photography

A few weeks ago Jordan and I visited the Wildlife Safari Park about two hours down the highway from us. We had bought a Groupon a while ago and the time had come for us to use it! I wasn't sure what to expect from a safari in the middle of Oregon nowhere, but it was a pretty cool experience. We got up early so we could arrive promptly when the animals were hopefully still awake (before afternoon nap time). They were and we had a great time driving among exotic animals not usually seen in our parts.

I'm so on top of things, I'm ready with my photos from September right now at the beginning of October. Woot woot! I even managed to fill up my whole calendar this month.

Some favorite moments:

The days get away from me, and I'm getting a bit late to be posting about August, but I will not be defeated by the date on the calendar! In an attempt to try and keep the days from getting away from me, I've been trying to get back into the discipline of taking a photo a day. It's really great to be able to look back and see a little review of the month in photos. So many of these moments would easily become forgotten, and it just takes a minute to snap a photo.

Somehow, we're almost a week into August already, and I'm sort of wondering where July went. This makes it clear why it's important to take photos, since otherwise this would remain a big mystery. This is a good reminder, because often when there's a moment when I could take a photo, I often think, "I don't really need a photo, I'll remember it." I'm not sure why I think this, since I don't have a lot of evidence to support it....Despite making lots of scrapbooks for many years, I still don't feel like I do a great job of capturing moments here and there.

One thing I really wanted for my birthday was a macro lens for my camera phone. I love taking macro photos, particularly of flowers, and when I heard that they made clip on lenses for smart phones, I decided I couldn't really live without it. The lens I got is not anything serious, but fun to play around with. It's basically like attaching a magnifying glass to your phone. It's a little tricky to get the angle just right, since you have to move around to get the focus right.

I had a solid photo organizing, editing and uploading system going until last summer when I got my smartphone, and then everything dissolved into chaos. My system only worked when I had photos coming from one source, and the addition of a new stream really threw a wrench into things. Also, the transition from constant traveling to regular life also changes things a bit. I no longer need to constantly be dealing with photos, but that does bring up the question of when to deal with the random photos from life.

I think after a lot of messing around, I've finally settled on a system for getting my photos edited and uploaded. For a while I had a system that worked well for me, then I made the switch to Lightroom, was just starting to figure that out and I got my smart phone, and then got completely lost on how to manage camera photos, phone photos, plus random stuff like Instagram. I think it's finally all starting to come together.

I started to see this hashtag pop up on Instagram yesterday, so I did a little searching to figure out what it was. It sounded like it would be wonderful, and I think it is!

Still working my way through 2013. In this case I was trying to hold off until I got our photos from Mexico edited. I'll have a post just about our trip soon. But here are my 15 favorite photos from the year. It's crazy to think of all the places we went this year. 2013 was a busy year!

2014 seems to have come like both a thief in the night and a punch in the face. I was most certainly not ready for it, and now it's here and there's no going back. I'm trying to convince myself that just because I didn't have everything figured out before the clock struck midnight, doesn't mean I can't spend the whole month of January trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of 2014. So, I'm still working on my goals and big to do list for 2014. In the meantime, I'm going to share a bit about what was great in 2013. First up, Instagram.