June 2

Today we woke up very near to Mt. Rushmore. After getting ready, eating breakfast, and packing the car again, we quickly stopped for Starbucks, then drove right to the Mt. Rushmore Memorial.
This was in small mountains (I think larger than foothills, but not terrible large at all.)  It is quite exciting to drive in the mountains. I love the ups and downs, ups and downs, again and again.  We saw so many beautiful sights hard to describe.
First we saw the large rocks (such as the ones the presidents are carved into.)  Each one looked a little different.  (To me they mostly looked like sleeping rock monsters.)  Some are very large, and others very small.  Pine trees abound. Some regular trees are around also.  Mt. Rushmore was different than I expected in the fact it had a parking garage, and lot, and it was very...built.  There was a long brick walkway with many brick arches along it leading to an amitheatre.  The presidents over looked this ampitheatre and walkway.
Seeing the carvings was so amazing. They are extremely detailed, and of course, ginormous!
We took lots of photos, and also sat and looked for awhile.  The faces are at the top of a huge rock formation; directly under them is quite a bit of loose rocks and gravel with just a few trees, under that was lots of trees along a steep hillside.
After we finished seeing Mt. Rushmore we  went a little further.  We stopped and looked at different places several times.  Eventually we stopped for the night in an old mining town (or perhaps I should say a set of old mining towns, as there are several very close together.)  Mountain towns are just so different than what we are used to seeing. This one is old, has just a few streets, some high, some low, some steep.  The roads are narrow in some spots, the houses all have retaining walls to keep their yards intact.  There are lots of brick buildings, but the houses are mostly very colorful.

June 1

The sun was barely glowing orange through the curtains; everyone was asleep. 5 am and our alarms went off. Time to get up and leave!
We quickly got ready, ate breakfast, and packed the few last minute items. We were off! It was chilly and wet, but a beautiful morning. Lauren drove; I napped for a few hours. Up north through the pine forests, over the Missisippi we drove. Then west all the way through Minnesota. We stopped for gas a few times, and also in Blue Earth to see the 60 foot Green Giant. We then drove further west into South Dakota, where the speed limit is 80! That was great! Later we saw the world' s only Corn Palace in Mitchell. Culver's provided us a delicious dinner, and then we were back on the road.
Eventually the road started having slight inclines, and there were rolling hills all around us. There were cows, horses, occasional houses, a few dirt roads (we were on the interstate), and towns that were small, and few. [At this point I called and booked a hotel about 2 hours down the road.] We continuted on through the badlands til the hills were getting larger and steeper. We could see a thunderstorm in the distance, and smell the rain coming. We heard flash flood warnings on the radio, but couldn't stop. We made it to our hotel just as it started to pour!
Over 15 hours we drove more than 800 miles on I-90, saw quite a lot of interesting sights, spent a LONG time in the car, and are ready for tomorrow's adventures!

This was the most traffic we saw all day

The corn pictures were pretty neat.

Be Thou my Vision...

Procrastination method 501...make some wall art instead of doing schoolwork!
I had the idea almost two months ago. I have a small piece of paper on the wall by my bed that contains the words to the old hymn, Be Thou My Vision.  Its just a plain small white piece of paper smashed in with all my colorful photos.  I still like it there, plain or not.  But, I had an idea, why not create a beautiful photo and overlay it with the words?  I could print it large (as an engineer's print most likely) or perhaps smaller and frame it, then put it up on the blank wall across the room.  I had a print there, but tired of it, and took it down. Because looking at a bare wall is more exciting...
So to create this, I needed related photos.  Photo #1.  A photo of the ocean. Now, besides the fact we use our eyes to see the ocean...not really related to the hymn. However, photo #1 gets to be my base image because I pretty much just always want a photo of the ocean on my wall. I miss the ocean. (To bad I live smack dab in the middle of the USA with no oceans close by me.)
Photo #2 needed to be related to the song a little more.  I thought maybe looking down onto an open bible would work well.  Could. Not. Find. An. Image. So, okay no.  Plan B was something related to vision, since Christ is our Vision.  Tried an eye. Tried the lighthouse. The eye just didn't quite work...
The lighthouse scene, however, I feel fits very well.  It well relates to the first photo (I believe this is always important for double exposures.  The stories the two photos tell must relate somehow for the end result to be emotionally connect, and be one beautiful photo.) I really don't know much about double exposures...and that is probably the most un technical thing I've ever decided about photography!
Anyway, to me, these two photos seem to fit together well, and the third element, the words from the first verse of  Be Thou My Vision, also fit well enough.
So, here's my new wall art for awhile. Until I get bored of that, and take it down for a bare wall...

Does anything I do make sense?

Apple cobbler adventures

Last Thursday I went to apple picking with all of my siblings, my best friend, and two little girls my sister nannies.  It was fun! We came home with some apples, of course.  I was so sad that I couldn't take any orchard photos! (My poor camera has been sent away to be cleaned, and fixed.)
A new dream of mine is to do a photoshoot in an orchard! (Also, to pick cherries. I found out that one of the local orchards ALSO has cherry picking in July!)
Today I decided to make an apple cobbler type dish. Just to eat. Just for fun.  I made up the recipe as I went along; it turned out delicious.  I really wanted to do a food photoshoot with some apples as props.  Emily was kind enough to let me borrow her camera.
I great enjoyed setting up this shoot outside on the tabletop of my mom's grill. It gave me some beautiful lighting! I was in the shade of the house, but the late afternoon sun was shining on the greenery behind me.

Today I learned how to do a 'double exposure' with editing.  Its not a true double exposure I guess, since its not on camera..but since we don't use film, is that even a double exposure?  Who knows...
But in any case, this was great fun! I use GIMP, so I just googled how to do it on gimp, and tried it out!  Fiddled with settings till I got what I want.
The hardest part was choosing two photos that went well together.  That took me a number of tries. Do the two photos relate in any way?
Do the pieces fit without blocking important things from each other? Does the combination look to busy or hard on the eyes?  Hmmm, what is a perfect pair?!

I chose the ocean scene for a few reasons: I love the ocean and sky, the ocean and sky are close to the same color, it is a fairly 'blank' photo, and it is beautiful.  As I was looking through random photos I saw Lauren's hands on the piano, and knew that would be a good match. I turned the hands photo black and white so the colors would only be that of the ocean scene. Think of the sounds of piano combined with the rushing ocean waves.  Think of the beauty of music, and the beauty of the ocean and sky.

What would I name this photo?
I have no idea...

Addalyn

I have had a good summer at camp. Its been busy, happy, and its soon coming to a close. This summer, besides doing a newborn shoot, I also did a wedding reception, a wedding as a second, and my first ever senior guy shoot.
So keep looking for several more posts on my summer shoots.  Soon I will be doing another senior session of sweet Lisa.  Its a challenge fitting in these sessions between working at camp but I'm glad I can do a few.
This morning I enjoyed taking some photos of scenery here in central WI. What a beautiful sight.  God's creation is amazing, and breath taking.

Babies are for sure a part of that amazing creation!  I have wanted for quite awhile to do a newborn photoshoot.  It just wasn't working out, and I was waiting for the day it would happen.  Well a friend of mine had a baby early this summer.  She brought her up to camp when she was just a few weeks old, and we did a newborn session.  Addalyn was very alert, and awake, so sleepy shots were a challenge!  But she was adorable at just over 5 pounds, and 18 inches long.  I am so glad I could do this first ever newborn shoot.

30 days 30 photos

Flowers

So Lauren and I completed our challenge.  The last few days didn't go so well....we missed a lot of photos.  But we made them up in the later days.  I am only missing one photo-after dark. I kept procrastinating that because of atrocious mosquitoes.  I have never seen mosquitoes as bad as this year.  Not sure how they all survived this super duper cold winter...so much for having less bugs!

Something old

I am glad we did the challenge.  Because of it, I have many beautiful photos I would not have taken otherwise!
Anyway, I am off to camp today, and do not have time to post all the photos.  But here are a few from the challenge I liked.

Faceless self portrait

What I ate

Sunset