a peek inside the fishbowl

I’ve been mulling over the photography side of my life and am slowly figuring things out. I hate to be so cryptic, but it’s all still percolating and I’m not quite ready to write about it in full. Let’s just say it’s been something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Related: it was Picture Day at soccer practice the other day and I hit a breaking point. Why would I pay for someone to take ONE digital snap (hey, it’s DIGITAL, you can take more than one photo you know!?) and get ONE print … especially when I can take 10 minutes and take it myself? For practically nothing? :)

Not that I want to put anyone out of business, but anyone can take the same kind of photo, and you don’t really even need a very good camera in order to do it. Honest.

1. 1) Pick your background. The focus is on the person here, so make sure what’s going on is not too distracting.
2. 2) Get out of the direct sun if you can. Seek shade for even lighting. Even better, take your pic on a day that is slightly overcast.
3. 3) Zoom in close. Fill that frame!
4. 4) Here’s a question. What do you say to make a kid smile? Cheese? Smartie? This varies for everyone, but I prefer to make the kid laugh in some other way. It looks more genuine in the end.

Because all of the other kids get a printed photo I’ve made a point of printing this one too… which isn’t something we normally do. We have an HP printer that prints a pretty good picture but you can upload it somewhere for printing too (like Blacks or Henry’s).

Your photo assignment, if you wish to accept it, is to do a sporty portrait of your loved one. If you like, post the link in the comments below for a little show and tell. I’d love to see what you come up with!

As a bit of a continuation of the campfire pizza post I wanted to write more about the camping food side of things.

I have to confess that for all of our healthy eating, for us it’s a time to junk out… so much so that when I’m grocery shopping before we go I cringe to think that I might run into someone I know at the store. Seriously.) Hot dogs, chips and more chips, granola bars, cookies, sugary cereal… much of it is stuff I give a pass the rest of the year.

We are healthy people. We eat pretty well and try to stay relatively active, but this is the one time of year that it’s easier to let go. It worked in other ways too, like when the girls were small and wanted sugary cereals at other non-camping times of the year. They’d look longingly at the rows of bright boxes with smiling cartoony faces.

“Can we get some of this mom,” they’d ask hopefully.
“SURE!” I’d say. “When we go camping!”

The result? They leaned to stop asking for the most part, but I always kept my promise. For a few years we bought those tiny boxes of cereal when we went camping, but lately I’ve taken to buying one box to bring with us. 2011 was the year of Cap’n Crunch. Woo hoo!

On the morning of our first day of camping we unpacked our kitchen bin only to discover a disaster of epic proportions:

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