Change is an investment in the future

“Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.”  – Jim Rohn

 Welcome to Week 2 – Looking forward to “A” Future

As we start week two, it is a nice coincidence that we are in the last week of the year.  The last few days of a year seem to be a common time for people to plan for the next year. 

As a person looking forward to the future, i.e., a future being 50, I do have a grand plan.  But first, I can’t help but reflect and gather up some of the key experiences of the past year.  I invested a lot in change.  Being willing to change and grow is what made the year worth living. 

This time last year, I was, along with 200 + other people, beginning the year unemployed.  After a little over a decade with the company, it was closing its doors.  We were all walking out the door, never to return.   It was expected, we all knew that the company was closing.  Prior knowledge provided me with the opportunity to plan.  I had a new job waiting.  I had to change and grow and move on with life.

I started a new job a month later.  Starting out learning everything new, I drew from my past experiences to make the potential with the new job last.  Looking back now, I learned change and growth go hand in hand. Fighting change makes the future hard to look forward to.  Accept it, grow with it, change with it and build something new and more exciting.  

Last week’s message was to find FOCUS.  What did you do this past week that helped you grow in your FOCUS?  Did you find something to FOCUS on with me?  Are you too going to turn 50 sometime soon?  If not, we can still hang out together and discover something new. 

What did I do this week to help me grow in my FOCUS?  I purchased an online photography class from: http://froknowsphoto.com/.   I’m inspired to take it to the next level in my photography.  I would definitely recommend checking out his website and lessons.  I’ve been experimenting all week with “shooting in the RAW”.  There’s a whole new world of photography beyond the preprogrammed settings on the camera.  Talk about stretching the comfort zone.  I know this will definitely help with my exploration of the future. 

Thanks for stopping by…the next seven weeks we’re going to explore “A” Future being 50 – hope to see you next week where we will discover the first “A” in the future.  

Experimenting with different composition.

Taking picture of the tree in daylight - blowing out
the background.

Reverting to the auto setting.
I couldn't figure out what went wrong,
I had forgotten it was set on
a timer from the night before...

Experimenting with ISO and the M - yes,
Manual setting...I'm so excited to try
new ways to set the camera.

I even ventured outside.  Here's another
"blow out the background".

Try framing things -
this is very poor composition.
I really liked how the tree looked though...

Stepped out of the shade.
Oops - wrong amount of
light coming in!

Better...even a splash of color.

Sometimes you have to take a different
path to discover something new. 

49 Weeks ‘til I’m 50 – Ready, Set, it’s all about A FOCUSed plan to get there!

“Along with a strong belief in your own inner voice, you also need laser-like focus combined with unwavering determination.” – Larry Flynt

Week 1 - A few weeks ago, I was thinking that I was simply just getting old.  Feeling tired, worn out, and a little sorry for myself, I started to act as I was getting old too.  Turning 49 is not the precursor to doom and gloom.  It is an exciting time in life.  There’s this myth that once you hit 50 you are over the hill.  Where the heck did that come from?  How daunting for the person just turning 49?  If you approach it as the end of your youthful life, then your life takes on a sad and depressing overtone.  It simply sucks the life right out of you.  I don’t want to do that!  In order to change my thinking, I became determined to find a way to keep positive about this approaching change in life.  I need to focus on the positives.

Another myth is if you have a plan you can succeed at anything.  Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.  There’s enough documentation in books I’ve read or heard about to substantiate it as true.  There are plenty of people who do plan and who do succeed.  I know it has worked for me to have a plan.  I certainly don’t want to fail at being 49 or 50 or whatever age.  I’ve got a plan to make sure this year, well at least the next 49 weeks before I turn 50, is full of learning, growing and looking forward to the future.  As the infamous “they” say, “You’re never too old to learn something new.”  

What inspired me to commit to a long plan like this, other than pure determination not to get down about being 49?

1^st - My own self determination to keep blogging for fun along with a couple books I read last year.  I’ll share my thoughts about them as the blog evolves over the next 49 weeks.

 2^nd - My family, they encourage me in my desires to keep growing and experimenting with photography.   This will help me continue learning more as it will change up the subjects/objects I need to find pictures of.   I’ve devised my own simple formula that I can practice with:  I’ll be capturing all the moments using the ABCDEFG of Photography:

1. Aperture
2. Balance
3. Composition - Color
4. Depth
5. Environment
6. Faces
7. Gleam

PS…yes, this still fits my Randomness – Duh, my whole blog is about randomness!  This is yet another example of where I have a new interest!  Taking a look at life being 49, exploring it with random moments of fun…preparing me for the next ½ century of my life.  

I hope you you’ll join me – feel free to stop by every week, once a month to read a recap, or come in at the end and see if I survived the plan.  Next week – “A” Future explained.

Thanks for stopping by ~ Hope you enjoy the moments of FOCUS in your life.  Let the focus begin...

Sometimes current feelings are very
blurry...looking past them you can see
rays of focus to keep you moving forward.

Take a look at the big picture.

Start focusing on where you are at.  

See the real pieces in life that you treasure.

Add a little color to the white spaces in life.

And see what you can create when
you focus on the outcomes!

Balance, symmetry and asymmetry - just for fun!

Life is a balance, take time for play not just work. – Catherine Pulsifer

True to my randomness, I decided to skip my lesson on "s curves" due to the weather.  I have a favorite curve in the road where I run.  It is the final curve on the last mile home.  I bet it is pretty with the snow that we've been so lucky to receive.  Until I'm brave enough to venture out in the snow we'll save that lesson for later.

Instead, I jumped to the next lesson on "balance".  For me, skipping around the lessons keeps it interesting.  I guess I'll find out if the order of the lessons is important or not?  Photography is my "play" and a fun break from work.  I do think art really isn't that rigid, neither is photography.  So here we go...symmetric and asymmetric balance.

Symmetric - two equal size objects on the two sides of the photo.  Depending upon the objects, this can be interesting.  First attempt...I thought that the objects needed to fill the frame and be of equal size.  I took a picture of two pieces of art that go together, but have different scenes in them.

There's some history behind the machine stitched scenes.   The company that made them has since gone out of business. They are a gift that my mom bought for my step-father years ago.  If I remember the story correctly, they are of UW Stout back in the time when he attended the school.  I still haven't decided if I want to keep them or sell them.  The frames are custom made out of barn board.

 Then I tried natural lighting with smaller objects.  I began the process of seeing when the asymmetry started to appear in the photo.  Simple little wine corks, and I added a little interest by taking a picture on the glass top of our wine barrel.  Our favorite local winery - River Bend.

Two of my faithful companions similar in size are always right there wondering what I'm up to when I grab the camera...so of course I just had to take an asymmetrical picture of them too.  Copper is trying to decide if he really wants to go out in the snow or not!   Tizzie is simply ignoring me at the same time keeping track of what I'm doing.

This morning as I looked at the pictures from yesterday's session, I wasn't quite happy enough with the pictures.  I've been playing with the ISO settings from previous lessons.  I learned the trick of blurring the tree lights in the background.  Simply set your ISO to 400, focus on the object in front of the tree and the lights will blur.  I redid the lesson with two little toys my mom had while she was growing up.   I can't decide if they are happy little figures or if they are just plain serious.  I wonder what it was like playing with them as a child.  What do you think?  I think taking pictures of them was a fun play moment!

Guy in the front, you can barely see the girl in the background.

Symmetry in the center, low in the picture.

Symmetry in the middle of the picture.

Girl in the front, he's starting to blur in the background.

Hand carved toys...I wonder if they were
stocking stuffers or if they were her big gift that year?

A holiday card moment...

The guy in the front.  She's a blur in the background.

Focused on the tree - missed the objects!

Symmetry!

Thanks for stopping by - enjoy your moments of balance between play and work!  I better get some work done now that I played all morning...  Next week, some other random photo lesson will be discovered.

Launching into focus

An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward.  So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great.  So just focus, and keep aiming! – Unknown

I have to admit the assignment of discovering diagonal lines in pictures has been the toughest one so far for me.  Either I just don't get it or I have too many non-diagonal opportunities for pictures in my immediate environment.  Maybe it is that I don't see them or think that way for capturing pictures. I've been struggling to get through this lesson.

The goal is to create a leading line into the subject of your photo.  The line either leading into or out of the picture from the subject.  I just kept focusing on seeing a clear line in the photo versus having the line lead into the subject.  Maybe that was my problem?

So today, I just grabbed my camera and decided "enough is enough, just find a diagonal line and get this lesson done."  I needed to move on and launch into the next lessons.  Just sitting thinking about how I haven't gotten this one done has been really dragging me back.  Just realizing how much it was really pulling me back helped get me motivated.

I focused, kept aiming and mission accomplished.  Well, I hope mission accomplished...

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy launching yourself in new directions!  Next week's lesson S Curves (I'm guessing I'll need to remind myself of this lesson in order to get through it quickly!)

First attempt - trying to use the railings to lead
into the "subject"

I tried through the railings, they then became
the focus, so this is wrong...

Does the table create a "diagonal line?"

I think this might be the best one
of the day...

See how the line goes across the picture,
does it lead to the bear, or away from it,
or neither because he's in the center?

Dessy jumped into the picture, but she's a
blurrrrr.....

Leading my way to next
week's lesson - S Curves

Moments of thanksgiving

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, and confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melodie Beattie

Today I'm taking a break from my photo lessons to simply enjoy Thanksgiving.  But first, a little story about thanksgiving.

It is so amazing to me how humans (i.e., me and my husband) can be so affected by news.  How our moods can literally go on a roller coaster in a 24 hour period of time.  Yesterday at this time, we were receiving texts from our youngest daughter telling us the progress of her trip home from college for Thanksgiving.  She let us know when she got on the bus, when she arrived to the first destination and when she met up with her friends for the trip the rest of the way in the car.  We even went so far as to watch her with the i-phone app that tracks the location of friends.

The anticipation of seeing her, having her home for the weekend and all the thankfulness we experienced knowing she was safe was truly uplifting.  To see her and hug her was such a high.  After the fun of seeing her look around and see what is the same and different in the house while she's been gone the semester, she was ready to nap.  We felt the comforting feeling of gratefulness.  Just having her here and knowing right where she was, resting peacefully in her room.

I felt so happy and content.  It was a perfect time to bake the pies for Thanksgiving.  The lovely aroma of pumpkin pies baking added to the comforting mood.  I couldn't think of a reason not to keep smiling.  The mood suddenly changed with the news of "has anyone seen my school Id lanyard?"...  What is in your lanyard thing I asked?  "My school id, my license, my debit card, my insurance card, my travel card...I can't find it..."  

She must have dropped it on the mega bus.  Yikes, is all I can say.  I don't know about you, but it was so real, the mood in the house went from grateful and happy to fearful, angry, depressed and panic.  She amazingly stayed more calm than her parents.  Either she didn't know the magnitude of what can happen with the information she lost or she knew it would do no good to get angry.  Probably the latter, since we, the parents, tend to blow everything out of proportion now that she is a young adult.

We successfully talked her into cancelling the travel card and the debit card.  I contacted the insurance company and we decided when we would get the new driver's license.  The only other thing to do was to check with the school when she returned to get a new id.  We somberly went on with the day.  Let's be thankful she has learned a few valuable lessons.  She's been so amazing living in a big city, traveling all alone, and growing up, now she knows to put the darn thing around her neck instead of her pocket.  This will only help her grow more.  But...as I went to bed I still couldn't help but panic about what could go wrong with the loss of the documents.

As I awoke this morning, I started to plan what else we could do to find the documents.  I was in my own little world wondering what we could do.  My husband asked me how I slept.  Of course good because I was exhausted from the emotions, bad because of the worry.  I woke up still worried.  He smiled and said, "Worry no more, our daughter's roommate had texted late last night.  She found the lanyard on the table in the dorm room.  She must have laid it down and walked out in her tired state."  Great news!!!

Ah...now that's a moment to be thankful for.  Yes, a roller coaster 24 hours.  The doom and gloom has left the building, and now we can be thankful for the happy emotions filling the house.  The true thankfulness is that things work out no matter what when you stick together as a family.  Hopefully she'll forgive her crazy parents when she awakens today.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your moments of thankfulness and gratitude on your Thanksgiving Day!

I took this picture early summer before she
left for school -
a frequent shoe dropping at the front door

So happy to have shoes at the front door,
thankful they brought her home for a visit!

Finding random rules of thirds

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature. – Eric Hoffer

The lesson this past week was to discover the Rule of Thirds.  This tried and true method supposedly helps capture points of interest in pictures.  Following the rule, the object of interest intersects in one of four places on the photo.  Imagine two horizontal lines and two vertical lines intersecting to break the picture up in nine even boxes.  The trick is to line up the focus of the camera so you follow the rule instead of always placing the object in the center.

Instead of trying to see if I could do the lesson this week, I looked back at all my "spectacular" pictures (i.e., What I thought were spectacular at the time I was taking them.) taken over the past few months to see if I had unintentionally been able to follow the rule or not.

I wonder if it is natural to want to capture photos of subjects following the rule of thirds or is that where the creative photos come from?  Is that how one makes their photos truly more interesting?  Or is it simply random luck?  Now that is more interesting to me...random great photos.  If you know anything about photography, you have to take TONS of pictures to get very few great pictures.   It becomes a matter of introducing some order in to the randomness of life.

Thanks for stopping by ~ enjoy your moments of ordered randomness!  Next week's lesson to discover diagonal lines.

Dessy definitely fills up a third or more
of a clothes basket. 

Zoom in and her nose becomes a point of interest

Copper stands out sort of in this picture, but
I centered him.

Here I placed him in a better point of interest

The fork stands out in this placement.

A bunch of apples

Zoom in a little more, still see mostly apples.

Zoom in even more...now do you see the stem as the
focal point?

The red car intersects at a point of interest,
plus it is a really cook car...add that to my
wish list!

Both of Dessy's faces intersect the rule
of thirds!

Once again, she is filling a space.  Her nose intersects
properly, but she consumes a lot of the picture

Here's a bit more interesting placement, don't you
wonder what she's looking at that might
draw her out of the box?

Perfect intersection of thirds!
You see the moon is the
subject of the picture right...?

Zigzag shutter treasures

Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead. – Tahir Shah

My lesson this past week was to learn about shutter effects.  After experimenting on several different days and subjects, I've decided the camera ready settings of "sports" and "landscape" are better at capturing the photos than I am at figuring out how to manually set the camera.  While I am getting brave at trying different settings to see what I get, I suspect there are more tricks out there to learn.  I also think that for the slower shutter effects, I would benefit from a tripod to steady the camera.  The blur factor would definitely diminish some if I did.

The treasures of the auto settings on my camera help me when I'm in doubt.  Not unlike my subjects (i.e., pets, moon, birds, etc.) I have zigzagged my way through multiple attempts over the past few months with those settings. Along with the continuous shot mode in the sports setting, it can be quite fun to see what pictures I end up with after the sessions.

Two hummingbirds - captured with the
continuous shot, sports setting.

Shutter speed, a steady hand or a tri-pod, and aim at the subject all help capture the photo you're going for. I attempted to capture Copper running fast in zigzags around our back yard.  I held the camera close to the ground to follow him as he ran around me.  The "sports" and continuous picture mode helped catch him at random moments.  I took 83 photos in our short photo session.  Unfortunately when holding the camera close to the ground it focused way too many shots on the grass instead of him.  I did end up with a couple noteworthy photos.  As I always say, the discovery process is the part I enjoy the most.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your zigzag strategies - may you find treasures that help you get ahead in your journey!  Next week's lesson - rule of thirds.

Slow trot away from me, isn't that a cute trot?

Ready set, let's go

Yikes, here he comes, and I focused on the grass...

This one is my favorite shot of the day!

Motion blur, look at his focus though.

I was moving too fast to catch him.

I like the contrast and focus on his face.

Lean into it....

Wow, look at how his legs move...and his
tail curls under...

4:00 am moon...I definitely didn't have the
shutter speed correct.

One more attempt, a little better,
but still not right.  Maybe I
should have slept in longer...