Momtographie, Week one

I have a new respect for portrait photographers. Yesterday I dressed my girl up in her cute blue Hanna dress. I was so excited to take photos of her in the room my mom has fixed up for the kids at her house. It's all red, white, and blue- too cute. But I must have taken a thousand crummy/blurry photos and only a few ok ones. Whenever she wasn't posing for me, the photos were horrific! How do they capture those cute shots when the kids aren't looking..mine are always awful. Anyway I hope to learn a little more by the time the the course is done.

This week we were asked to look at light and a bunch of other aspects, but did not learn anything technical. Since I have no daylight time to take pics, I looked forward all week to visiting my mom and pop's house where they have lots of light and pretty furnishings. Here are a few I liked.

I took this one right before the "official" photo shoot. I like it, too. 

Jefferson Memorial visit

As I mentioned last time, I enrolled in an online photography class, and our teacher encourages us to share our photos on a blog, if we have one. As if I needed encouragement! Yesterday, we had a break in the cold weather- nearly 60 degrees!- so I jumped at the chance to take the kids on an outing and practice my new photography skills. I've been wanting to visit the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, so off we went.

I was very pleased at the images I captured, using manual mode the whole time! When a shot turned out too dark/blurry/light, I knew what to do to adjust it! I am so excited about this new hobby.

So, you'll be seeing a lot of photos around here...

Getting even busier!

Time is flying! Ever since the New Year began, I've been feeling like our time here is almost up. I've been making (tentative) departure plans, thinking about weekends away after I (hopefully) pass my test, and cramming as much Chinese as possible into my brain. But if I thought it was hard before, it's about to get harder. Last week, we finished our college Chinese textbooks and graduated to the FSI-created job-related and other textbooks. We went from about 100 vocabulary words a week to what is looking like 300 a week. Now, I'll be honest- I can't learn every one of those words. I am pretty good at learning their sound/meaning, but the characters take a LOT of work. I try to choose which are more important, and I hope that by seeing them over and over again, I'll learn them passively (it's not really working). So, I will be spending even more time in the lab, working with Rapid Rote to memorize those characters.

As if I wasn't busy enough, I just signed up for a month trial of CrossFit (let's not talk about that right now, what was I thinking?), as well as a photography class!! I recently took a 4 hour in-person "Momtographie" photography class, and it was excellent (the next one is Feb. 23!). We just bought a new DSLR, and for a while now, I've been wanting to take better photos, but didn't know how. The creator of Momtographie, Beryl Ayn Young, is a terrific teacher who focuses on helping moms take better photos of their kids. I love her business model and approach- it fits me. So I couldn't resist signing up for her 6 week online course, in which she will expand on the topics covered during the 4 hour class. I want to arrive in China and really know how to capture the things I see!

In other news, it's the Chinese New Year and we had a fabulous celebration at FSI yesterday. I made my debut as a Chinese elf. My parents were so proud....

We are off to check out some other festivities! 祝大家春节快乐! (wishing everyone a Happy New Year!)