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365 Photos – Day 11: Rocky

Here is WebGuy’s:

Here at Disneyland things are not what they seem to be. Even the rocks are not actual rocks, but they are rocky. Here is a photo of a portion of the beautiful recreated landscape of the southwestern rock formations found at Big Thunder Railroad: “The Wildest Ride In The Wilderness”.
Taken with Olympus E-500 140mm telephoto lens, f 5.6 1/1000″.

Here is mine:

Big Thunder Mountain is about the only place in Disneyland where there are real rocks. This little grouping is at the base of the stairs where you go up to get on the ride. I love how it was staged and the little story it tells.
Olympus sp500uz on Landscape setting

365 Photos – Day 10: Words

This is WebGuy’s:

In Santa Barbara on an anniversary trip with Annie. I shot these words in the sand just before the water washed them away. Taken with the iPhone at dusk.

My photo is of the menu board at La Suoer-Rica, the legendary Santa Barbara Eatery. This place is truly a hole-in-the-wall, but was mentioned on the tv show Alias, and is well known by So-Cal celebrities. Not your avaerage taqueria with burrito fare, but creative yummy healthy food. I thought their menu was filled with words, hence, my photo for today.
Taken with my camera phone

365 Photos – Day 9: Black and White

Today’s Theme is Black and White:

Here is WebGuy’s photo:
I call this still life with water bottle. I also call this what I consume through my day. I caught this grouping on my desk at work. It thought it worked for me. I added a little lighting from one of my swing-arm incandescent lights and took the shot with my iPhone. The iPhone can manipulate the highlights and shadows quickly and simply without any manual adjusting by the operator. I then softened the image just a smidge. I LOVE the patterns in the apples — almost too pretty to eat!

Annie’s note: I love the lighting and the shadows that Guy got in the above shot. I especially like the shadows underneath the apples. This is a totally descriptive photo!

Annie’s Photo:

You know, feet are not particularly beautiful. Actually, I think people’s feet are pretty odd looking, except for my own, and even then… I suppose that’s why I enjoy pedicures and having pretty toenails when I’m done. Comedienne Carrie Snow said: “If your toes are painted then you’re all dressed up when you’re naked”. I really love the depth and definition that black and white photography gives that color photography cannot duplicate. I especially love the vibrant turquoise and red fabrics of my quilt being subdued.

taken with Olympus DSLR 500 in black and white mode.

A Day to Celebrate

I am just a little over 5 feet tall. I stopped growing when I was in the 6th grade, to my consternation. But because I’m little, I love little surprises more than big surprises.

I’m going to share something with you that has taken a lot of courage for me to share, and I know you’ll understand why in a moment.

It’s no secret that I’m not exactly skinny, eh?

Here’s a family photo from ten years ago (You’ve seen the most current one on a recent blog post. We haven’t changed much…):

we’re all a little chubbalicious here.

(Check out the picture of Robin on the left — he grew out of his baby-fat phase.)

Speaking about baby fat, I didn’t always look this way. I lost my baby-fat in junior high and weighed 95 pounds, soaking wet, in high school. The day I got married, my wedding dress was a size 5, which in today’s uber-skinny sizing, was the equivalent of a size 0.

Babies — all three of them, helped me to get to a not-so-zaftig look. (Zaftig means sexy-curvy auf Deutsch) There was nothing zaftig about me. I constantly battled the losing weight/gaining weight yo-yo of life until 1989, when I started Weight Watchers for the first time.

I was soooo good and so diligent. I started out there at 180 and was within 5 pounds of goal weight… when I found out I was pregnant with Robin! Well, I was SO happy — it was a good pregnancy because I was really healthy but my craving in the last trimester for Baskin-Robbins Jamoca and hot fudge shakes and tuna sandwiches did not help a thing. Like the heart wants what it wants, the pregnant body wants what it wants too.

Kirsten started out losing weight at the end of October this last year, and by February she had lost 5 dress sizes. I started her weight loss routine and lost 16 pounds, but I started traveling a lot to teach and Quilt Market and nothing is a quicker weight loss killer than traveling and not being able to control what you eat. so… I climbed up and added 7 pounds.

Enter WebGuy, who was inspired by Kirsten’s weight loss, who has lost over 100 pounds since the first of February — that’s the equivalent of losing a small size adult like I was prior to babies! And he looks fantastic, I’ll tell ya. Just check out his Facebook picture.

Contrary to popular belief, NOTHING inspires you more to lose weight than to see current pictures of yourself. NOTHING. And certainly not pictures of you being thinner and looking great. When you are so over-weight, it’s hard to visualize ever looking like that again and eating your emotions (happy/sad, mad/glad) always outweighs the desire to be thinner. At least in my family, with my genetic makeup. My mom and sisters would agree.

This picture:

Yes, Cambria is darling, but it’s my chubby legs in this picture that I saw and thought “I didn’t know that I looked like that…” that gave me pause for thought.

And, this picture…

… when I saw this picture, I just about passed out. This is my favorite top. It doesn’t look like how I think it looks on me — it makes me look FAT. : (

These two pictures have motivated me to lose weight more than any skinny pictures ever would.

(I will post some of those next week. I will have to scan them because I have no skinny digital pictures…)

Immediately after this last picture, I decided that enough was enough – if Kirsten and Guy could do it, so can I. And, I decided that traveling is no excuse. After all, I make the decisions for myself and I CAN be in control. That was at the end of August.

So… Today, after 30 days of making that commitment and after 20 years, I finally have a cause to celebrate… for the first time since I was expecting Robin, I weigh…. 199.7!

I am under 200 pounds for the first time since I had Robin.

365 Photos – Day 7: Family

Day 7’s topic is Family

Here is my photo:

I thought all day about what I was going to for a “family” picture. Then, when I was thinking about starting dinner, this idea came into my mind. We have “Dave” who grows “Old Fashioned Tomatoes”. At least that’s what his sign says. We live for Dave’s sign at the end of each summer, when we can drive 5 minutes from home and get today’s pick of the vine. These are all from Dave’s.

The varieties are: Yellow Heirloom, the striped ones are also Heirloom (my favorite), an orange tomato, a beefsteak, yellow grape tomatoes and the small red ones are called Juliettes — sweet and delicious, all!

A note from Annie: ok, so what do all of these random 365 tomatoes have to do with quilting? Not much, so far — except that it is making me look at fabric differently, I find that I’m being more thoughtful about new quilt designs, and I’m more aware of how I look at things. I just read a fantastic book by Michelle Richmond, “The Year of Fog” where the main character is a photographer and she talks about how she looks at things through her lens and how our memories sometimes plays tricks on us. (If the theme of kidnapping bothers you, don’t read the book)

taken with Olympus sp-500uz, f 3.2, 2 second exposure, natural light

Here is Guy’s photo:

It was a busy day. I came home from work and couldn’t find anything more creative than to pull this picture off the wall and shoot us behind it. Taken with Olympus E-500 50mm f4 1.8 seconds – no flash.

365 Photos – Day 8: Building

Today’s topic is Building

Here is Annie’s:

Building… blocks!

I used Carrie Nelson’s way-too-cute fabric collection with a touch of some Riley Blake that just happened to match perfectly. I can’t stop making these Exploring Fabric Choices blocks or quilts…

Taken with Olympus E-500 F8, 1/2.5 on a tripod with ordinary kitchen light

Here is WebGuy’s:

I was going for a moody but descriptive – illustrative example of today’s theme. This might work well as an illustration to a blog post or a magazine article. Taken with Olympus E-500 F8 5 seconds with hand-held light painting out shadows.

365 Photos Day 6: Sugar

Today’s theme is Sugar

Here is mine:

Taken at my local Walmart. I think it speaks for itself. Even though I am eating differently, Reese’s Peanut Butter cups is the candy I miss the most — and I could eat myself into a coma with those liitle sweets. I wonder how much sugar is really in all of those bags… A ton?
Taken with my phone’s camera

Here is WebGuy’s:

I was trying to include motion along with the sense of the sugar coating the strawberry. The motion really is there, sugar was raining down over the strawberry as I shot the picture. It seems that the grains were too small and I exposed the image for a much too short a time to get the motion of the sugar pouring over the strawberry. Still the sweetness and moistness comes out in the image.
Taken with Olympus E-500 with a 13 second exposure and using an LED flashlight as the source light at f8.

365 Photos Day 5: Vegetable

Day 5 Theme is Vegetable (animal and mineral are in the jar too ; )

Here is WebGuy’s photo:

I was getting some great window light in my bedroom and thought the slicing of the tomato would jive with the slices of light in the background. What do you think? I really like the way the lens caught the translucence of the tomato through the skin on the left-hand edge of the front part of the tomato. Taken with Olympus E-500 40mm f5.6 at 1/30″.

Here is Annie’s Photo:

The only vegetables we keep in the cupboard. I was hoping for corn, peas and green beans — but we don’t eat them any longer because they are considered to be starch rather than a healthy vegetable like broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage. We’re on a health kick at our house. I’ll be talking more about that later.

taken with Olympus DLSR 500, mushroom label slightly over-exposed.

365 Photos, Day 4: A

Day 4 theme is “A”

Here is Guy’s photo:

A is for AMAZING — and that is exactly what my daughter Kirsten is. This photo tells the whole story about her. She is beautiful, confident, and secure in who she is. Her eyes can look into your soul and see the good in you. Her mouth speaks kind words and is always ready to laugh with you. I used a small amount of vignetting in the photo and softened the image to help describe the softness of her touch. I particularly love the way the afternoon shadows cast by the tree we are under play on her skin. I hope you like it.

Here is Annie’s photo:

A is for Apple… Apple…

I just couldn’t resist.

taken with Olympus sp-500uz in the auto Portrait setting

365 Photos – Day 3: S

Day Three Topic: “S”

Here is WebGuy’s photo:

S is for ‘scrumptious’. Despite my weight loss achievements this year, I still love good food. This berry cobbler does it for me. It truly is scrumptious.

Aside from that, I am trying to capture the yumminess of the food I photograph. I use all natural light. I choose food presented in a white plate or bowl. I get as close to the food as possible, to allow the viewer to see the texture, grain, and sheen in the food. I will try to have a relatively short depth of field to avoid any distractions from the background. All of these items contribute to a picture that makes my mouth water every time I look at it.

Oh yeah, I took this with my iPhone.

Here is Annie’s photo:

Stars

This is Robin’s bedroom door with his mission service poster. I count each day with stickers, not counting off the days til he returns home, but each day he serves. The regular days are stars, the days we get letters are hearts, and the days with double hearts are the days I’ve spoken to him on the phone (there are a grand total of 3 in the last 254 days).

I liked how this photo came out, illuminating a portion of the shiny stars with the light from the bedroom window. Not a competition worthy photo, but a fun one nonetheless.

taken with an Olympus sp-500uz