Celebrating fall and Martinmas

Fall has seemed at arms reach for quit some time. Living in the desert gives seasons a whole new definition. As in we have 2.5 seasons: Hell seems cold- HOT, Cold (for a couple weeks) and then everything in between, which seems to be mostly WIND!

Yesterday Thomas, Winston (our dog) and I spent the late afternoon at a park. It was absolutely perfect outside for Thomas to ride his Skuut (wooden bike) around. As we were wondering around the park the flame intense colors of the trees really popped out. Brilliant reds, fiery oranges and citrus shades of yellow. Thats when I nodded my head and agreed with myself that Fall was FINALLY in Vegas!

A few weeks back when my friends around the states were headed to the apple orchards I was feeling slighted. Walking down the rows of apple trees when it is still in the 90's just didn't give me that fuzzy fall feeling deep down in my soul.

Martinmas is coming up in just a few days. It may prove to be my favorite of the obscure holidays. Something about making lanterns and watching my little guys face glow from the little flame as we walk around our neighborhood that makes me feel extra warm.

So if you are new to Martinmas here is a little description from the book All Year Round. The traditional way of celebrating Martinmas is with lantern walks or processions accompanied by singing. St. Martin recognized the divine spark in the poor man of Ameins, and gave it the protection of his own cloak. When we make a paper lantern, we, too, may feel that we are giving protection to our own little 'flame' that was beginning to shine at Michaelmas, so that we may carry it safely through the dark world. It may only be a small and fragile light-but every light brings relief to the darkness.

I would love to hear some songs that people sing while doing their lantern walks. I am not sure what kind of singing we will be doing...if any! But you never know!!! Never the less Fall is finally here.

Cast iron woes

I just wanted to take a quick second and tell you all about my new cast iron skillet and dutch oven. We were at the BX (base exchange) and couldnt resist getting these for our new camping adventures. When we got home last night Pat and I were both eager to give them a try. Pat asked me to fry him an egg, but I wasnt sure an egg was the best thing to try out first on our new cast iron. Instead I noticed a bowl full of mixed organic apples that needed to be used soon. So I opted on making some homemade applesauce. We had some discusion on how to clean the cast iron and weather or not we needed to season them before cooking. Some how all this info went in one ear, translated to something completely obscure and with a quick rinse under some slightly less then hot water I started the apple sauce in the dutch oven.

The applesauce finished cooking in no time and smelled wonderful, warm and inviting. The thought of eating this made me feel all cozy inside. So with that I filled up two bowls with the piping hot applesauce. Pat was working up stairs on the computer so I brought him up a bowl and then went back down to indulge in my very own. I ate about half the bowl and decided that was more then enough for me. It wasnt nearly as wonderful as my moms or my aunts homemade applesauce. I figured it was because I used a mixed varity of apples and sweetened it with honey rather the sugar.

A little while later as I was (excuse me here) leaving the restroom I noticed in the mirror a dark shadow coming from within my mouth. I got closer, squinting through all the smudgy handprints my darling son had left on the mirror saw the horror left behind, from my not so fabulous first attempt at using cast iron. BLACK! My teeth were black and grey!!! I couldnt stop snarling my lips up in the mirror. Then I remembered Pat upstairs. I ran up, swung open the door and asked Pat if he noticed anything odd about my teeth. As I smiled his expression went from curious to horrified in two seconds flat! With out words I examined his teeth, I shook my head "yes," his too were black.

After much scrubbing our teeth came clean. For the next twenty four hours or more I noticed we kept secretly looking at each others teeth and then giving reasurring smiles to one another. Our teeth are now free of all stains but I cant help but wonder what our insides must have looked like after this little event.

Since then we have done PLENTY of research (thanks to the internet) and have sucsessfully cleaned and seasoned both cast iron pans. This morning I made pancakes and they were uterly fantastic. Hip, hip, horay, for cast iron sucess (after much error!)

Why are all my pictures so bright?

Lately you may (or may not) have noticed my pictures are extremely bright. You may be asking your self, "I thought Michelle was taking photography lessons?" Well to answer your inner thoughts, I am taking lessons! My photos may appear to be getting worse not better but that is simply because I am implementing some things I am learning and do not have the proper computer soft ware to work on my images after taking them. I hope to be getting the soft ware soon, but for now its just to expensive.

So what is it I am doing to my images? Well when I take pictures now I am purposely over exposing them, just enough. I have recently learned about the grey scale and the histogram on my camera. Understanding shades of grey has allowed me to better understand how pictures are formed. Then when I learned what a histogram on my camera is and how it works I was able to start taking better pictures. Well pictures that will appear better after I work on them in the digital dark room (once I get my hands on this program!)

Humm, how do I even begin to explain the histogram? http://www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/tips/histogram_tips.php Ok just click on that link, it will take you to the webs ten best histogram sites. But what I was taught that you may or may not get from these sites is this, and listen up close because this will change your life in photography from here on out. The histogram has several columns,all the columns equal one hundred percent of your picture. But the histogram is not visually divided equally. The very last column on your histogram equals 50...yes FIFTY percent of your pictures lighting data! The first several columns combined equal the other fifty percent.

So when you take a picture (now get your camera set up, so that you see your histogram with every picture you take!) you must make sure that some of the data is read on that very last column on your histogram. Other wise you have lost 50...yes FIFTY percent of your data.

By over exposing your pictures just enough you will push your histogram to the right and now you have 100 percent of your pictures data to work with in the digital dark room.

It took me 3...yes three hours to learn this (complete with pictures, drawings and hand on work.) All under the guidance of a professional. Not because I am slow (well that may be part of it, lol) but because as he put it, this is the most important bit of information that a photographer can learn. So if I have royally confused you in the ten minutes it has taken me to type this, please don't give up. Just do some more research and learn how to use your histogram and learn to push it to the right.

As soon as I get my computer soft ware I will post before and after pictures to show the effects of all this.

1st Winnebago trip

Our first vacation in the new (new to us) Winnebago. We went to Valley of Fire, which is only about 50 miles or so from Las Vegas. The first day was a bit stressful because Thomas wanted to touch and flip every switch in the RV. Let me just say there are LOADS of switches for little fingers to get in trouble over. By the second day things began to fall in place and go a little more smoothly for us all. We took one afternoon and drove to Lake Mead. Hiking was a blast, and Winston (our dog) seems to have a little Billy Goat in him! He hiked like a champ. Thomas is a future mountain climber as you can see in one of the pictures below. Well my little camper is needing some immediate attention so I must cut this blog post short for now...
PS. All these photos are bright (over exposed) on purpose. I just couldnt wait to post them, before working on them...but that will be the topic of another post down the road. Enjoy!