Week 1

Happy

January 30, 2011

Ariana and I started our Phototastic Year today.  It snowed a few inches last night and Ariana said it was the perfect time for me to take pictures of her.  I had bought a pettiskirt back in the fall and she had not had the chance to wear it for pictures yet.  So she put it on and we bundled up and headed to my favorite boardwalk.  She had a blast twirling around in the snow and posing for me.  She is such a natural.  I love photographing her.

After taking some portraits of her, we headed back home to change and get the rest of the camera gear.  Then we were off to my parents house to visit with my brothers who were in town for my mom's birthday. While we were over there, Ariana and I headed outside to take some more pictures.  I let her use my Nikon D60 and she took some really nice shots of some trees.  We weren't outside very long because it was so cool out and our hands were freezing.

When we got home I showed her how to upload the pictures to the laptop.  I also showed her how to do editing in iPhoto.  I'll show her how to edit in Photoshop later, I didn't want to overwhelm her.  It was really cool to wake up the next day and see her on the laptop working on her pictures.  We had a great first week in our photo challenge.

Wednesday's forecast is calling for 8-12inches of snow.  Hmmmm . . . sounds like a perfect day for week 2!  And I should have my new camera by then!!!!

Finally

I have been looking to upgrade my camera body for about a year now.  Last year my wonderful husband bought me a 50mm f/1.8 lens for my birthday.  I currently have a Nikon D60 and the 50mm glass will not autofocus on the D60.  No big deal I thought.  I can just manually focus right?  Wrong.  I can manually focus if I am focusing on a non-moving subject, like a flower.  But when I am trying to take pictures of my kids, it doesn't work so well.  They are constantly moving and I am constantly getting blurry shots.  That is when I knew I needed to upgrade my camera body.

I started doing some research and discovered the Nikon D700.  The D700 was a new full frame camera that had just came out and it was not as expensive as the other Nikon full frame cameras.  Now I had a decision to make.  Do I switch to a full frame or stay with DX series.  If I upgraded to the D700 the two lens that came with D60 would not work on this new camera body.  The 50mm lens would work on both the D700 and the D90, and it would autofocus on both.  If I stayed with the DX series and upgraded to the D90 then all my lens would work.  This was a tough decision.  Saving for the D90 would be easy.  Saving for the D700 would take a longer time since I would also need to buy a lens.  I drove myself crazy thinking about it.  After much thought and research, I decided to go with the D700.  After I made that decision, I could not buy anything else for the D60.  I couldn't get any of the filters I wanted because they would not fit on the new lens I was going to buy for the D700.  It was really really hard to just sit and save money and not invest in new camera supplies.

When me my birthday rolled around last week, I was very anxious.  I received money as gifts for both Christmas and my birthday to go towards my camera fund.  I decided to check the price of the camera again.  When I looked I saw that if I ordered the camera and a lens then there was a $300 savings.  I counted my money and saw I had enough for the 16-35mm lens but was $279 short for the 24-70mm lens.  Oh what to do!  I didn't know which lens I wanted more.  I wanted them both!

After much thought, and driving my husband insane, I decided I wanted the 24-70mm glass first.  So I was going to have to continue to save and wait for the next deal to come around.  That is when my mom came to my rescue.  She offered to loan me the money so I could get the camera.  I am a very frugal person and I also hate owing people money.  I also have anxiety spending money.  After a couple days I decided to take my mom up on her offer.  I placed the order yesterday for the Nikon D700 with the 24-70 f/2.8 glass and a Tiffin UV 77mm filter.

Now I have to wait until February 1st to take delivery of my new camera.  The next four days are going to feel like an eternity!!!! But I finally did it!  I ordered the camera!  When I was talking to my dad he told me to get over it.  You can't take the money with you and you really want it and you have been saving for it forever.  Just hit button and place the order.

Mom and Daughter Photo Challenge

Phototastic Year 2011
I want to do a photo challenge this year and have been thinking about to do.  I would love to do a 365 Photo Challenge but know that it would be really hard since I work and don't get home until late.  I saw some other photographers are doing a 52 Photo Challenge and decided that was the challenge for me.

Ariana was feeling like she wasn't spending enough time with me so I told her about this challenge and asked her if she would want to do it with me.  She said YES!  We got to talking and were trying to think of a name for our challenge but could not come up with one that we liked.  At dinner we were telling Julia and Trevor about our idea and Trevor came up with the perfect name: Phototastic Year.  We loved it and chose that for our title.

We are going to take one picture a week and post it in our blog and write a little about our experiences.  Some of our pictures are going to be taken indoors and some outdoors.  We will see where our creative minds take us.  I am hoping to get some great shots this year, maybe even some that I would never have thought of.  At the end of the 52 weeks we will be able to look back at our pictures and hopefully see how much we have grown as photographers.  I'm really excited!!  I'll get to spend some quality time with Ariana, and Julia when she joins us.  Julia only wants to be involved some weeks, she might change her mind and take pictures every week.  We will just have to wait and see.

 Mom and Daughter Photo Challenge 2011

Phototastic Year

1 picture 52 weeks

picture taking

mommy daughter time

photography excursions

day trips

creative minds

silly adventures

crazy stories