with my aperture of f1.4 and the focal length of my lens which was 85mm) that my depth of field (how much of my image could be in focus) was about 8cm (just over 3 inches).

Hope that's helpful to some of you.

The Man-Cave

Annie's favorite thing to do lately is to spend the evening working with her dad on the attic/man-cave...

In fact, I've even heard her nag him into working in the attic when he didn't feel like it.

Which means that the man-cave is (after three years) coming close to completion.

When we bought this house, the attic was a scary place, with knob and tube electrical wires dangling everywhere, thousands of rusty nails sticking out of the ceiling and old wooden floorboards that wreaked of cat pee.

And when he tore out the floorboards and started cleaning the area beneath them, he found old school calendars that dated back to 1907, church bulletins that were over 100 years old, an old world map drawn in pencil by a kid named Elmer, an empty box of tire-tape for Model-T tires, a small leather journal filled with spelling words in the most beautiful penmanship you've ever seen, and a plethora of other cool, old finds, amongst the dust, dirt, debris and bird carcasses. (The place was so nasty that every cut and scrape that came into contact with what was under those floorboards became infected.)

And it took him forever to clean out the space because he was so worried about vacuuming up something important.

And every time he'd collected a small pile of cool finds, he'd give them to me. (I've saved them all.)

But now it's all clean, with new 2x4's (For support.) new electrical wires (He's re-wired the entire upstairs, but the downstairs still has the old knob and tube wiring.), new windows (There were only screens before.), tons of insulation (There was no insulation before.) and thousands upon thousands of screws. (He didn't use a single nail.)

And he's even throwing a man-cave grand-opening party in September, but you can't come unless you grow a mustache between now and then. (Mustaches are required to enter the man-cave.)

So I'm considering skipping waxing a few times so I can make it to the party.