And my favorite part about the image box; I KNOW you have folders and folders of photos sitting on your desktop of family vacations, birthdays or just day to day life and that’s where they stay.  But I would love for you to get some of those photos printed and add them to your image box.  Then the image box not only is a unique keepsake from your photography session but also a keepsake of the entire year!  I’m committed to making an Image Box for my family every year so I don’t have to dig through my hard drive for my favorite photos anymore.  Plus, there is just something about sitting down and sifting through a pile of printed photos…

Remember the day before Valentine’s Day?  The AMAZING morning when frost was covering all the trees?  I love that.  So I went for a little photowalk to capture just a bit of it.

One of my new years resolutions this year was to buy more of our food from local farms.  I found there are quite a few places that you can purchase from that also have convenient drop sites up here in the cities. If you’re interested in finding a farm or drop site near you, check out Eat Wild MN.  If the Seward neighborhood is convenient for you, shoot me an email for drop site information for free range, organic eggs and whole chickens!   (They really do taste better!)

Left - 1/100 @ f2.8  ISO400  70mm       Right - 1/100 @ f2.8   ISO400  85mm

Our challenge this week was ‘Details’.  Of course, macro came to mind (which for me is my little lensbaby) but against the clear sky, even a wide angle shot had plenty of ‘details’.  I love the red berries against the blue sky.  I’m glad the birds haven’t been too hungry.

What I got were a lot of blurry photos.  But I also got a few that I wouldn’t have been able to get other wise.  I wasn’t about to lay in the snow that day (it was 9 degrees and windy) but when ’shooting from the hip’ I stuck my camera low to the ground, where I couldn’t be, to catch a different angle.

I think I’ll be trying this one again..next time with a wide angle lens so I don’t keep cutting heads off.

Also, for a quick peek of someone shooting from the hip, check out Tamara Lackey’s latest blog post.  About half way down, she’s playing with the kids and ’shooting from the hip’.

I’m really not behind in my Project 52, I’m just behind in posting!

For week two, we still didn’t have a specific theme so I just took a very random photo…that I have to explain or it just looks random.

I was out on Lake Nokomis, playing ice chunk fetch with Ike (until we got busted by the leash cop) and there was quite a bit of uncovered ice because of the recent rain.   I don’t think I have ever seen clear ice like this on a lake in my life!  The rest of the lake was solid translucent white  (or snow covered) except for these patches here.   Suspended bubbles, darkness below, walking on glass.  Kind of cool.  A little skylight for the fish.

f2.8  1/640  ISO 100

I will be offering my support to organize relief services by offering both my weekend and weekday session fees for $150, of which, 100% will be donated to relief causes and support for Haiti. Funds raised though Lenses of Love will be sent directly to Kentucky Adoption Services (KAS) who will assist in relief efforts and care of the many-orphaned children of Haiti. KAS works with Brebis de Saint-Michael de L’Attalaye (BRESMA) orphanage in Port au Prince, which was damaged during the earthquake.   One-hundred percent of funds donated to KAS as ‘humanitarian aid’ is used for humanitarian aid and all Lenses of Love donations will be marked as “Haiti Relief”.    This offer is available for families that book their session by Sunday, February 14, 2010 and complete their session by April 30, 2010.

My amazing friend Sally, who is a photographer in Colorado, started Lenses of Love and I was so happy to be able to join and help out.  Everyone in a time of disaster feels the need to just ‘do something’ and thanks to Sally, I’ll be able to help out a little bit more than if I were doing this on my own.   Lenses of Love is important to me because as a parent in the process of adopting from China, it was comforting to know people cared and were so willing to help the orphanages after the devastating earthquake in China in 2008.  Although many orphans in Haiti did receive humanitarian parole and are home with their parents in the US and other countries across the world, many, including a fellow adoptive parents little boy (please view the story here) still remain in Haiti.   The orphans who remain in Haiti as well as those children who have been recently orphaned due to the earthquake are the littlest ones who need support from agencies such as KAS.

I met some amazing women from across the country at a photography workshop last April and a bunch of us have kept in touch.    We have  weekly chats where we can run photo and business ideas past each other and our own little forum as well.  They are all so inspiring and I’m so grateful to know them all!

So, we all decided to start Project 52 (a photo a week) together with weekly challenges for each other, both creative and technical, to keep our photography fresh.   Plus, because we are all children’s photographers, it also will give us a chance to get out and shoot things other than our favorite subjects.

On with Week 1 - I’ll call it ‘chasing the light’ because I was literally chasing the light as in running down the frozen boardwalk to get some backlighting before the sun went down.  But I was too late for the effect I was specifically looking for.  Although the sun hadn’t set quite yet, the pond was a bit too low for me to catch any sunflare.  But even without that, I like it because of the warmth it has even though my hands were about to fall off.

You can follow my Project 52 here on my blog (subscribe too!) and I’ll start a folder on my facebook business page as well!  Facebook Page

1/160 @ 2.8 - ISO200 - 70mm