Camera Cake

My birthday is just 6 days before Christmas, so my mom has always tried really hard to make it seem special and very separate from Christmas. This year my family came out for a family birthday party and they brought this cake:

My sister had been texting me earlier in the day asking me about cameras and where to find information on them, etc., and I thought she was really going to go out and buy an SLR, but it turns out she was just doing research for the cake! They formed the whole camera out of cake - I have no idea how the heck they actually iced a huge pile of crumbly cake but they did! And, it tasted great!

Thanks girls!!

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Giving is awesome

The deadline for "Giving is Awesome" nominations has past. Thank you for your entries! The winner has been decided!!

I came across "Giving is Awesome" a while ago and thought it was a really cool idea. Photographers all over Canada and the United States sign up and donate photography to deserving families for Christmas.

So, I signed up and am donating $150 worth of photography, which includes a session and a print credit, as well as images on a CD. The person referring the family who is chosen will also receive a free family session.

You can check out all of the details behind Giving Is Awesome here, but here are my details:

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You probably know someone who has experienced some really rough times, who might be struggling to stay afloat, maybe raising kids while working more than one job, or is volunteering and helping others selflessly while in their own life they're facing some awful things. You probably know someone who can't afford to go get family pictures, but who would really love to have those family pictures.

I want to know who they are, and give them a chance to have those memories! So, I'm giving away $150 worth of photography. This includes a family session, their images on a CD, and a print credit. The person who nominates the winner will receive a free family session!

So just a couple of things:

* You can't nominate yourself, and the person nominated must sincerely be unable to afford photography. 

* The nominee must reside in the Raymond/Taber/Lethbridge area. 

* Tell me who you know, what they're experiencing, and why they deserve my photography services. Please include a way to contact both your nominee and yourself.

* You must e-mail me the full story: kinsey@kinseyt.com.

The winner will be announced on Christmas Eve -- please think of someone you know who could use some family pictures this season and get nominating! I can't wait to read all of your entries!


~Kinsey

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Christmas Cards

This is Clark and I's Christmas card this year so far.  I kept wanting to take a new picture, but Clark wanted to use a wedding one, so here it is! :)

This was another version:





And here are some other cards I played with:

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Christmas Baking & Aperture

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the food! My mom and I teamed up this year to make a bunch of things...

First, the pretzels. I love rows of things, because they make depth of field really fun. If you've never quite understood what the heck aperture was all about, maybe the following pictures will help you out a little bit.

This one was shot at f/1.4, which means the hole inside your camera letting the light in gets really big.  This results in a shallower depth of field - you can see that hardly any of the pretzels are in focus, just a tiny, skinny plain in the middle:



The next three were shot at f/2:








This was shot at f/2.8 - you might not see a big difference between 2 and 2.8:


And this one was shot at f/5 - can you see the difference? A lot more pretzels are in focus, or at least not totally blurred out, like the first picture.


And here are some more goodies!

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Charlie Brown Trees

 I was over at my mom's the other day and we started talking about how our tree looked growing up - the 'Charlie Brown' type, that we as kids so lovingly decorated with our collection of random ornaments that grew each year.

On Christmas Eve, we always received two gifts to open - a pair of pj's (matching of course!) and an ornament.  Over the years we got all kinds of ornaments. My mom and I started looking through my ornament boxes and relived a few memories, and my mom mentioned one ornament in particular that was so fragile that she wasn't sure anybody had it left. And we got an idea! My new photography project is to capture all of these ornaments in photos, so even when they get broken, or lost, and don't make it on a tree anymore, we'll still have the memories of our family Christmas tradition. So, here's the first one!

This is from Christmas 2007. My siblings and I all got 'Precious Moments' themed ornaments. They were all different, if I remember right, but here is mine:



More to come! I promise, some of these are pretty good....;)

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The First Look

I wrote about having a first look here, but since I didn't actually have one myself, I'm excited to share the experiences of a few couples who have! Read about them here! These are all interviews with the grooms - it's cool to get the guys' perspective on the whole thing - an interesting read even if you're already married, or know you're not going to do a first look.

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Our first nativity!

Clark and I received a Willow Tree nativity set for our wedding, and as Christmas got closer we wanted to have more pieces! We happened to get a gift card to the pharmacy in town for our wedding as well, so when Willow Tree stuff went on sale for 20% off, we bought 3 more sets to add to the collection (one set was the shepherds, one set was the wise men, and the third set was all animals) - now all we need is the creche! That's the stable-like thing.

Once we set it up of course I wanted to take pictures! It gave me a chance to play with my flash and aperture, and I wanted to experiment with my ISO to see how grainy pictures could get - these were all shot at 1600 - so you'll see some grain. I used my diffuser and tried some different angles. I pretty much never like direct flash, so these were all shot with my flash to the side or bounced off the ceiling, and even angled backward a bit so it wasn't too strong. I'm not in love with some of the shadows I got, but I didn't use a reflector or anything - next practice shoot! :)

I love the little sheep!






My favorite new piece might be the camel:

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I love this wedding!

I stalk Jasmine Star pretty religiously, and today she posted a wedding that I loved! It was actually fake - staged just to show off different vendors and give them stuff for their portfolios, but I loved the style and the colors. I'm already planning my sister's weddings. And right now I'm trying to convince Clark to decorate our master bedroom (when we have one in a year) in white, black, and purple (maybe with some gray), the colors of this wedding. :)

Check it out here


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#76 - In Progress

Tonight I'm helping at the senior's lodge across from our apartment. Our ward is having a Christmas party, and I'm helping pick all the seniors up with the Handi-Bus to take them over to the dinner. I think it will bring back memories! At my previous job working at a senior's lodge, we had field trips every few weeks and we'd load everybody up with their walkers and wheelchairs and get them all buckled in, and then we'd sing songs like "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." I may be the only 23-year-old on the planet who knows that song. But trust, me it's a gooder! :)

Anyway, I loved that job and I'm excited to be a little more involved with the seniors. I also spoke with the coordinator over there and I'm all set to play the piano for a Christmas sing-a-long in a couple of weeks. I called asking to just go and play while they were hanging out after dinner, to brush up on my rusty skills, but I somehow agreed to play for a sing-a-long. Okay, I quit piano in like grade ten, and hardly touched it during the last 5 years of university. So, my mother-in-law might just see me a lot over the next couple of weeks! She kindly agreed to let me play her piano whenever I want to. I warned the coordinator, but she said they didn't care and they'd love it even if I played out of a beginning piano book. I'm excited to start playing again, and this helps me out with #76 on my list - Volunteer at a Seniors Home.

Wish me luck!

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