Nihao, Cupcake!

LOAD Day 16 & Best Shot Wednesday

Day 16 - HappyGraduation, originally uploaded by Xnomads.

A digital page today.

BEST SHOT WEDNESDAY

I'm doing this Wednesday a little different than before. Just one 'BEST' shot hasn't been doing it for me. So I thought I might try most interesting shot. Or perhaps a few most interesting shots from the week. I'll try that for a while and see how it works for me. Let me know what you think? I love comments.

I'm off to bed now, but I'll be back in a few hours to add a little commentary to each of the following photos. ENJOY! EDITED at 1:00PM, Beijing Time, Feb 17: Commentary has been added.

There are public exercise parks all over Beijing. The kids are always drawn in and have to give them a go. I like this photo for the pop of colors (contrasting) against the grey wall in the background. I also like the composition (Nicholas' face is in the top right third of the photo). I also like the straightness of the lines. I think this would be a far less effectivec photo if I had been standing off to the side even a little which would make the lines less uniform.

I am not sure this is a fantastic photo in and of itself but I like what is going on in it. This is a strange practice here in Beijing. Workers (in this case a trash bike driver) collect snow and then dump it down man holes all over the city. This was happening just as we were passing through this street. Nicholas was quite interested and stopped in his tracks to watch. You can see the worker there on the left side.

We took a break for some hot cocoa. This photo almost works for me. I wish Reece (far right) was turned into the photo and had a more engaging expression on his face. What I do like is the separation between all of the people (not crazy about the face growing out of Braden's head). I like the 'white space' in the photo between Nicholas and Dad. The triangle of cup lids (circles) is appealing.

I think this photo is hilarious. You see this all over Beijing. Couples getting their wedding photos taken at famous sights all over the city. In this case, I was trying to figure out what the heck they had in the background. All I could see was a mishmash of cluttered restaurants and neon signs. But based on the photographers angle, he must have the trees and he is probably using a zoom lens so it is blurred any way. I think this is a strange place to take wedding photos, but not the stranges place I've seen!

Nicholas was dying to play on the snow covered ice so he ran out on his own. I like how the silhouette of my two kids are separated from the other crowds of people. I also like how I got the sun to show up as well as a little color in the sky. The way I did that was to close down the aperture as far as it would go (i.e., f/22). I was attempting to get the star shape effect, but I think what happened was, it let in less light, so shutter speed was slower and more color ended up on the card/film. It also gave me those nice silhouettes as it ended up a little underexposed since the camera couldn't quite get a correct exposure (compensate) due to the extreme f stop I chose. (These are all theories of mine. Nothing is based in fact! And probably aren't explained all that clearly!)

Best Shot Wednesday - Jiaozi Restaurant in the Hutongs

If you are looking for the Project Life Tuesday post, please go here. I mistakenly put this web address and wasn't able to figure out how to delete it. Please forgive me!!

IMG_7995.jpg, originally uploaded by Xnomads.

For Chinese New Years Day we ended up in this restaurant for a traditional meal of Jiaozi (dumplings). And at one point, all of these workers came out of the kitchen and just stood there staring at the few of us diners in the restaurant. Then at the same time, they all got back to work. Perhaps their break was over?

This photo is so China to me. You so often see people just staring with a blank look in their eyes. Since living here, I have learned that people work long hours with very little time off. Sometimes 15 hour days with one or two days off a month. I think if I worked that much, I would always have a dazed look on my face.

Houhai Ice Robots & Their Keeper - Best Shot Wednesday

Houhai Ice Robots & Their Keeper, originally uploaded by Xnomads.

After reviewing my photos for the week, I think this is my favorite. I like the contrast of this very serious, somewhat intimidating guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, watching over these funky, warn out, ice robots pulling rickshaws.

Best Shot Wednesday

I love the expressions on these boys' faces.

I must admit that I didn't love any of my choices for Best Shot Wednesday this week. I think my actual favorite is in the post about my son's Super Hero cake and celebrating his birthday. It is the one of him blowing out his BRADEN candles. But it had already been posted, so I chose this one as my runner up. The boys are obviously having a great time. Just what a birthday is all about.

PHOTOGRAPHY THURSDAY

Tomorrow I'm off for a day of photography with my two best photography friends. We are heading to Houhai Lake in the hutongs and plan to stop in to a traditional Beijing snack shop for a few snacks and some good photo opportunities. If I get anything good, I'll post something in the next few days.

ONE LITTLE WORD BLOG HOP

This coming Tuesday, February 1st is the One Little Word blog hop. It all starts right here! Come on by to see all the projects the participating bloggers have done for January. We have more than 20 bloggers participating so far!

If you are in the class and want to join the blog hop, it isn't too late! Leave me a comment or send me an email and we'll add you to the list!

Best Shot Wednesday a little late

I have been away from my blog for exactly a month. It was a break for the holidays - the US holidays, that is. Here in China, the holidays are just beginning. That sort of makes things fun when you live in two places like our family does. You get to celebrate (and get the time off) for the holidays at home as well as in the land of your residence - in my case, China.

February 3 is Chinese New Year so the whole country is preparing. The stores are crowded with shoppers buying gifts to bring home. The entire country (just about) migrates to their home town to spend time with family. A few days ago the train ticket office down the block was flooded with customers. They were lined up down the sidewalk. Today it was empty. I think that means all the tickets are gone. No joke. If you didn't get a train ticket, find another way home. I also keep seeing the odd person walking down the street towing a wheeled suitcase behind them. These are the people that have already returned home (or are just starting their journey) and haven't quite made it yet. I saw one woman with her suitcase standing around our outdoor mall next door obviously waiting for her ride to arrive. I feel like I should be taking pictures of all these little things that are signs of the preparation going on.

I'm excited for these holidays because the kids are home and my husband doesn't have to work. He couldn't work even if he wanted to. The whole country shuts down. We have no family obligations beyond feeding our children and hanging out with them, so it is the perfect holiday. A no obligation holiday. I think of it as a rest up from the holidays at home. Who doesn't get exhausted after a 12 hour flight, an eight hour drive, three jet lagged kids, a bad sinus infection, catching up with all the family and friends you haven't seen for half a year, shopping for the things from home you miss, packing, a 13+ hour flight, more jetlag and unpacking? It's the perfect time to reorganize the house (from the move just before summer), visit a few temple fairs, sleep in, watch DVDs, play games received at Xmas, nag about homework given over the break and catch up on sleep! Oh, yes, and stay inside away from the freezing COLD!

Since I've missed the last few Best Shot Wednesdays, I thought I would do a little catch up. These are a handful of my favorite shots that I took during my blog hiatus.

What I love about this photo is that my 12 year old is still more than willing to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas and isn't embarrased by it in the least.

This is my five year olds' very first letter to Santa. Here he is addressing the envelope. It is funny because what he listed in the letter is very different than what he told Santa after hearing what his brothers wanted for Xmas. (Legos turned into an iPad and a computer!)

The rainbow we saw from the car on our way to Arizona from California. It looks like we were near Palm Springs maybe.

The boys checking out the gifts under the Christmas tree to see if there are any for them and if so to shake them and guess what is inside.

Bailey, my in-laws cat, in his special spot right in the middle of the kitchen near the warmth from the bottom of the fridge. He's old now and instead of hiding from us, he wants to be in the center of the action.

Nana helps Braden during his turn in Guesstures. Very fun game for the whole family!

My favorite desert photo from this trip. Taken on a walk in my in-laws' neighborhood in Tucson.

Nicholas using his birthday camera to make his latest stop action animation feature.

On the way out of town, Dad wanted to take the kids to Waffle House. He knew they would love it and he was right! Reece insisted I find the recipe and make their waffles from now on.

Celebrating on New Year's Eve with the pulling of some Christmas crackers. I love that this British tradition has found its way to the US. My first encounter with the Christmas cracker was in 1991 at my work Christmas party when I worked at Debenham's (student work visa) in Cambridge, UK. Such fond memories!

Reece playing Step Mania (just like Dance Dance Revolution) in his feety pajamas. I LOVE that my 12 and a half year old still LOVES feeties. He's in now hurry to grow out of his childhood favorites - thank goodness!

I plan to enter this final photo in Rebecca Cooper's weekly challenge, Simple Things, this Sunday on her blog.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon for some exciting things coming up. This Monday, January 24 I will be participating in a LOAD (Layoutaday.com) Blog hop. We will all be sharing how we prepare for LOAD.

What is LOAD? It is a month long challenge in which participants make one scrapbook layout a day and post it in a Flickr gallery. I love it because I work very well under deadlines and it is my most productive scrapbooking time. This will be my 5th or 6th one. Wow!

On Tuesday, February 1st I'm organizing a blog hop for the participants in Ali Edwards' class ONE LITTLE WORD at Big Picture Classes. We will be sharing our project for January and any other reflections on our word from the month of January. Please come by and join in the fun.

If you are a member of Ali's class and would like to participate in the blog hop, please leave me a comment in this post and I'll get back to you with more details.

Other things that I have been working on:

*Cleaning up my hard drive, my external hard drives and refining my back up system.

*Downloading and editing photos from the holidays.

*Creating my photography website.

*Helping kids with homework!

*Studying up on Lightroom & Photoshop 5 (I bought both of Scott Kelby's books when I was at home).

*Planning two birthday parties - first thing tomorrow morning I'll be decorating one of the cakes (a cupcake cake - camping theme, extra cupcakes will be mad scientists). I'll post pictures sometime in the next week.

*Transfering old Hi8 video tapes to digital (so excited about this) using the Canopus ADV110 - couldn't be easier (with the right cables).

*Catching up with Project Life 2010.

*Recovering from jetlag.

OK, I better get some sleep. Thanks again for stopping by and come back soon!

Best Shot Wednesday 4

Isn't this little child absolutely adorable?? In China, the way the children are dressed, you can never be sure if the child is a boy or a girl just from their clothes. I refer to this cutie pie as a 'she', but I honestly don't know if that is accurate. Please bear with me!

This adorable child was walking down the narrow alleyway (or hutong) and I just had to take a photo. I'm usually too shy, but I got the feeling from her father that it was OK. I squatted down a bit and knew I had to work fast as she wouldn't be in this perfect spot for more than a moment. I instinctively focused on her foot because I didn't have time to establish a focus point on her face. I did this because I figured her foot is on the same plane as her face so if I get her foot in focus, her face should be as well. Luckily, in this case, it worked!

I'll submit this shot for the Sweet Shot Tuesday at my3boybarians.com that I discovered a couple of weeks after I started my Best Shot Wednesday feature.

Thanks for stopping by! xxxx

Best Shot Wednesday

This was taken at a nearby park in the kids' indoor play area. It costs $4+ a head but when it is freezing outside, you've ridden your bikes all over looking for a place to fly your kites and the only place you find already has too many kite fliers, you shell it out to relieve some guilt and so your kids' faces can look like they do in that photo!

In case your interested, I talk in detail about the technical side of the photo - how I captured it and what I did to improve it. If this doesn't interest you, skip the next section!

DISCUSSION OF PHOTO'S TECHNICAL DETAILS

As you can see this was a strongly backlit photo. I attempted to compensate by overriding my camera's automatic meter reading.

Let me explain in a little more detail. I was shooting in AV or A mode (aperture priority) set at around f/2.8. My first couple of shots were way underexposed since the automatic meter was adjusting for the strong back light. I used my meter compensation button (+/-) and set it to overexpose (+) by a few stops. My subjects looked better but were still underexposed.  My solution was to edit a little in Adobe Lightroom after I got home. I had a lot of information to work with because I shot in RAW.

In Lightroom, I adjusted the exposure and then used the burn/dodge tool (not sure if that is its name in Lightroom) to get rid of most of the over exposed spots in the background. Unfortunately, this photo is not at full quality. I'm considering uploading all my photos at full quality so they don't look so fuzzy. They just take longer to upload and download!

Focus

As they were zooming down the zip line, I was having trouble getting my subjects' faces in focus. My solution? As they were getting ready to go down the zipline again, I prefocused my camera on one of the yellow posts on the left and as the boys reached that yellow post, I clicked down the shutter.

To make this photo better I would have framed it a little differently. I would have allowed for more space below the toes so that you could get an idea of how high off the ground they were. I could afford to do this since I had space at the top to spare. I wouldn't be losing their hands gripping the handle bar or the buffer space above that.

THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating tomorrow! I wish I was celebrating tomorrow, but here in China it is a regular work and school day. That means my kids will be at school and my husband at work. We will celebrate instead on Saturday.

We are planning a potluck style meal with a few friends. Two American families, a British husband and dad whose a bachelor for a few months and an Italian family. We will have nine adults and nine kids in all. Not sure how we will swing that with our limited plates and chairs but we will manage some how! 

I'm hitting one of the markets on Friday morning in pursuit of some decor to make the table Thanksgiving-y. The one thing I know I can find there is fresh flowers, beyond that, I'm a little worried. Our table is so long (using leaves), I have no idea what to do for a table cloth. I'd like it to be fitting for a TG dinner party, but I may be expecting too much. Only time will tell...

Tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day, I will be volunteering my time at one of the orphanages I have been working with for the past month or two. We usually go on Mondays but this week had to be rescheduled. I thought it appropriate that it should be on Thanksgiving. What better way to spend the day than helping those little ones without families?

Today I picked up some books for the kids at the orphanage. The books are small and were cheap. I can't stand that every time I go see them they are playing with empty paint cans (the building is under construction), or sharing a torn book between eight of them. We worry that the books will disappear (has happened before), but I figure at 50 cents (US) a piece, I can afford to bring ten books (or similar) items each time I go and the kids can play with them even for the few hours while I am there. At any rate, it will make me feel better! It's a selfish gesture actually.

On a happier note, enjoy your days of celebration and gratitude! Hug your families and enjoy your bounty of food & blessings!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

xxxx

Best Shot Wednesday - 2

Hi Again! It is Wednesday, so here I am with my best shot of the week. This is my youngest son all ready to leave for school. Our neighbor doesn't like us to keep our bikes in the hallway (most other floors keep their bikes in the hallway) so we keep them in our play room. The weather has started getting colder so we are wearing heavier coats and gloves to protect our hands from the chill on our bike. 

What I like about this photo is the morning light on his face, his expression, and a slice of our daily life.

I didn't take too many photos this week even though I got a new lens last Thursday! My faithful 50mm f/1.8 broke. It fell out of my bag (that I was sure was zipped up) and landed on my oldest son's head as I was bending over to help him get ready for school. My much more expensive wide angle lens and camera body were also in my bag, but luckily they stayed put! I only paid about $60 for the broken lens three years ago so I think I got more than my money's worth.

And as I joked with a friend back home via email - my main concern was obviously my lens NOT my son's head. My defense was that his head can heal (though no damage was done), my lens can not. Haha!

Of course this mishap gave me an excuse to upgrade my 50mm. This time I got the f/1.4. And I'm even more in love with it than I was with my f/1.8. The colors are more vibrant, the pictures crisper. And I am reminded again first hand that with lenses you get what you pay for.

Do you have a favorite lens? Why do you love it? I'm always curious to hear what lenses people are using and what they use them for.

SIMPLE THINGS

I was just visiting Rebecca's blog and I discovered her Simple Things challenge.

I thought my Best Shot Wednesday photo was perfect for it this week. I truly LOVE riding my son to school on the bike. Since moving to Beijing we are now 'city people'. We don't own a car and our two older boys take the bus to school. All that means no more 'car time' to spend with my children chatting to them while driving them to & from school, sports and other activities. When I was home this summer I realized how much I missed it. This time my youngest and I have on the bike is all I have left of my 'car time'! It is likely he will be taking the bus starting in Fall and then it's lost forever (or until we move back to the States). I'm savoring that Simple Thing every day!

PHOTO WALK

I took my two youngest boys on a photo walk early Saturday morning. It was so cold that we didn't last very long, but it was fun nonetheless. I must admit that I get shy about taking the photos I really want to take but I have no problems coaching my boys into taking some good ones.

Here are some of my favorites of the ones they took:

 My 5 year old's:

My 10 year old's:

It is shocking how quickly the hutongs and back streets of Beijing are disappearing. In this same little village area surrounded by blocks of high rises, an old lively crowded restaurant was just flattened on Tuesday. My son and I ride my bike through this area every day on the way to school. We were both shocked when one morning it was literally reduced to a pile of rubble. Just the previous day it was teeming with people. I had made a mental note to stop there one day on the way to school for some fried bread and to take a few photos. Too late now!

They are making way for new modern skyscrapers.

Me? I much prefer old Beijing. It won't be here much longer. Don't Blink!

Best Shot Wednesday & Dinner

Recently on a few peoples' blogs I have seen them feature a best shot of the week. I love this! I figure, I can commit to posting consistently at least once per week, so from now on I am making Wednesdays here on my blog - Best Shot Wednesday.

In the future, I will make sure the shot is from the previous week, but for today I am featuring a recent shot that wasn't actually taken this week. It is from my five year old son's school's family sports day. All the schools here do it. And it is a tradition in Japan as well.

Students and families gather at school one weekend day during Fall for some fun activities. Usually they are relay races. Nobody keeps track of the winners (except for some of the kids, of course!) and every student gets a medal at the end. Braden's quote of the day, 'Dad, I didn't know there were going to be medals!' 

One of the things I realized I needed to do with my photos is make them more interesting. I could capture the expression, get things in focus, meter things correctly, control the depth of field, etc, but my photos didn't always tell the whole story. They were a little stale. You didn't always know where my subjects were or what they were doing. Therefore I have been trying to include more of the surroundings in my photos.

My new wide angle lens has assisted me in doing that. I can get close to my subjects - which adds interest and intimacy - and at the same time include background and/or surroundings to help tell the story. 

The photo above wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it were just a close up of his expression or even a tight shot of his waist and above with a blurred out background. Sure you would get to see the cute expression on his face and with the framing of his waist up, you might even be able to guess that he was participating in a relay race, but with the wider shot, you get the surroundings as well. Not only can you see he is in a school yard, but you can see there are adults and kids in attendance and you can almost feel the excitement and energy.

And because I couldn't help myself. Here is another favorite from the day that also demonstrates what I was trying to do.

His older brother is his partner in the wheel barrow race.

DINNER 

Because I so often get frustrated with my choices for cooking here as well as dealing with the limitations of my kitchen, I made waffles for dinner. I bought a new waffle maker a few days ago, so I'm having fun with it. To make them a little healthier than the traditional waffle, I found this multi-grain recipe on FoodNetwork.com. They were pretty good and better yet filling. Turns out though they don't have enough fat for the kids' taste, therefore next time I will go back to my healthfied version of waffles from The Joy of Cooking. Perhaps I'll post that in on another day.

Waffles for dinner.

Thanks for stopping by! Leave me a comment if you get a chance and stop by again any time!

xxxxx