Olivia was wearing a very cute polka dot outfit from Grandma Evy today, so we snagged some pictures this morning while she played on the floor of the kitchen. Maurice was busy cleaning up the basement a little while she and I played and took some pictures. I need to learn how to not use the zoom lens indoors, since clearly it isn’t meant for such shots without a flash. Thankfully, the flash unit will be here late next week. Phew!

Charlie came over later in the evening to help us move an old desk upstairs from the garage. It belonged to a friend, but she’s no longer up here and has no need for it. It is now sitting behind the couch and will soon be the new home of my sewing machine. Yes, I have too many hobbies… I’ll land on one some day.

Maurice and I also ran out to Ikea today. We looked at a desk setup that will allow us to reorganize the basement and possibly clean it up in such a way that would make us feel more comfortable letting Olivia play down there. The desks we have now don’t match, and they are so old that another move will certainly break them. While at Ikea, I had the pleasure of leaving my purse in the cafeteria. I nearly had a heartattack, but a wonderful young boy found it and gave it to his mother to turn in. I hugged her for it… I think that freaked her a little, but I was really relieved to have my purse back. We calmed down and snagged a wooden puzzle toy for Olivia for a whopping $7.99. Oh yeah! Those “Anatex” cubes typically go for about $50-100, so getting a little one for Olivia to beat up on for just $7.99 was awesome. They also had really pretty chandeliers for infant girls, but I figured Maurice would rather shoot himself than install that in her room. It was only $14. Bah. I love Ikea, in a very deep and awkward way.

The humidity has been horrific in the area all week long no thanks to the spotty thunderstorms, so imagine my surprise when I pick Olivia up from daycare to see a mass of curls on top of her head. Her bangs decided to bunch up and curl, which is awesome… because my hair can’t hold a curl to save its life. No really… I’m not kidding! For the wedding, the hairdresser used an entire can of hairspray on my head yet the curls still fell out over the course of the day. My hair is very anti-curl.

Olivia is feeling much better now that she’s over whatever stomach bug haunted her this past weekend. That had a lot to do with why no one heard from us after Saturday’s strawberry festival extravaganza. Olivia sicked up again on Sunday, and we took it easy the rest of the break. Unfortunately, this meant we missed out on a lot of Memorial Day festivities.

In other news, the 430EX II flash unit will be coming in later next week. That should help polish up a lot of the pictures that I take in low light settings (like our living room, oddly enough — not a lot of good lighting there). I’m doing a lot more things to ramp up for a potential business venture; however, I really need to work on a portfolio in order to actively pursue it as a little side career. I am practicing as much as possible, but potential customers would certainly recognize the fact that my entire website is filled with pictures of my daughter. That said, if anyone wants to volunteer (who hasn’t graciously done so already) feel free to ping me

I decided to futz around with some cheapo photography experiments today. First I found some old drapery lining material that I had bought at Joann’s ages ago when I made the drapes for our house. I have a decent amount left, and it’s also very heavy and wrinkle resistant. Win! I tossed that over a couple of chairs, voila… insta-backdrop. It’s not fancy, but it works. Next, I bought a $12 clip lamp from Home Depot and outfitted it with a daylight, 75watt bulb for $5. Not bad. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than the $100 umbrella lamp I’ve been eyeballing on ebay or $300 softbox… oi!

First I took a couple of shots of wine bottles. For those that don’t know us, we keep the bottles of wines that we really enjoyed. You can’t read all of the labels, but that’s intentional thanks to the lovely bokeh my 50mm f1.8 gives.

Next I tried to take pictures of Olivia. Maurice was kind enough to help distract her by shaking a toy. It made her smile in the right direction, so I was quite happy with the results. The only thing that irks me is that the white backdrop took on a greyish blue tint. I tried fixing this in photoshop, but it wasn’t doing well. The only way to resolve that is to get real lighting or a flash unit with a diffuser attached to it.

The biggest lesson I learned here is that backdrops aren’t my style. I like natural settings like grass, trees, hardwood flooring, drywall, or a lovely carpet. I don’t really like the “studio” backdrop look. It’s just not my cup of tea, but if it was everyone’s cup of tea, then why would the world need so many photographers? Everyone has a style they enjoy, and they pick photographers that match their own style. Hrm, that sounds sinfully like a “cop-out”

We’re late, of course, with the monthly photo shoot. Olivia is moving around a LOT now when we take pictures, so the nature of her photo shoots is going to change drastically. I’m not focusing so much on getting her to smile for the camera as I am at just getting some good shots of her in a natural setting. At 10 months she still isn’t crawling, but she scoots around like a champ! She is enjoying various table foods for dinner and loves going out to restaurants. Olivia has taken to communicating to us when she wants something by reaching out toward it and opening/closing her palm toward it. That’s been quite helpful — except when she wants something she can’t have (like the cell phones… laptop… cat tails). Ah, and she’s also taken to sticking her tongue out.

This past week she caught a really odd little bug. It lasted maybe 12 hours. No fever, no fussiness, but she couldn’t keep ANY food down. We fed her a bland meal of rice and pedialyte until she recovered yesterday afternoon. To celebrate, we met up with our friends, the Stones, at the Delaplane Strawberry Festival. It was really nice! They had pony rides, funnelcakes, crafts for the kids, and vendors galore. Naturally, we purchased 12 pints of fresh strawberries before heading back toward the car. I got some wonderful shots of Olivia and Isabella today, especially of Isabella, since she will pause for a few seconds to let me snap a smiley face. Olivia kind of just…. stares. I think the new camera still confuses her.

I didn’t post ALL of the images here, because there are 15 of them, and it could get hairy putting all of those here and expecting people to load the site quickly enough. Feel free to visit my Flickr Photostream (click here or the link to the right of the page) and see the rest.

Woops, the alarm didn’t go off. This means no exercise, no fancy hairdo, and a slow ramble toward work this morning. I did manage to snap a couple of images this morning of Olivia and Maurice. These are with the new lens. I’ve noticed the lens has some noise to it if there’s no direct light on the subject’s face, but I resolved that easily enough in Photoshop with a few filters. Maurice seems to think I should do this professionally (on the side of course). I’m not sure if I should yet. At least, I think I need to practice a bunch with friends and family before I branch out. I am good with a camera, but I also rely much too heavily on natural light settings. I’d need to pick up a soft light flash to do low-light portraits without flooding the person with tons of bright white light and overexposing the image. Ick. I hate flash It looks so fake.