Society of Stampaholics

Project 365 - Feeling a Little Squirrelly

I woke up this morning to find it had snowed another two inches while we slept. This, alone, wouldn't be too bad, but it didn't stop there. All day long it has snowed - fairly quickly in the morning and slowing down as the day passed - but never stopping.

I've been trapped inside, amusing myself occasionally by watching a fat little squirrel rifle through my garbage can. I decided to try to get some shots of him, but that meant I had to open the front door and stick my head and arm and camera out - which spooks squirrels, generally. However, I had some popcorn from yesterday's movie, so I tossed a few handfuls onto the porch and tried to entice him to eat some while I stood in the open door.

He was having none of it.

Oh, he came close, but the minute I got the door open far enough to stick my camera out, he scampered out of my sight lines.

The little cousin of a rat!

I did manage to capture him on the post, and then, later, I leaned out the dining room window and snapped him high up in the tree. My favorite, though, was his descent from the tree to retrieve the popcorn he dropped. The look on his face just goes to show that squirrels aren't exactly thrilled by falling snow when there's popcorn involved.

Cropped with adjusted exposure levels so his little face wasn't in shadows.

Cropped with adjusted exposure levels. This is why I love my camera's twisting body - I could never have gotten this shot with a stationary lens.

Cropped with a very small exposure adjustment.

(You know, I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel with its eyes shut. Well... not one that was breathing, anyway. He looks like he just woke up and is groping for his coffee.)

I know there's only supposed to be one photo per day, but the Photo Police will just have to get over it.

Project 365 - Chocolat Manage a Trois

Gigi's Valentine's Day bag was knocked over in all the excitement, and this was a corner of the "neat" part of the spillage.

Did the usual crop-lighten-remove color cast thing....

Project 365 - Gigi the Brown Belt

We wanted her to have a life-long sport, and we wanted her to be able to protect herself. So rather then enroll her in the cheerleading academy on the left side of the building, we opted for the karate dojo on the right side of the building.

She started when she was almost five years old, and she will be eight in three weeks. She's gone from white to gold to yellow to orange to green to blue to purple... and here we are at brown. 

My camera battery was dying, but I managed to take at least two pictures of her after her graduation ceremony. This is the better one. I cropped it, corrected the exposure and removed a slight color cast.

Project 365 - Bill & Gigi Watching a Movie

I found them in the bedroom watching Big Fat Liar for the 168th time....

That man is a saint.

Here's the original photo:

And here's a crop:

I don't know which one is "better."

(I want these Project 365 pictures to be posted on the date I took them, if you're wondering why they didn't show up on the actual date of the 12th.)

Project 365 - Gigi's Breakfast

This is a typical picture of Gigi's finished breakfast. She doesn't do crusts, always drains her milk, and has discovered that doing practice spelling tests with an ink pen makes the activity pleasurable. 

Project 365 - View from the Choir (sorta)

Today's photo was taken in a rush while in the middle of choir practice.

So it's not very good!

All I did was lighten it up a little.

Project 365 - Inside Bill's Glass

Hey, this whole picture-a-day thing has already taught me something: photographing little stuff is very interesting to me - I like to capture micro-moments!

Tonight it was getting rather late and I still hadn't taken my picture for today. I skulked around our dining room table - which is a disaster. (Spouse's oil painting activity is dominating one end of it, there's all kinds of daily debris in the center, and then at the closest end, there's this little spot where we actually eat.)

I took a few shots of a nice little Modern American Family still life: an ink cartridge spilling out of an Office Depot bag, the pepper shaker, a Wendy's kid's meal toy, and a roll of paper towel (yeah, we're real formal around here). 

And then I noticed Spouse's drink glass.

A nice, contained environment.

With no mess.

And that's when I learned that microcosms are my friends!

I didn't use a flash (the overhead light provided the illumination), but I played around with the cropping and corrected the exposure in Photoshop Elements.

In response to the comments people left about the reinker tool wheel....

Use your 40% off coupons and get these inker tools for about $3 - and it's worth the persistence, because once you don't have to swap out your foam pads... well, it's the difference between using colored pencils alone and using colored pencils with Gamsol.

The holder is the Inkssentials Craft Spinner made by Ranger, and you can get it in a variety of places - including JoAnn's online here. It costs $19.99 - use a 40% off coupon, and it comes down to $12.00

Alice, the wall behind is sponge painted. It's a work in progress - you can see pictures of it here. The wall is sponged because the walls were never properly finished.

And a little insight into how I "see" the world: my camera is a Nikon Coolpix S10 and has a body that rotates 180 degrees - which means I often look at things while holding my camera at my waist, and turning the lens up or down. (This is very handy as I'm too lazy to crawl around on the floor and point my camera upward!)

Thanks for looking!