I ♥ Faces - Smiles

I love the site I ♥ Faces! I have never entered but I have been meaning to for some time. Since this week's challenge is smiles I thought I would enter this photo of my smiley girl. Check out the site for all the beautiful smiles entered!

Welcome Twenty Ten!

Twenty-ten. That sounds pretty cool.
Can I just repeat how am so glad it's a new year, a new decade!

I have chosen Discipline as my word to start the year. Just uttering it makes me nervous because I can honestly say it is something I lack. I figured, though, I need to hold it close and think about it daily in order for me to have any way of becoming the disciplined person I want to be. Do I expect that I will be a disciplined person by the end of the year? No, it's a process; but I hope that by keeping it close it will help me with food choices, workouts, creating time for art, thinking before I speak, keeping a clean home, what I spend my money on, etc. As you can see there's a lot of room for growth!!

It was hard to choose between that and Authenticity which is something I talk about wanting all the time. I am not leading the life that I envision for myself (in too many ways to mention) but it's extremely important for me to figure how to do that. Discipline will be ongoing so I doubt it will be mastered but I will keep Authenticity in the back of my mind as I make choices throughout the year. This is going to be hard... but it allows for small successes along the way. Wish me luck...I'm going to need it!

And for fun, I am going to do Project 365 which basically means take a photo every day for a whole year. If you are interested in seeing my photos you can check them out at my new blog, A Photo a Day in 2010. I plan to take a photo a day (but may only post them once a week or so). Either way, in the end I will have a ton of memories which I will turn into a 365-page hard cover coffee table book to document the year. It sounds like a cool project that will:

* improve my photography skills
* force me to do something creative every day
* document what I expect to be a remarkable year

Let's get this year started!!

Have a Good Weekend!

It's going to be warm this weekend! I'm so glad it's Spring. I hope the warm weather doesn't distract me too much from working on my dossier. Wish me luck!

cherry blossoms bulletin board by my kindergartners

Spring Break

I am on Spring Break! Yay!! This morning, the first thing on the agenda was to photograph the cherry blossoms before the rain came. I drove downtown, found a great parking space, put 4 quarters in the meter and walked about 20 steps when it started to drizzle.


So, I returned to my car to wait it out. While waiting I took these shots:


After about 15 minutes I hopped out of my car--put another 4 quarters in the meter (1 quarter only gave 7½ minutes) and snapped these right before it started pouring:


The lighting wasn't the greatest but I think I got some pretty decent shots. I really need to study my camera manual this week while I'm off. On the way home I stopped to pump gas. It was there where I spotted a penny on the ground.


Like I have done since I was was about eight years old, I recited "See a penny, pick it up? All day long you'll have good luck. See a penny, let it lie? All good luck will pass you by". As I bent down to pick it up I wondered what good luck I was going to have.

I found out 15 minutes later. When I got home I saw this parked across the street from my house.


The man, an employee of the water company, asked me how long I was going to park in front of my house because he had some work to do. Knowing I hadn't requested any work (and growing concerned as I spotted the front end of his bulldozer with remnants of broken asphalt therein) I asked him to double check the address of the assignment. He repeated my address to me and informed me that he was to begin right away but would call his supervisor to prove to me that this was where he was supposed to be. Turns out he was supposed to be digging up at my street address but in a different quadrant of town! Can you imagine what a mess that would have been if I hadn't been off this week; if I hadn't gotten home in time? Thank goodness for that lucky penny! :-)

Photography Contest #2

I entered my second photography contest. The theme is the inauguration. I entered two photos, but one of them I can't identify the subject so it might get disqualified. The shot below is my second entry. It pales in comparison to the first but so as not to split the vote, I am asking for votes for this photo only. (I learned about splitting the vote in the 10th grade when I ran for class president. I was up against one of the girls in the "popular crowd" so my friends and I nominated another popular girl and split their vote. It worked... I won! I haven't won anything since so I am going to implement the same strategy. :) Please vote for me!



By the way, first place is $1,000 and in my mind I have already spent it so I need your vote! :-) Thanks!

click here

(If the link doesn't work, go to fotoweekdccontest.org. Click on Peoples Choice and look for it...right now it's on p.2 but if you can't find it you can look for it by my name)