Through the Lens: Spring & Summer 2016

A few of our life through the lens of my DSLR: May through September.

PALMER: our 'old house', which we sold in June
1 | fun in the play tent   2 | reading together   3 | getting familiar with the potty   4 | "What's in there?"

HOMER SPIT: July in Homer
1 | my baby girl is two   2 | the beach is fun

OUR AIRSTREAM: august
1 | Raina during nap time  

OUR PROPERTY: august - west hill, homer
1 | working late nearly every night after kids are in bed   2 | beautiful sunsets   3 | coming in for the night to see the sweet sleeping faces of my big boy   4 | Riggs at four years old: scrapes and bandaids everyday

currently {vol. 9}

m a k i n g
I spent this week organizing the photos from 2014 on my computer...oh my gosh that was a lot of work. I'm resolved to do this monthly in 2015 so I don't have to spend two full days at the end of the year deleting, filing and backing up the years pictures. Now that they're all cleaned up, I'm working on our 2014 part two photo book. I use shutterfly to make photo books with all our family photos instead of printing them out and manually putting them in albums, it works great! I also print out my instagram photos in books using chatbooks. 

l i s t e n i n g   t o
The dryer and washer are both running, KSKA (PRI's The World, to be specific) is on the radio in the kitchen, and Riggs is telling me everything he's thinking about as I type this. The soundtrack of my life, haha.

h o p i n g
A lot of my houseplants desperately need to be repotted and I'm really hoping I can find some cheap but not hideous pots at the thrift store in Palmer. Maybe the subtitle for this should actually be dreaming as I've never had the best luck at this particularly thrift store.

r e a d i n g
Slowly making my way through David Starkey's Six Wives. Every paragraph in this book is packed with historical information making it nearly impossible to read when the kids are awake. Since I haven't been able to commit to any fictional books lately I decided to read some history instead and learning all the actual details about Henry VIII's wives and marriages to them is really hitting the spot for me. 

p u r p o s i n g
I took so many pictures of Riggs with my real camera when he was a baby (see my 365 projects from 2012 here and 2013 here) and I've been feeling a little bit guilty lately about how many I've taken of Raina (not very many). So I'm purposing to keep my camera out and handy so that I can grab it instead of my iphone when I want to capture a special moment in her life. I wish that I would I have started an actual 365 project with her from day one, but I didn't and I can't go back, and late is better than never, right? I might actually have a photo a day of her since she's been born, but definitely not using my real camera.

Here are a few I've taken lately that really capture who Raina right now:

and one of Riggs and Tutka, I couldn't leave them out...

building my portfolio | Alaskan Outdoor Newborn Session

Photographs have always held a special interest for me. Even as a child I loved to look at our family photos, over and over and over again. Since Riggs was born my interest has grown exponentially and expanded to actually taking photos myself. When Riggs was a few months old my father-in-law generously gave me his older Canon Rebel to use and I've been hooked on DSLR photography ever since.

It's such a lot to learn, however, and I feel like I'm really just skimming the surface of a very deep ocean of information regarding my camera settings, actual setting and posing, and then editing in photoshop and lightroom. It's overwhelming! My learning style is very hands-on so I've been trying to take as many pictures in as many different situations as I possibly can and am happy to have family and friends that oblige me and my picture taking.

My best friend and her husband just welcomed a new addition to their family, a handsome little man named Lane, and I offered to take some pictures for them when he was a week old (see my pictures of his older sister Lyla during her month-long NICU stay, here). I'm really happy with how the session went and with how the photos turned out and just loved getting to document such a special time in their lives.

us + changing leaves + the banks of the Matanuska River

Some of my favorite memories as a family have been made outside, wandering and exploring the trails and beaches that surround us in this valley we call home. No distractions, no walls holding us in, just endless miles of landscape for us to cover together.

Sometimes I struggle with balancing being fully in the moment and attempting to document the beauty around me through photographs. Often I have to force myself to leave my camera in my pocket (iPhone) or in the bag until we reach our destination, or until certain points along the trail that are especially picturesque.

Then there are other times that I get carried away taking pictures, upload them right away and then somehow forget all about them. Months later I'll be scrolling through files and find a set of pictures hidden away in a folder with only a date to describe them. That's what happened with these from early in September. I found them again a few weeks ago, and vowed to edit and post them soon. Today I finally got around to editing them and wanted to share them before I forget again. The leaves are long gone now and there's (still) no snow, so having these photos to look back on is especially nice right about now.