I am excited by today’s Daily Prompt, Menagerie. I was just playing with a photograph of my two puppies. Well, strictly speaking they aren’t puppies. Sophia is 9 and Garibaldi is 5, but I will always think of them as puppies.
Puppy Love
They are not very obedient. They like to bark. A lot. But they are also sweet and loving with our little children. We love them, too.
You might also enjoy Tongue 1 and Tongue 2.
This week’s travel theme on Where’s My Backpack is all about trees in honor of Arbor Day. I grew up cold northern areas with lots of rainfall, and tall lush trees. Some areas were lowland deciduous forest. Some were filled with towering evergreens. Moving to a desert landscape was quite a shock. For one thing, you have to worry about irrigation. Irrigation? I’ve always lived in areas where the rain falls often enough you barely think about watering the grass.
Now, I live not just in the desert, but in an area with citrus trees. Citrus trees are watered through an irrigation system where the area is flooded. It is almost magical to look out over a citrus grove and see a small lake where there were just pebbles before. Especially in the desert, where water is a symbol of wealth. When my husband and I first moved the desert, we noticed that every upscale place had fountains, as a symbol of their status and prosperity.
Also, the citrus trees have such interesting branches and shapes to them. A perfectly healthy tree might have a dark and gnarly branch reaching out from lush and green boughs. And in March, their fragrant blossoms fill the air for weeks with a delectable perfume. I love that day when I step outside and every breath holds invigorating scents.
On this particular day, not only was there irrigation, but rain as well. Hard downpours alternated with sprinkling drops, creating ripples on an otherwise serene reflective pool. I loved seeing two different sources of water interacting to create such a beautiful, peaceful picture.
Happy Arbor Day!
You might also enjoy Travel Theme: Freedom.
To amuse myself while I am sitting and nursing my baby, which is a substantial amount of time throughout the day, I’ve been reading some photography tutorials to learn how to take better pictures. I want to have the skills to take awesome photographs of my children, of my travels, of pretty much everything. This post isn’t really about travel, except that I would like to take better travel photos. But, I think it is amusing, so please read on. Last week I came across a tutorial about how to take action photographs of dogs. I decided to give it a try. Here is one photo of our male dog.
This is the kind of photo that the tutorial was discussing. It’s a fun photo. I love how insanely puffed out his fur looks while running. I swear they could make stuffed animals that looked just like him, and children would go nuts over them.
Now, we have two dogs, a male and female. They love to lick babies. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love it. Especially our female, Sophia. My husband and I joke that for the first few months of life, our children know our dogs only as Tongue 1 and Tongue 2. Their soft, luscious fur remains elusively out of reach to our tiny baby. But their tongues can cover a huge amount of distance! Our dogs are also kind of mischievous like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Dr. Seuss books. They are not the most well behaved dogs in the world. Anyway, one of the pictures that I ended up with was this.
This is Tongue 1. If you love dogs you probably are laughing right now like I was when I saw this gem among the other dog photos. I love how her crazy, flipped out tongue is the most in focus of anything else in the picture. It just really captured her personality, a little neurotic, very loving, and very mischievous. So laugh away, and maybe try taking some photos of your own dogs.
Here is a link to the article about taking dog action portraits for your enjoyment.
http://digital-photography-school.com/6-tips-for-photographing-dogs-in-action/
Enjoy, and have a great day!
The kinds of activities you participate in as a family in your local area are also the kinds of activities you’ll likely participate in while you are traveling. Aside from just having a lot of fun and bonding together as a family, local adventures are a great way to prep your children for travel. The children learn appropriate behaviors for hiking, museums, tours, or whatever your family likes to do. Parents learn valuable skills like knowing when the children are close to a melt down so they can preemptively strike and diffuse what could be a very stressful situation.
Really, we just like to explore and have fun as a family. Last weekend our local garden was hosting a family photography class. I like photography. My husband likes photography. Our children, even our 2 year old, are always taking whatever camera they see and taking photos with it. I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to expand our skills, so I signed us all up.
A professional photographer gave a brief lecture about the five elements of composition. We then had some time to head out into the garden and practice with our newly acquired information. Each person had some time to sit with the photographer and discuss a few of their favorite pictures. Then, as a class, we each shared one or two pictures and again talked about the elements of composition.
This is how each member of our family reacted to our experience.
My husband, being the very busy man that he is, relished the chance to work on his photography skills, even if he was sharing our DSLR camera with me.
I would have liked to take a few more pictures than I had the opportunity to, but really enjoyed watching my husband and children have a good time. The fact that it was a beautiful, sunny day surrounded by beautiful plants and my beautiful family, I probably would have had a good time even if I hadn’t taken any pictures.
Our six year old relished holding her own point and shoot camera and taking as many pictures as she wanted. She was thoughtful about her compositions, remembering the lecture we had regarding what makes a good photograph.
Our four year old loved taking pictures of her baby brother. She could have cared less about taking pictures of the landscape. At least we will know who to go to for good portrait photography some day.
Our two year old had my old iPod to take pictures with. She felt like such a big girl running around the gardens with her big sisters.
Our little baby just enjoyed being pushed in his stroller in the beautiful weather.
The class was a little long for the four and two year old, but we managed to hold off any meltdowns by discussing our next move of getting lunch, and asking for their input. The class was the perfect length for our six year old. She ended up with some really beautiful photographs. Let me share a few with you.
Our next big trip, we will provide a point and shoot camera for our children to share. Maybe they can make their own photo book with the pictures they take. Who knows? We’ll see where they want to take this new skill. The most important thing is we had a mini family adventure close to home, and had a really great time.
little travel bugs 