Photography class

I am taking a digital photography class this semester. This group of pictures was our first assignment. It may look completely boring and pointless...but I was very excited to learn it. This lesson was on taking a picture with the correct exposure settings. Our assignment was to take pictures of a black object, a gray object, a white object, and then pictures of the three of them together. He wanted the object to fill the full frame, and take one regular point and click picture of each one, and then change the camera settings to correctly expose the picture, so the black object was really black and not a form of gray or brown...and the white object was really white and not an off white or gray. I have never changed the settings on my camera, so this was fun to do. It's kind of an uninteresting post, but people ask me how school is, and I can actually show my work for this class, so there ya go! Oh, and the reason my white looks slightly pink or orange has to do with shooting in florescent lighting.


Original Black Object

Under exposed by 1

Under exposed by 2


White overexposed by 2

White overexposed by 1

Original white object


Gray under exposed by 2

Gray underexposed by 1

Gray overexposed by 2

Gray overexposed by 1

Original Gray object


Contrast underexposed by 2

Contrast underexposed by 1

Contrast overexposed by 2

Contrast overexposed by 1

Original Contrast of objects

Happy 11th Birthday, Caleb!

Caleb had his birthday this past week and he is now 11. He was supposed to be born on Feb. 19th, but he was anxious to be out. He spent 8 days in the NICU, and we were so relieved that it wasn't anything serious, just a little breathing difficulty. He is a great kid, and we are happy to have him in our family. He chose to go out to Bullwinkle's Pizza for dinner, and we let all the kids play a few of the arcade games they have in there.

This was Caleb's favorite present. It is a Bakugan. I'm not really sure what they do, or what the hype is with them, but they are THE hot toy here. I've looked for them several times, and have only ever seen this one at the store in the 3 months I've known about them.


The cake.

The boy with the cake.

He blew each candle out individually! It was pretty funny when we told him he didn't get his wish, because he didn't do it in one blow...I don't know how he didn't know that "rule". Do you also love London posing in the background....lol!

The story about the cake is...I knew that we had a cake in the cupboard, because I could see the side of the box. What I didn't know is that it was a strawberry cake (ie and pink cake) and that just wasn't going to work. I added a ton of yellow food coloring to the batter to make it orange, and then we put blue frosting on it, so it could be a BSU cake. =) He thought that was pretty cool.

They must have got this from me...

What is with all the big hair around here!?! Brooklin is constantly giving herself giant hair, and last week, we put London's hair up in these twist things (I didn't take a picture of them) but when we took her hair out and brushed it, she said "Now I look like Brooklin". All I can think of is they must have gotten it from me. =) The sad thing is I did my hair that way to look GOOD...and they do it to look funny!

Brooklin and London with big hair

London with "Brooklin" hair

Me at the age of 15...my sophomore year of high school. Go ahead and laugh, =) I know a lot of you (girls) did the same thing every day....rat, tease, blow dry, and use endless cans of aquanet. =)

You'll Find it at Fred Meyer

Darwin went to the store this week to pick up some stuff for me. He watched this old lady pick up a bottle of juice, read the label, gasp, and throw the bottle like it had just shocked her. She walked away in a huff. Of course Darwin was interested to see what was going on in the juice bin, so he walked over and picked up the bottle she had just tossed. It looks unassuming at first glance, but the fine print is the kicker! This is not just another vitamin drink! Hope it makes laugh.


Oh, and by the way, it was so nasty, I couldn't finish drinking it...and it didn't seem to make any difference to either of us. =)

Super short, super fast

we had a great christmas and new years. we got lots of snow, and now everyone is back in school...including me. we have been sledding numerous times, and someday i will find the energy to go through the 800+ pictures that my friend wendy took, and post a few. (if you have a facebook account, all the good ones are on there...just add darwin or i as a friend and then you can see them.) darwin got a 10/22 cricket rifle and a machette for christmas. i am taking 10 credits this semester...math 105, online music appreciation, and a digital photography class. brooklin just talked to the band director today, and she is going to be the pianst for the sixth grade choir. caleb finished all his requirements for his arrow of light in cub scouts, and will receive it sometime in february...and he is turning 11 in about 2 weeks! london is practicing the piano everyday without being asked now. isaiah is just being isaiah...and wishing he was older so he could do more stuff. we have spent the last 3 weeks playing settlers of catan...our new favorite game that we got for christmas. our adoption update is still not done...boo. the lady keeps finding one more thing we need to get to her, so who knows when we will finally completely approved again...this is taking forever!

i hope to have a real update soon. i'm not really busy, but since i left it for so long, it is hard to know where to start!

seizure!

Snow Beautiful

Today is 13Jan09. I started this post on the 7th, and for some reason, the site wasn't downloading pictures, so this post has been stuck in editing for a week...oops! I took all of these pictures on the 7th, and later in the week, we got 3 more feet of snow. Sunday, it warmed up to 40 degrees and has been raining ever since, so the roads are nasty and everything is turning gray now. I am glad I got these pictures before it got ugly!

New family pictures

We've had a few candid family shots taken recently, so I thought I'd post them.

This picture was taken on Saturday the 27th. We hiked out to the face of the Mendenhall Glacier with our good friends the Daltons and the Rosenbruchs. Wendy took this picture for us, and it turned out great...even with coats on!




This is the picture we sent out with our Christmas cards. I didn't want a picture with our coats on, so we went out to the glacier in September, before it got too cold.

This picture was also taken by Wendy. This is our family at our ward's Christmas lu'au that was on the 5th of December. The videos of us all dancing are further down the blog.

Christmas traditions

Ever since I can remember I have eaten strawberry waffles on Christmas morning. It is a tradition that as far as I know is carried out by everyone in my dad's family; including his six sibling's families, my 37 cousins and since more of them are married with children than aren't now...however many of their families too. I of course, shared this tradition with my husband and children and we enjoyed strawberry waffles on Christmas morning. Maybe sometime, I will try and come up with how many spouses and children my cousins all have, but for now...it will just be numbered as a lot. =)

Sledding and a frozen lake

Darwin and the kids went sledding on Saturday. I was sick, so I stayed home in bed the whole day. Anyway, he took them up to the Mendenhall Glacier. It has been SUNNY and between 3 and 23 degrees for 9 DAYS now! It is absolutely beautiful. The lake at the glacier is frozen solid, so after going down the hill for awhile, they all walked across the lake up to the face of the glacier. It is amazing...the glacier. I'm sad I missed it, so we will have to go back out when we are all well again. (Caleb, Isaiah and I have had the pukes)

MaNiC mOnDaY

POP QUIZ: ARE YOU USING YOUR CAMERA WEEKLY?

Today's theme is to test your photo taking abilities and to see if you are putting those cameras to work. This Manic Monday will have three pictures to it...If you haven't been using your camera lately, then you will just have to post this saying, "MISSED EVENTS OF LAST WEEK, WILL TRY TO DO BETTER IN THE FUTURE."

That is right, this is like a pop quiz!

First picture: Any picture of your choice taken between December 6th-9th
Second picture: Any picture of your choice taken between December 10th-12th
Third picture: The 12th picture you took on Thanksgiving Day

Make sure you list the date the picture was taken and a little caption describing the photograph

This picture of Brooklin was taken on Dec. 5th (cheating by one day...does this count??) at our ward Christmas party. We didn't take very many actual pictures, because we were video taping the whole thing.

This picture was taken on Dec. 10th. The kids were decorating a gingerbread house.

Picture #3

"MISSED EVENTS OF THANKSGIVING, WILL TRY TO DO BETTER IN THE FUTURE."
(We ate at our friend's house, and she took all the pictures, and I haven't put them on my thumb drive yet.)

Kung Fu Fighting!

We bought a PlayStation 2 in Dec. of 2002. We bought it because of one particular game ... EyeToy Play. We were introduced to the EyeToy game by Darwin's sister Lisa while we were visiting Idaho for Christmas. We played her playstation every other night, because it gave us all such a work out, we were too sore the next day to play it again, and had to give our bodies a break. We left his parent's house and headed to my parent's house, and we didn't have a playstation, so we went to Toys R Us and bought one...and the game. We came home and played it with my family. My parents came home one night, and from their car they watched us through the window. They didn't have any idea what was going on in their living room. All of us were sitting around watching one person standing in the middle of the room flailing their arms around wildly. We always said it would be fun to video tape someone playing EyeToy, but we never did it.

Fast forward to this week...Dec. 2008. We dusted off our well used copy of EyeToy Play, and set up a bunch of lights. We haven't played this game for at least a year. We were all having a great time. Then I suddenly remembered that we never did get any video of us playing the game. We have this GREAT video camera, called a Flip Video. I ran into the other room and snuck up on Darwin playing the Kung Fu game on EyeToy. He knew that I was taping him after just a few seconds, but that didn't stop him from playing. He wanted me to try and beat my old score, so he could tape me, and these are the videos. Enjoy! Oh...I did beat my old high score, and if you have the high score, it takes a picture of you for the leader board...that is what I am doing at the end of the video. Posing for my picture. =)