Day 208, 209, 210 and 211 of Project 365

Favorite foods week!

New York steaks are a family favorite of ours, especially when we can get them for $2.99 a pound at the WB Market here in Oregon City. And cooked up on the Traeger, you don't even need steak sauce. To go along with it, a new potato salad recipe that I love! Red potato's (no peeling required), turkey bacon, olive oil, vinegar, spicy mustard and parsley. And pan fried zucchini with a little salt and pepper (fresh out of Rob's mom's garden since he or I are not much for gardening.)

A favorite of Rob's - fresh cucumber slices with apple cider vinegar.

Strawberries, off the vine.... or still on! Juicy and delicious! A favorite for all of us!

Corn on the cob! Jenica just discovered this delicious treat and really did a better job of cleaning the cob with her 12 teeth than I do with all of mine. Gotta enjoy this while it lasts. Frozen just isn't the same!

Day 207 of Project 365

I have anticipated this newborn photo shoot for almost 8 months now, ever since I found out that my good friend Emelye was pregnant. And when I found out it would be a baby girl, I was that much more excited! Lucy Cooper, you do not disappoint! You are cuter and sweeter than we could have imagined. I'm sure today will just be one of many days that your "Auntie Shay" takes pictures of you, but for your first photo shoot, and at only 4 days old, you did AMAZING! You truly are a gift from God! Again, so hard to choose just one picture so here are a few more of my favorites:

Day 206 of Project 365

This is Jack. He is adorable! What more can I say, except that he was an absolute joy to photograph, as was his beautiful mama. Thanks to both of you!

Day 205 of Project 365

Lucy Cooper Cunningham made her appearance on July 22nd at 6:55pm, weighing 6lbs 14 oz and measuring 19 inches long. Mom, Dad and Baby are all doing great! We got to meet baby Lucy for the first time this morning at just 38 hours old and she is absolutely beautiful! Hard to believe that this was the size of our little Jenica almost 2 years ago. Here she is looking like a giant next to baby Lucy:

I'm so excited to take newborn pictures of baby Lucy on Monday, so stay tuned! More cuteness to come!

Day 204 of Project 365

I just love this picture of Brandi! I'm glad she gave me permission to use it as my picture of the day. This was my second choice:

But then I thought, I have plenty of pictures of Judica in my Project 365 and this wonderful shot of B is a great chance to talk about some of the things that make a great portrait.

First of all, the angle of the photographer is key. She was laying on the ground, so if I would have taken the shot sitting or standing up, it would not have the same effect. I had to get down on the ground at eye level in order to make it work.

Second, pay attention to your background. It can make or break your shot. You don't want distracting items in the background that take away from your subject. Yes, I could have photoshopped out Brutus' leg, but I purposefully left it because it leads to my third point...

Getting a great expression! Sometimes posed smiles just aren't the best option. You want your subject to look natural, so your options here are to take the picture without your subject knowing, or to say or do something funny to get them to laugh. In this instance, I asked Brandi if I could take her picture and promised to crop out Brutus' private parts that were so prominently visible behind her head. That was good for a laugh, and voilà! A gorgeous natural smile from my beautiful friend.

Thanks for being my picture of the day and for the wonderful afternoon at your pool :)

Day 203 of Project 365

Is it just me or are little girls in hats not the cutest thing! This is Jenica, Bridget and Maddie enjoying a snack in the midst of their play date at Chapin Park today. It's so much more fun to go to a park with another mom, that way you can have adult conversation while the kids play! Thanks Shannon! I always love your company! Looking forward to our movie date in two weeks :)

Day 202 of Project 365

I took this picture while trying to entertain (i.e. bribe) Jenica to stay in the kitchen while we had our carpet and furniture cleaned. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to talk about "depth of field", one of my favorite settings to play with on my camera, and one that was very confusing to me until I read a blog post a couple of years ago explaining it in more "user friendly" terms. So I will attempt to do the same for you. Depth of field refers to the amount of distance in a photograph that will be in focus and is determined by a number of factors, but the one under the most control by the photographer is the f-stop. Your camera has two main settings, the f-stop and the shutter speed. The lower your f-stop number, the less depth of field you will have, meaning that the areas around your main focal point will be blurred. This photo was taken at an f-stop of 2.4. You can see how only a few M & M's are in focus, while the rest, both in front of and behind, are blurry. F-stops can have quite a wide range depending on the kind of lens you have. My favorite lens, my Nikkor 50mm has a range of 1.4 to 16. For scenery pictures where you need everything in focus you want an f-stop of at least 8, maybe even higher. But for portrait type shots where you want the background to blur out so the face in the photo really "pops", I would recommend an f-stop of 2.8 or lower. Most cameras that have some manual settings will have an "A" mode, which is short for aperture priority. Aperture and f-stop are the same thing so if you put the camera on this setting, you can tell it what f-stop you want and the camera will automatically choose the correct shutter speed to have the proper exposure. I encourage you to play around with this setting and see what you come up with! Feel free to ask questions if you have any :)

Day 201 of Project 365

Day 200 of Project 365

Rob captured this picture of Jenica and it just cracks me up how much she reminds me of Ozzy Osbourne. I had to find a picture of him to go with it, but then looking through all the crazy Ozzy images in the internet I started feeling a little weird about comparing my daughter to him, so anyway... forget all the weirdness and just get a kick out of her cool shades and silly expression. And if she decides to be a musician some day that's great, she just can't be biting the heads of off chickens or anything (wasn't that Ozzy or am I getting my rockers confused?)

Day 199 of Project 365

Good thing we took maternity pictures this weekend! Tim and Emelye are in the hospital as I type this waiting on baby girl Cunningham to arrive. I am so excited to finally find out her name. I'm sure you will see newborn pictures here in the next week or two. We are praying for you Cunninghams!

Day 198 of Project 365

Today has been the hardest day by far to pick just one picture of the day. With over 800 photographs of Dave and Genie's wedding, the potentials are nearly endless. I picked this one because it was classy, beautiful, and just seemed to emanate with the love that the bride and groom have for each other. Rob and I both feel so blessed to be a part of this wonderful couples lives, and so privileged to be part of their special day! We both commented on the way home that this was the funnest wedding we had attended together, and that was even with the responsibility of capturing the occasion on film (well, actually digitally... but you get the idea.) Genie gave me permission to post a few more here, so here's some of my favorites so far:

Day 197 of Project 365

My youngest newborn photo shoot yet, tonight I had the privilege of taking pictures of little Megan Kendall, just 4 days old. She did absolutely amazing. She was awake and alert for the beginning of the shoot so we got some excellent pictures of her beautiful eyes and fun newborn expressions, then after eating a little she slept for a bit so we could get those wonderful peaceful baby shots. Thanks so much to the family for letting me capture the beauty of your newest little addition!

Day 196 of Project 365

This little cutie patutie came over with his grandma (my co-worker Wendy) and played with Jenica while I cut Wendy's hair. They were so cute together giving each other rides in the fire engine. And Jenica got to help give Kylo a bath today too at the dog wash down the street from our house. About half way through she said "Kylo all done, I get in". No no Jenica, you can take your baths at home in our bath tub. Ha ha!

Day 195 of Project 365

Jenica LOVES the garbage truck these days. Any new noises actually are very interesting to her and her reaction always makes me chuckle. First she says "noise" very seriously. Then she usually names the noise, for example "car noise" or "garbage truck". Next she wants to "see it". Cars are obviously a little too fast to make it outside in time to see, so the garbage truck is perfect! Nice and loud so we can hear it coming a ways away, and super slow so we can get outside in time to watch it pick up our garbage. She has been so excited about it lately that she told her babysitter about it all morning yesterday and sometimes remembers to tell Daddy about it when he gets home from work.

Day 194 of Project 365

Cassi and Malachi get to be my picture of the day today because this turned out to be the only picture I took today. We got back from our trip at 2:30 this morning, slept for about 5 hours and then got up to go get our baby girl. On the way, we stopped off to take a quick picture for Cassi. She has this same shot with her other two kids when they were close to this age and we forgot to do this one at Malachi's 3 month photo shoot so she wanted to get it done before her little cutie pie gets any bigger. After picking up Jenica (who did absolutely amazing while we were gone by the way) it was off to swimming lessons, home for a nap (for all of us) then back to Molalla for the afternoon, home for dinner and now trying to get caught up around the house before our short (but very busy) week kicks off in the morning. Better get off the computer!

Day 193 of Project 365

We packed up camp early and headed for home, attempting to beat some of the currents. It still turned out to be a tough paddle, and I think we were all glad when we finally arrived back in the harbor. Our guide Kelly estimated that we probably paddled 30 miles over the course of the 3 day trip. This was definitely and experience that we will never forget and would highly recommend to anyone who loves the outdoors! You can see more pictures on facebook by clicking here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=187989&id=516020965&l=8919014e77

Day 192 of Project 365

After a leisurely morning around camp, a couple cups of coffee and a delicious breakfast of french toast, fresh peaches and real maple syrup prepared by our amazing guides, we were off to circumvent Stuart Island by kayak. It was an all day adventure, with a stop for lunch near the Turn Point Lighthouse, where right as we were leaving we were able to witness a pod of Orca Whales swimming by, probably less than 150 yards away. Truly an amazing sight and one of the highlights of the trip. We also saw numerous bald eagles and many other species of birds (one of the girls in our group was a self proclaimed "bird nerd" and even though she was from the east coast, she was still able to recognize pretty much every species of bird we came across). We even had a baby seal swim right up to our kayak. The seal was so young it still had it's umbilical cord attached. The mom was waiting near by to rescue her baby as soon as we paddled off. After our second full day of kayaking it was back to our beautiful campsite for another amazing meal cooked by our wonderful hosts and a good nights sleep in our tent (provided by Crystal Seas, along with thermarest sleeping pads and pillows.) I actually slept amazingly well for tent camping!

Day 191 of Project 365

Saturday was a long day but totally worth it! We caught the 6:30am ferry over to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island and had breakfast while we waited to meet up with our Crystal Seas kayaking guides at 9:00am. From there, we crossed the island to Snug Harbor Resort (where we have stayed the last 2 years that we have visited the island) and started packing up our gear to head out on our 3 day, 2 night kayaking tour. There were 7 in our group total, plus 2 guides, so we had 5 kayaks in all to pack full of all our gear needed for the next few days. After packing and suiting up in our neoprene booties, spray skirts and life jackets, we headed out for Stuart Island, located about 5 miles northwest of San Juan. After a full day of kayaking, we arrived in Provost Harbor, on the back side of Stuart Island where we got the most amazing first come, first serve campsite overlooking the water. This was the sunset view from the door of our tent. Absolutely amazing! More to come...

Day 190 of Project 365

This will be our 5th year going back to the San Juan Islands! We are so excited! Our first trip in 2006 included a sunset kayaking tour, and ever since then we've wanted to try kayak camping, but the next year we had Kylo with us (our dog), the year after I was 7 months pregnant and last year we had our (at the time) 10 month old daughter with us. This year we are finally going to make it happen! Jenica will be in great hands, staying with friends of ours for the weekend. We are driving up to Anacortes tonight to catch an early ferry over to Friday Harbor where we will meet out guide and depart on our 3 day, 2 night expedition. Obviously I won't be posting to the blog while I'm gone but stay tuned because I'm sure I'll have some great photo's to share when we return.

Day 189 of Project 365

Day 188 of Project 365

Day 187 of Project 365

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband who is now 33 years old. He asked if that was considered min-thirties. I say no... still early 30's. What do you think?

Day 186 of Project 365

I know you've probably seen this one yesterday on facebook but it is literally the only picture I took for the day... so here ya go!

Day 185 of Project 365

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! I had fun this week incorporating the flag into my picture of the day. If you have other ideas for a "theme week" let me know. It made things more interesting to have something specific to photograph.