Shaking Things Up

I'm shaking up the blog. Thinking about renaming it altogether but haven't quite decided to what. My Life in Peoria, maybe? Living in Peoria? Not sure. I know I haven't explored enough of the area to take Peoria out of the name but I'm no longer wanting to keep it so narrowly focused. It's limiting and tough to update some months, especially in the winter. So bear with me while I think things through.

In the meantime, I've been playing with light and flashes and taking pictures of actors these days. No one famous...at least not yet. I've been helping out a local high school with head shots of the kids in the upcoming school play. It's been a lot of fun and has highly challenged my thinking and planning skills, which I like. I'm determined to figure this off-camera flash stuff out so I can branch out into creating more interesting photos.

IN other news, my pre-teen turns 13 tomorrow. Puberty kicked in a few months ago. His crackly voice and upper lip fuzz remind me of that every day. He's shot up a good couple of inches recently and I find it charming that he keeps measuring himself to me about twice per week. He's obsessed with growing taller than his mother. As I write this I shake my head cause I can't believe it's been thirteen years since I laid eyes on that beautiful face with those wonderfully curious baby blue eyes. I still see his baby face when he sleeps. I guess that never goes away for us mothers.

So tomorrow we'll celebrate his birthday, maybe reminisce for a little bit and then I'll officially be the mother of two teenagers. Shiver in fear with me.

Mono Monday

This is a shot of the inside of the hallway that leads into the Peoria Civic Center:

I do love all those lines!

Through the Windows

Another place I really enjoy visiting for photographic purposes is the Peoria Civic Center. It's another one of those places where the 'mood of the view' changes from season to season. I loved walking into the building through the glass hallways this past Fall. Now the scenery has changed once again:

Swirly Whirly

Not sure I captured this quite the way I wanted but thought I'd post anyhow.  This is the view from the parking garage across the street from the Peoria Civic Center:

Wouldn't it be cool to skateboard all the way down?

Peoria Docks

One of the areas I find very beautiful in this town are the docks down by the river, believe it or not. I never get tired of going down there to photograph them. They look different from season to season and I especially like them in the winter:

Just to orientate you (especially if you're not from around here), that bridge you see in the background is the Murray Baker. It carries I-74 over the Illinois River and into Peoria. To my left is the Peoria downtown area and to my right, across the river, is East Peoria--a completely separate, much smaller city.

Mono-Monday

A little late for Monday but monochrome nevertheless. Forgive my lateness in posting this. I scheduled it ahead of time not realizing it wasn't going to post till Tuesday. Ah well.

Some of the Peoria Flickr group members and I went out walking around the downtown area this past weekend. It was pretty cold out but once we really got moving it wasn't so bad.

I was hoping to get lots more pictures but between the cold and the lack of motivation, I ended up taking just a few shots. This week's photos are from that walk, starting with a black and white shot of the outside of some building we walked by:

Last one of the flash series

I just had to throw this one in here because I love this picture! These are a couple more of the random kids hanging out at my house:

Again, this is the black bed sheet used as my background. I pointed a flash and umbrella at each girl and they did the rest. They're so much fun!

I hope I've inspired you to start thinking about that flash class now. ;)

Happy Heart

A couple of random kids I found hanging around in my house one afternoon:

I shot this with the white sheet as my background but I wasn't entirely happy with the way it turned out so I dropped out the white in Photoshop and added this textured background. It sounds a lot harder to do than it really is. There's a podcast called Photoshop User TV that you can subscribe to through iTunes.  Each episode runs about 30 minutes and is packed with so many Photoshop ideas your head will spin around at first. However, every episode is free--you can't beat that!

More fun with Flashes

Same flash setup as the previous post. I was having a little fun with this great book which talks in detail about how to use a Nikon flash. It's a fantastic book and not entirely for Nikon shooters. You can use it too if you shoot with a Canon. Really.

 

More fun with 3D Movie Glasses

More fun with the kid and her pair of 3D movie glasses:

Same two flashes as in the previous post except one was positioned behind her to camera left and the other in front at camera right. The background is a big, black sheet I got at Walmart for about $12.

The Fun You Can Have with 3D Movie Glasses

Here's another picture where I used the same two flashes I mentioned in the previous blog post:

This time, though, I covered one flash with a blue gel and aimed it at the back wall. The other flash is sitting on a stand with a white umbrella, which is aimed at me. And those wonderful glasses are from the movie theater where we saw Avatar in 3D. Love those glasses!

Catching Up Yet Again

Well, I'm back into the routine of work and general everyday busyness although I did get the day off last week when it snowed. The amazing thing is that my kids didn't. They had to go to school so I spent the day watching chick flicks and drinking coffee. It was heaven. I really should take more days like that!

We received River's ashes last week. I must say, it was a bittersweet homecoming. They came in a little wooden, engraved box which is now sitting on the mantle in the family room. A fitting spot for the dog who loved laying by the fireplace, hogging it from one end to the other. I'm thinking maybe in the spring or summer we will either bury them or spread them around the yard. Not sure yet. Our youngest has had a tough time dealing with his death and has written many poems and cards and stories to or about River. A perfectly healthy way to deal with it, no? Ah, but such is life...short, precious and oftentimes a collection of bittersweet moments.

Aside from day to day family stuff, I've been playing with my flashes and cameras in my basement studio. Unfortunately, we have an unfinished, unheated basement so my moments there are spent in spurts. But those spurts have certainly been productive and I feel I'm getting a better handle on the flash photography stuff. It's certainly fun!

My youngest has been my most willing model--thanks to my bribes sweet talking ways. She's quite the ham in front of the camera although lately she's started to take an interest in being behind it. Personally, I'd love one of my kids to follow in my footsteps and I think she's going to be the one but ssshhh! Don't tell her I said that cause she wants to be as different from me as she can possibly be!

Anyhow, this week's pictures are all flash related. I've been using two flashes--one is a Nikon and the other is a cheap Vivitar I picked up a year or so ago--and a couple of cheapie white umbrellas. The flashes are both placed off camera in different positions and are set to emit different levels of light, depending on what I want the final product to look like. I trigger the Vivitar with a little transmitter that sits atop my camera called a Paul C. Buff Cybersync. The Nikon flash is set to trigger by the light of the Vivitar. It's really quite fascinating when it all comes together. Take a look:

I used a plain, white sheet for my background that I strung up with clothes pins tied to strings that I nailed to the 2x4s of the basement ceiling. Talk about a cheap studio!

If you'd like to learn the basics of using your flash off your camera, or even on, I *highly* recommend the Peoria Art Guild Class "Lighting with Small Flashes." (The next session is scheduled to start January 18. Call first to find out if there are any more spots in the class.)  There's a lot of hands-on training and you'll walk out of there knowing how to take better pictures with your flash. Honestly!

Happy New Year's Eve!

So this picture will officially be the last of 2009. My New Year's resolution is to take my photography up a notch and to work on consistency. That second one might be tougher as life with young kids gets pretty busy at times and I can go weeks without picking up the camera. What are yours?

Planning on a quiet night at home with the kids and the Husband but wishing you a year filled with God's blessings, wherever you are.

One more

My father-in-law was a very talented woodworker. He loved building large pieces of furniture and replicating smaller stuff my mother-in-law would see at the store. She'd draw him a sketch of what she wanted and he'd build it. He did, however, refuse to build "knicky knacky ticky tacky" stuff--as he called it. Sadly, he passed away in 2002 but many of his birdhouses still remain around the yard:

To grandmother's house we go!

We went off for Christmas to my mother-in-law's home in Michigan. It's literally a trip "over the river and through the woods." It takes us 7 hours to get there but the trip is always hell interesting with three kids in the back seat. It's actually not that bad since they've learned to love our gas station stops. They figured out they can load up on all sorts of good eats as a reward for putting up with the driving. They're especially fond of corn nuts.

I adore my mother-in-law (MIL) who always rolls out the red carpet for us when we're there. She loves to cook and seems to enjoy having us there. She's 82 years old and runs circles around the Husband and I. She remains incredibly active and I want to be just like her when I grow up. Yep, I'm one of those lucky few who has a great relationship with all the in-laws. Wouldn't trade that for the world!

My MIL lives on a lake in Michigan, which always offers up interesting photo opportunities. The next couple of photos are from around her place.