December 8th, 2020

Well, I'm at the end of a 5 day stretch off of work.....*sad* Not going to lie, I think I may learn to like working 3 days a week. We'll see - maybe they're taking it easy on me because by the end of last week I looked like I'd been hit by a bus. Regardless, the weekend was spent trying to absorb as much as I can about ventilators and working on a Christmas gift. Well, that and we watched the RIT Tigers win hockey twice against cheaters......I mean the Niagara Purple Eagles, and now that Mulan is free on Disney+ we finally watched that. 

Mulan was.....interesting. I initially was against it. I really hate this new insistence from Disney to make live action remakes of all of their movies, particularly the ones that have talking animals. You. Cannot. Make. A. Live. Action. Movie. With. Talking. Animals. And. Make. It. Look. Good. You can't change my mind on this one. Not to mention, my favorite part of the animated Mulan was Mushu so when I found out he wouldn't be present in the movie I was no longer interested. But with all of the extra attention given to social justice this year and realizing a lot of the things I used to enjoy now coming out as problematic, bastardized versions of various cultures, the animated movies being no exception, I decided to give it a try. It sounded like Disney was at least going to try getting this one a little more culturally correct, although it also came with its own political problems, so I guess it wasn't 100% foolproof, but I digress. Storyline was actually good, I enjoyed it. But my God the CGI. Even without the talking animals it reminded me of CGI from the late 90s - horrendously obvious and did not fit in at all. The plane crash in Air Force One was less blatantly obvious. That was really my only gripe, they did a decent job with it overall. 

It's been so nice to see some sunshine the past couple days. All the gloom and precipitation has super been getting to me, and making it really hard to take Mack on long walks. I love my gloomy days. I light all the candles, wear my PJs all day and don't leave my house, but after several weeks of it I was no longer having fun. Yesterday I was so excited when the sun came out because there were still enough clouds in the sky that the sunset was going to be gorgeous. I was watching as sunset was coming and it was looking amazing. So I threw some clothes on and headed towards Black Creek Park to see if I could get some really good photos - only to be caught by just enough people driving exactly the speed limit to miss it by literally minutes. I was so mad. Usually if I catch a great sunset I just stand in my driveway but with the high trees and houses in close proximity I figured a place with a wide open field might be better. I officially have regrets. Whatever, there'll be more someday. 

In the meantime, here ARE some decent ones I've captured lately. These were all just taken from the front of my house. Hopefully no one calls the cops someday for the suspicious person taking photos haha

Currently for sunsets I've just been using landscape mode and messing with the brightness setting a little to make sure I'm not washing out any of the colors or making anything too dark. I've tried adjusting aperture and shutter speed but I've found it doesn't make as much of a difference yet. Once my crochet projects are over I'm hoping to buckle down with getting through this book that Matt bought, maybe supplement with some online resources. Plus it'll probably help to one day get myself set up ahead of time, tripod and all so I have a little more time to play with things. I haven't quite figured out if there's a way to keep the objects in the foreground from looking so dark, but I actually don't mind the super dark trees against a colorful background. It's kind of cool. 

I really haven't started editing my photos. As I get time I review all my photos and try to critique the things I could have done better. But for now I'm just trying to focus on taking the photos better rather than editing the crap out of them. Partially because I don't have tons of time to be bungling around Lightroom, but I AM more concerned about learning to not lean on editing. 

Alright I'm going back to my 7th Heaven marathon. I LOVED this show as a kid and I'm so excited Hulu has it. At least Miss Rona encouraged some of these streaming services to bring back some great shows. Spent 6 months watching all 15 seasons of ER, which was awesome. That show got me through 2 research projects and 2.5 crocheted blankets. Downside is I have way too many commercials memorized at this point, which my husband will never let me live down :|

December 3rd, 2020

 Hello there!

If you're reading this it probably means I took the plunge and decided to share this.....or you randomly found it on the internet. Whatever the case, welcome to the perpetual blooper reel that is my life. We like to keep things interesting in our family....and do things the hard way.

2020 has been quite the year. I want to hate it, but I can't. Nothing has gone according to plan, but because of that we got to do things we otherwise wouldn't have been able to. All of our awesome trips that we had planned got cancelled. Instead we replaced all of our flooring with vinyl plank, fell in love with the St. Lawrence River, subsequently bought a vacation home on the river, bought a car and I decided to change jobs. We also got a cat. She was pre-pandemic though. In between all of this craziness, I decided to more seriously take up crocheting, explore more of the parks of Rochester with Mack, dedicate myself to making new recipes more often and learn photography. 

So we've certainly been busy. That's not to say there haven't been any low points, because there's been plenty. I'm definitely bummed we haven't left this state since February and I'm even more bummed that it's almost a year since I've seen my family despite planning numerous times to try. Also, literally haven't been to Disney in over a year, which is killing me in the soul. And being a healthcare worker right now is all kinds of "special." It gets even more awesome when I decided to switch gears to critical care literally 2 weeks before the brutal resurgence of Miss Rona. Remember that time I said we do things the hard way? Yeah. 

I decided to start this blog mostly to chronicle my journey into learning photography so I can actually post photos and talk about them without gumming up my Instagram with my currently subpar skills. For now it'll mostly just be my adventures around Rochester but my hope is at some point to get some travel photos in here. When it's safe to do so of course. I've been itching to get a real camera for a couple years now, though I kept talking myself out of it since iPhones DO have decent cameras. When my travels to the river and around Rochester showed me that I really wanted to start getting good landscape and sunset photos, I found out the iPhone has some limitations in that department, so I officially put a DSLR on my wishlist and I could no longer be convinced otherwise. Did a little research and ended up getting a Canon T8i with an 18-400mm lens to start with, which I love so far. It's a heavy lens, but I really wanted something that I could use in just about any situation and distance. Matt was additionally awesome and bought me a book that is basically a photography course and breaks things up into weeks that focus on the different aspects of photography. It's been super helpful so far and explains things in a way that are easy to pick up.  

We'll see where this all goes. I'll probably end up throwing in some other stuff I'm up to like the various DIY projects I'm getting myself into, crocheting, new recipes, maybe some books I'm reading. We'll see. If nothing else it'll be a good distraction from the craziness of the world, which I'm sure I'll need at some point.