"Let Them Be Little"

I think three still qualifies as "little"... especially when attired in a hero's clothes.

Ya has been really into firemen lately. In fact, he wore his souvenir fire hat to dinner out yesterday. When a passerby said, "I like fires, too," Ya walked away grumbling.

"I don't like fire, I like firemen. They put fire out." Bravo, my littlest one, bravo.

IHEARTFACES "Let Them Be Little" challenge

i HEART faces: touch of sun

A lazy day is perfect for a park play... which, of course, makes "lazy" quite a misnomer.

i HEART Faces: White

Iheartfaces is challenging photographers to conjure up their images of white in a color capture.

During my photojournalism teaches at the high school I work at, I sometimes take my students outside and use them as models as I lecture [ramble]. I don't look for them to pose - actually preferring that they be oblivious to my camera. My shutter never stops working as I talk about composition, backgrounds, filling the frame, and telling a story. I love the results after a teach like this... always amazing captures of my beautiful and unique teenage charges.

This particular photo is one of my absolute favorites because I took it right around the same time that the student was working on a column about choosing to wear her hijab and dressing herself in clothing that kept her modestly covered all year. She's such a wonderful, intelligent girl, who has dealt with the stares of inconsiderate peers who don't get her "fashion" and don't bother to simply ask her the significance of her dress. I adore her strength. I envy the light she brings into the classroom. I love her naturally-beautiful outward appearance that matches so well with her soul.

I.H.F.: Vivid and Bright

A bright smile. A bright child. A bright future.

Colorful gloves. Vibrant love.

Purple tough. Black rough.

Yellow shy.

Teal appeal.

She's the real deal.

Spirit shines.

Glad she's mine.



Pray

Many times a day my Nanny prays.  She prays aloud.  She sets an example.

"Dear God, thank you for letting me see another day," she says.

And while I used to think it a little odd to repeat this over and over, now I find myself feeling blessed just to hear her say it one more time. 

There's something amazing about having faith.  It makes all things seem possible even when others say they are impossible.  And I'm so glad my children will know the power of believing and the peace of devotion.  Ours is a family raised in the pews - - and though we may stray from the church's physical vessel sometimes, the foundation is firmly built in our hearts and resonates through our spirits.

**This photo taken during our intimate family worship service at the RAJ Reunion May 29, 2011 in the family church, Poplar Run (North Carolina). 

http://www.iheartfaces.com/

Slice of Life

The theme for I ♥ Faces competitors is Slice of Life.  I sort of decided awhile back that I would no longer enter the weekly photo challenge, but sometimes I'm inspired to use the prompts anyway.  This week we've seen rain, 30 degree weather, 60 degree highs, and snow.  Yes, we woke this morning to a white dusting in March.   But yesterday, we challenged Mother Nature and ventured down to our creek for a little nature.

We found this awesome orange rock.  I wanted that rock.  Ya, however, thought it was a great projectile and promptly snatched it, ran, and tossed it into the murky water.  Chi fished out a different orange rock for me, and I hid it away protectively.

The kids humored me a bit by posing with my little Kodak Brownie camera.  I saw a collection of antique cameras as a display of this wedding Jasmine Star photographed.  I fell in love.  And KB is the first old timer I've welcomed into my home.  Perhaps there will be more...

Best Face In February [ I.heart.FACES ]

I can always tell when she's had enough of my camera and I...

the book for Chi...

This evening, Chi opened up her Bible.
She flipped to a section of Psalms I had earmarked for no particular reason.

And she read aloud.

Her words grew more fluid with each verse.

It was

beautiful.

I am blessed.

She enjoyed reading.  She plans to read to me tomorrow.  I think I'll like this new ritual.

I ♥ Faces Best Face of January

She is the rarest of jewels in my collection.
The one given while yet contained inside its protective outer rock.
Waiting to be discovered, to be polished and smoothed into something even more beautiful than the raw mineral.
And entering her eighth year of discovery, she sparkles.
I hold her gently, afraid I might leave too many of my impressions on her surface, and yet hoping she'll keep fingerprints of our life together with her forever.
I guard her closely, keeping her safe inside my padded jewelry box.
But like any beautiful jewel, she wants to be shown to the world.
She hopes to bring beauty into others' lives.
And I understand that something so perfect, so precious isn't meant to be contained for long.

I didn't have to think very hard about which face was my "best" from January.  She's one of my best from everyday...

I ♥ Faces: “Innocent Wonder”

"Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul" 

~~ Francis Thompson

I HEART Faces: All smiles

Happy Birthday I Heart Faces! You're the same age as this little stinker (who's giddy because he's armed with a snowball that you can't see because I'm retreating with my camera as I shoot):

I'm pretending this morning that this is how we'll spend our day: out in the snow, pelting one another with mushy snow balls and enjoying the naughty but silly fun of an ol' fashioned fight.  But alas, the forecast was amiss (or rather 30 percent was more accurate than we'd have liked), and there is no snow keeping us from our work or school day.  Oh well. Maybe next time.

I'll smile anyway. I'm here!

From the family card blooper reels

We're still working on our lessons in following directions...

Remember When

Every once in awhile I filter through the negatives - yes negatives - of images snapped here and there. It makes me yearn for the ease of yesteryear.  I wonder what I'd have become were I to have continued on my path towards a media career. 

Would I have been happy?
Immersed in the field?
Traveling to capture life outside my own little world?
Saying a million goodbyes to family and friends?
Perhaps not having a family of my own?
Would I have wanted to be that girl - the glamorous girl with the glossy pictures [she took] in all the magazines?

Would I miss the laughter of my children?
The smiles and the tears?
The endless diapers, the potty training?
The spontaneous hugs and kisses?
The "I love you"s?

I flip through the photos, like this one I took in Hong Kong. 

I reminisce.  I miss.

And then I realize... I'm where I want to be.
Right here.
Right now.
Mommy.

This week's I ♥ Faces challenge is scenic black and white.

Orange you glad?

I didn't say banana?

Okay... so this was a fun one!

Ya and I (and Oma, too) were busy for no less than an hour playing and shooting together.  It was a giggle fest that will likely remain in the mommy memory bank much longer than other afternoons.

Oma and I designed quite a little "set" for the little man. Unfortunately, he refused to stand next to it and smile. 

So we began a game of peekaboo.

Only in childhood does a tiny branch become a perfect hiding spot.

Come on, you know you can't see him.

And as we played, we embellished the tree and encouraged him with chants of "Where's Ya?"

I loved our little setting, but every shot I captured I tended to crop out the majority of it... hmmm. Perhaps I just adore a good closeup?

The photo I chose for the iheartfaces contest ultimately involved a basket, the leaves, and a weathered wooden platform.

Immediately after Ya bounded out of the basket, he had a request: "Now you get in, Mommy."
And to be directed to do the very same thing I've asked him to do?  Such a grown up move on his part.  For certain I felt silly trying to fit in a tiny little basket, but we laughed and Oma took pictures, and I loved it.

Challenge Orange {iheartfaces}

My little man is truly Mama's Big Boy.  No more baby.  No more an unknown actor in a house full of characters.

He's got "Personality. Style. Flair..."  And we love every minute he's on stage! 

And so, no experimental session in photography is lacking in laughs, in improvisation, or in memories.  iheartfaces is great for giving some inspiration to creativity, and when I have time to stop and imagine what could be, the resulting shoot with Ya is something I relish in.

For challenge orange (which happens to be my favorite color of the moment), I instantly thought about painting.  Can't you envision the orange smudges on his cheeks, his hands, the paper? It would've been stunning. Did you know there is no orange in our watercolor ink kit?  The closest was a mixture of red and ochre, and what two year old knows how to mix his colors?  We did get two pretty impressive paintings, but no challenge photo.

Next idea?  Well, get Ya to carry baskets of leaves, collect leaves, or throw leaves.  Like his sister, this model does not do well with directives!  Nope, he's got to do what feels natural regardless of what the photographer and artistic director have planned.  So, he played peek a boo.  He knocked down my props. (He did pick them up.)  He ran away laughing.  Great photos for our album, but you guessed it, no challenge photo.

Alright.  Do what he insists on doing.  Play peek a boo.  Suggest what he can hide behind. Ensure it is orange.  Set the camera at the fastest shutter speed possible and wear running shoes! Try not to show frustration when the vision and the results don't mesh.  You ever counted how many peekaboos a toddler can utter in a minute while rocking back and forth behind a tree? Ahhhh!

No challenge photo... but, again, great pictures of Ya antics.

So I bet it's a bit of a wonder why I chose an image where my bolt of excitement is being contained in a basket... Or, maybe after all of the botched attempts, it's not...

I thought about isolating his hat in a few photos to highlight his orange button by shooting down toward him.  And while I liked the results, the pictures didn't speak to me.  Finally I decided it's all about his expression. He was totally skeptical when I suggested he climb into the basket and hide in the leaves.  Without saying anything, he gave me enough huffs and raised eyebrow to show this what not his idea of an optimal peek-a-boo position.  And this shot, with his mouth set in a "you gotta be kidding me" smirk is totally him.

And after he got out of the basket?  Well, he insisted I get in it and be covered in leaves.  It's only fair, right?

Breast Cancer Awareness

Chi has a thing for rollie pollies... and though she thinks Mama is absolutely crazy, I couldn't help snapping away at her feverishly digging up the little bugs and gingerly placing them in a container to observe for a few days. 

Now I've got lots of shots of her harvesting the creatures, but the picture I'll cherish most is this one:

I sacrificed the only bloom on my parent's wild rose bush in the hopes of adding a little pink power to the picture. You see, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I want to celebrate life!

I shot without flash on a day when the sun spent most of its time hiding behind the clouds. A 50mm prime lens at f2.8 gave the background its blur (which is great because I shot toward a street crowded with parked cars).

And my darling Chi? Well, she gave my image life with her glowing smile.  This is how she warms my heart - impromptu laughter, a scrunched nose, her almond eyes squinted to the point of creating tears.  It's my best because she's the best. 

Notice that her birthmark - a heart - is totally visable on her neck.  What a beautiful stamp God gave her, my own Queen of my heart.

On the processing:  I located a really cool Black and Color process action in a free set called "Aly's Vintage."  I auto toned the photo in PhotoShop, adjusted my layers to improve the shadows, and then ran the action.  I then went back and erased the action on the wild rose.  A quick crop for size (5x7) and viola!

Murky smirk

Uggghhh.... the word-theme of the week at I ♥ Faces is smirk.  That's one of those expressions that I have trouble defining, but I know it when I see it. 

So, I looked it up at Merriam-Webster's online dictionary and found this:

to smile in an affected or smug manner (with smug using the "highly self-satisfied" definition)

Now if I looked at the etimology of the word (oh yeah, score one for the linguistics class I had to take), I'd have to note that in Old English - smerian - the word meant "to laugh."  Umm... that changes the look I should be getting from my photo victim entirely.

Ya is the master of expression... so there is a plethora of random faces to choose from... but what the heck is a smirk, really?

I went to yahoo's education site and their dictionary included the following "related words":
fleer, repress, guilty

And then I was totally confused. I thought about using one of several close ups, but decided that to really be a smirk, there should be a story in the picture.  The clock, however, decided it was bedtime, so I eenie-meenie'd my choice.

Vroom, Vroom!

We're revving up the engine around here, as Ya enjoys his motorcyle!

They claim it's for ages three and up, but we didn't tell him, and he does an amazing job keeping balance, zooming down hills, and scooting around the sidewalks.
How do you mobilize?

I ♥ Faces Beach Fun

Just a quick glimpse at how Ya actually spent his time at the beach... He waited patiently for Chi or Mommy to fill his bucket with water (as he would not go near it) and then immediately dumped said water into the sand to watch it disappear.  Repeat about 100 times and time lapses about 30 minutes.  Ughh!  Then it was time to offer him new activities to occupy his attention while Chi chased (or ran from) the tide's waves for a few hours.

 

Future so bright

He gotta wear shades...

...except they just don't stay on right!

{I ♥ Faces}