On being behind the camera

I’ve been lagging soooo behind on my picture duties. I’ve just now finally wrapped up the picture processing of Kevin and Katina’s wedding from mid-December (see here for their engagement pictures from last summer and here for pictures of the bride getting dressed), and I can’t wait to share the rest of the shots with you guys! (Katina was glowing. Kevin was dashing. Etc, etc.)

Consequently (since I’m trying to deal with my pictures in chronological order so I don’t get confused all to heck with where I stand), I haven’t made it through any of the Christmas pictures (except for the small batch of James shots), or the complete batch of New Years photos.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember that every year we celebrate the New Year with the same group of friends, and a merry group it is!

I love those guys. Some of them we see throughout the year, and some we only see once, at this party. Due to some pressure from facebook and my own inherent guilt, I finally threw a couple dozen or so pictures up on facebook, with the promise to go through them all later and actually get the complete set made public (task completed as of Monday!). As I doing my quick intial scan of the oodles of pictures, selecting a few here and a few there for immediate sharing, I was thrilled that there were a couple good shots of me and my husband!

(by the way, isn’t my husband’s nose fabulously straight? I hereby wish that nose and that nose only upon any future children of ours)

Being the girl behind the camera at most events in my life, there aren’t that many pictures of me–probably less than 0.01% of the total pictures taken with my lovely Nikon. And having a slightly weird face when it comes to the camera (don’t worry, I’m at peace with my face–it’s just not at peace with a lens), there are even less good pictures of me.

I also feel bad asking anyone to take pictures of me, first because I’m still slightly self-conscious (“will they think I’m, like, super vain???”), and second because I have to explain how to use the camera in order to obtain a focused, non-blurry, generally A-OK shot (“you can rotate this part of the lens to zoom in; yes, you have to look through the eye-hole-thingy instead of just looking at the screen; press halfway down on this button to focus, then the rest of the way down to shoot, but don’t hold your finger there after shooting because it will keep shooting and could burn out the flash; it you want to take a vertical shot you need to rotate the head of the external flash like so so that it points towards the ceiling and bounces off at the right angle . . .”). And frankly, that’s got to be kind of annoying to the poor person designated to take my/our picture. And in the process, I end up feeling like a micro-managing, controlling female fiend.

So thank you to whoever took these!

I think it was Liz.

They make me happy, and my nose doesn’t look 5 miles long. Yay!

More pictures to come!

2012 New Years resolutions

As a follow up to yesterday’s post reflecting on last year’s goals, what I got done and what I let slide, today I want to share some of my desires for this year. I guess ‘resolutions’ is a slight misnomer–these are things I hope to accomplish in the year to come. Some are ongoing and some are one-time tasks. I don’t want to make unreasonable goals for myself, so I’m keeping it minimal. Here goes!

–Record Thornfield’s first album. This is a huge goal for Eric, Carrie and me. We’ve been playing and songwriting together for over a year now, and now it’s time to lay down some tracks, baby! I really want a finished product we’re all pleased with and proud of, that reflects our unique sound and conveys that folksy, intimate feeling without teetering into something overproduced or overly rough-around-the-edges. The recording process is brand new to me, so it’s bound to be a learning experience! (Gulp.)

–Make Grandma Sue’s cream pie recipe. It’s just gotta happen.

–Continue songwriting! It’s been so wonderful finding this new venue of expression and creativity, and I can’t imagine stopping now. I wrote the first song of 2012 just the other weekend, so I feel like I’m starting the year off on the right foot.

–Continue blogging–it’s also been too great a journey to stop! Sometimes I toy with the idea of quitting when I’m in a creative funk (or feeling particularly tired), and though the time to stop may yet come, for now I will forge ahead through joy, silliness, inertia, enthusiasm and the occasional writer’s block. Honestly, my office job is such an ideal situation for blogging to happen–hours with nothing to do and a big ole computer right in front of me. I have trouble thinking of a better use of my time while I’m stuck here in the office than connecting to all of you through this blogging thang!

–Move! We have loved living in our apartment, but I would really like to have space for our own washer and dryer. I’m been laundro-matting since I was 18, and after more than a decade of toting clothes there and back and there again and back again, I’d enjoy a little respite. I’d also enjoy having windows that don’t rattle and let the snow in. Floors that don’t creak with every step, and allow us to hear our neighbor every time he coughs or turns on NPR Saturday morning (bless his NPR-loving heart!). If we stay where we are I will continue to be happy and satisfied, but finding an affordable apartment that’s a little nicer and has a bathtub I don’t feel the need to apologize for when guests arrive . . . well, there’s some appeal there that you can probably understand. I’ll keep you guys informed! For now, we’ll see, and I’ll keep dwelling in the contentedness of my joy in God no matter what.

–Have a morning quiet time. This resolution was something totally unexpected, and happened quite naturally the Tuesday after New Years. I hadn’t had almost any time alone with God during our Christmas holiday, so by the time Tuesday January 3rd hit and it was time to get back into the routine of our life, I was feeling parched and desperate for him–enough to get my butt out of bed almost half an hour earlier than usual to spend that time in prayer and reading the Bible before I headed out to work. It was such a sweet time that I’ve been doing it ever since, cup of coffee in hand.

To understand the ground-breaking nature of this, you have to know that I have never been able to get up early for a quiet time. I’ve tried, and failed, and tried, and failed. Oh–and tried and failed. The first example that comes to mind is those mornings as a teenager when my Mom and I decided to get up early to read the Bible before I went to school. We were going to be real spiritual go-getters, we were. And our intentions may have been noble, but our follow through and discipline were severely lacking–these well-meant early mornings ended with both of us sleeping in the living room instead. Yup. Snuggled into a corner of the couch, gently snoozing until it was time for me to stumble out the door with my backpack. I’ve simply never been wired for mornings, and apparently, it’s slightly genetic. So the fact that, without making a decision to change my habits, I just kind of slid into this early morning devotional time–it’s huge. I love those 20 minutes, and have plans to stretch it into 30 and maybe even 40 minutes. Now that I want to do it so badly and am enjoying it so much, it seems easy! Craziness.

–Go to the dentist. It’s been since . . . well, 2004. And I’ve been slacking on that flossing resolution I made ages ago. ‘Nuff said.

How about you guys? What do you anticipate and hope for in this (almost) freshly minted 2012?