love and ice skating.

Hey! Did you know that Logan has an OUTDOOR SKATING RINK?? I have lived here for three years and was unaware of this until a couple weeks ago.

And you know this Eric Dowdle painting?

When I saw it forever ago, I thought, "Oh CUTE! Man I wish Logan still had that outdoor skating rink.... Life was so much better in the olden days...."

But it IS still here! Logan IS still cute! And my love and I went there ourselves:

It even started to SNOW while we skated! How charming.

Then we went home.

p.s. I am embarrassed at the poor quality of these photos here on this PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG. I really need to learn how to use my point and shoot camera better, huh?

it's just me.

I have been pestering my wonderful friend Jalene to do a photo swap with me for a couple months. I wanted to take some pictures of her and more selfishly, I wanted her to take some pictures of me for my website. So even with our totally opposite work schedules, we finally got around to doing one half of the deal--MY PICTURES.

When the day came I suddenly got scared to do them, but I really love how the photos turned out. Jalene did such a good job--good enough that I didn't cringe when I saw myself! That's how you know you have a good photographer on your hands: you see yourself better than you actually are in their photos. :)

And I would like to tell you what I learned from Jalene that day. She is a very calm, purposeful, and deliberate photographer. Every shot she sets up is thought out and set up technically very well. I watched her get her settings right--fix exposure until it was right on, manually focus until it was exactly where it should be, and then position the frame for the best angle and crop possible. Then she would take one, maybe two frames of that shot and that was all she needed get exactly what wanted.

THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF ME. I am too fast and hasty and I snap snap snap away enough times that I might as well have a video camera with me. Then I come home with hundreds of images to sort through and edit and it makes the process so complicated. Jalene ended up with around 160 shots, if I remember right and SOMEHOW her percentage of good ones was still really high! Editing these was a breeze! I think I tell myself that the more times I press the shutter button, the more likely it is that the perfect one is in there with correct exposure, focus, and subject expression... but Jalene's process worked so much better. In the same amount of time, she captured less images overall than I would have, but a higher percentage of great ones.

I have known that this is something I need to work on--taking less images overall, but focusing on each one more slowly, making sure each technical aspect of the equation is how it should be. I know everyone has different styles of photographing and that is good, but I want to become a little more like Jalene in this way.

All of the following photos are my edits of her photography. And you should see her edits too.

Thanks for doing this, Jalene. I love you. :)

I like this next one a lot:

Yeah, and this one:

funky today.

I am in a funk.

The funk has been here for a couple of days but has been coming to a head the last 24 hours. I can't get past it, even though I've tried a lot of things.

• I ate a salad for lunch, thinking I needed something fresh and healthy. It just made me hungry for real food. 
• I took a nap. I just got really sad when my alarm went off and I had to get up.
• I read my scriptures. (Obviously not for very long because that should normally work.... So what, I got bored, okay??)
• I cleaned my apartment. Dishes, vacuumed, everything. I just ended up with continued frustration at the neverending dishes in the sink and our orange carpet which appears perpetually dirty.
• I even pulled out my seldom played yoga dvd so I could get some physical exercise. I just ended up annoyed at the instructor's supposedly calming voice. ("Now close your eyyyyyes.... inhale iiiiiiiiiiin.... and extend your ahhhhhhhhrms....")
• Then I tried eating ice cream. And even that didn't help! And treats are ALWAYS supposed to help!

So now what do I do? What is the matter with me? Could it be... Seasonal Affective Disorder, more commonly known as S.A.D.???

It's hard to diagnose for sure. But I do know that this needs to end ASAP. So any advice on snapping out of this mood would be very helpful.

Thank you.


p.s. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm over and done with the .symmetrical dots. in my titles.

just so you know.

A small item of business today:

I am re-working my pricing this month (in a very mathematical and technical manner) so that I can actually possibly start making a profit on my photography. :) The changes will take effect on March 1. So if you want to schedule a session with my current (cheap!) prices, this month would be the time to do it!

That is all, and happy Wednesday. :)

.we want.

...one of these:

We want one way bad. Mostly it will be for me to edit on, but Kenny is thrilled because then my lovely laptop gets passed on to him for school and his internship.

Except here is the problem: we don't happen to have $1200 sitting around. So we will be doing our taxes tonight (okay, I will be doing our taxes tonight (because Kenny always had the family accountant do his...)) to see how much our refund is going to be. Hopefully it is a LOT. Cause tax refunds are fun and it feels like free money.

Speaking of which, does anyone know how I'm supposed to do our taxes for 2009 where we were single for half a year and married for half a year?? I'm confused about that and a little concerned. Taxes are frustrating enough as it is.

And speaking of money in general, Kenny and I had a very productive discussion last night on our financial situation. And we even sort of have a budget! Except I'm not very good at keeping to those things. But I think we should start doing one of those conversations every first of the month. Because we did so good and didn't even get mad at each other like lots of couples do. Money is such a silly thing to fight over. If both people are just nice to each other and assume that the other one isn't trying to be a thief or anything, it shouldn't be so hard.

Speaking of being a thief, I just read a REALLY GOOD book called The Book Theif by Marcus Zusak. It's about a German girl during World War II but it's not a depressing, make-you-hate-life-and-humanity war book. It's so charming and thoughtful and just good. You should read it. But you can't read my copy because it is already being passed around. But I think you will want to buy your own so you can read it again later.

Speaking of really good books, have you read The Time Traveler's Wife? It's so good too. And did you see the movie? I loved it and of course, I cried. I need it to come out on DVD so I can buy it (and that is saying something because I purchase very few movies) and make Kenny watch it with me.

Speaking of Kenny, I love that he will watch chick movies with me. He's such a good husband.


Oh and if you are confused as to how you got to this point in my long-winded train of thought, here it is again:

iMac --> taxes --> money --> book thieves --> time-traveling story --> my good husband.