Quarterly Top 5 Photos: July, August, September

Wow, another three months have flown by. Before I post this quarter's favorites, I am going to link to my quarterly post for last time. I did the post, but then we went on vacation for two weeks, and I was without any internet access for the entire time that the linky was open. I know that it's strange for that to happen in this day and age, but it's true. I figure, if anyone wants to look at the photos from the second quarter, feel free. ;-)

 Link to Quarter 2.

On to Quarter 3--these are all photos that were selected for my Project 366 as well, so if you follow this blog, you've seen them all before.  But they're worth seeing again, in my opinion!

I like this photo because I feel like it's a quintessential summer image--kid reading for pleasure, barefoot, oblivious to the world around her.

Another traditional summer shot. My son Earnest on the Fourth of July.

I love this shot, even though it's a bit overexposed. I was just shooting like crazy, and lucked out in capturing it.

This photo is sort of amusing, in that there was chaos all around Trust, but yet, she appears very Zen.

  Here's Imp, my youngest. I think this captures his personality pretty well.

Thanks for looking.

Quarterly Top Five Photos

We're just about half way through 2012! Wow, how time flies.

 I like this one a lot of my daughter.  The ironic thing is that it was one of those times that I just grabbed the camera and took a few photos.

Really like the sentiment here. This was Mother's Day, so all the better.

 Happy birthday to my little guy.  He turned four back in May.

At a local children's museum with my older son.

At a local zoo with my youngest, who loves to feed the birds.

Quarterly Top 5 Photos

Wow, this year is flying by. I seem to always be saying that. I think it's a sign of growing older. When you're a kid, time creeps by, and then when you want it to slow down as you age, it doesn't.

Enough philosophizing. It's too early in the morning, anyway.

Here are my top five photos for this quarter:

This is my favorite photo for this entire time period.  Mainly because I finally was able to freeze the motion so well.  I also love his expression and the height.

I do like this photo a lot, but was bummed about the blurriness.  I am fairly certain that this lens has a back focusing issue.  Quite often, what is behind the subject is very clear (see my husband?) and when I'm taking the photo, what I intend to be in focus looks fine.  Anyway, this was the first time my youngest was on skis.  Since we didn't have a ton of snow this year, it's remarkable that we were even able to try this out.

Since this isn't a contest, I am going to include this photo.  It's too bad the settings on my camera weren't right.  It was one of those moments that I just shot because it happened so quickly and I didn't have time to adjust.  I did try to lighten it, and this is AFTER that attempt, so you can imagine how dark it was to start.  I do love her expression.

Love this of my daughter lost in thought.  She was working on a special research project for school.

I love the framing of this one. My daughter was very upset because she had just learned that she wasn't going to be able to meet a children's author that she was highly anticipating. (This did have a happy ending, because we later learned that the timing would work to our benefit, so she did wind up meeting the author.)

Top 11 of 11

As I'm sure was the case for any of you reading, picking the top 11 for the entire year was so, so difficult. Part of the difficulty is the fact that I'm finishing up a Project 365, so I have over 17000 photos to whittle down to 11 of the best. Granted, some of them could be eliminated right away, but it was still tough.

In the end, I had 22 'finalists'. I really just loved all of these finalists; some because I love the expressions and some because I love that the photo is technically pretty good. So, the 11 that I chose to include here are an attempt to balance the choices in terms of how many times each of my three kids appear in the photos, and from there, how many 'solo' photos of each are included. It's still not balanced, but so be it. Ironically, in my Project 365, all three kids appear the same number of times within 10 photos, which isn't bad for random shots taken over the course of a year.

So, here we go; these are in chronological order...

This one just makes me giggle. How could I not include it?

I love this one of my daughter. She looks so bright-eyed and fresh faced. The funny thing is, it was just a random shot as we sat on a tram back to our car at an amusement park.  This was not one of the pictures in my Project 365 as a photo of my kids and husband on the roller coaster won out.

Love his expression, love the gesture, just love this photo.  You have to know that my older son is the most serious and 'sincere' of my three kids, and I think this photo captures that part of his personality perfectly.

 We went to the zoo for Mother's Day, and we got to try hula hoops.  I love her carefree, having fun expression.  This was not in my Project 365, but a group shot of the two of us hula hooping together was.

 We have this one hanging as a 12" x 16" canvas in our family room (cropped down).  It was also one of the three photos included in our Christmas card this year. 

This one typifies my younger son's personality.  Smiley and happy-go-lucky a majority of the time.  He also is a big Thomas fan right now, so I like that he's wearing the Thomas overalls.

I adore this photo, despite its technical imperfections.  This one is not in my Project 365, as later this day we went to see my nephew play baseball and I included one of him instead.  I really didn't like days where I had to choose between a photo I really liked and one that better represented what we did that day or included someone who wasn't always around.

This is a good memory of our summer vacation.  We visited a swamp and we all got to hold the baby alligator.   His expression is priceless.  I also like my daughter's uncertainty in the background.

This was also from our summer vacation.  My son was enchanted by these parakeets.  He loved seeing them, and having them land on his arm.

Love the lighting on this, and the almost complete blackness. My son loved this Halloween costume, and the nice thing is, it's really PJs, so he can continue to wear it.

I like this action shot, especially since all three kids adore this tire swing in our backyard.

So there you go...some of my favorites from 2011.

Quarterly Top Five Photos

I mentioned in my last post how busy things are for me right now.  Although I've dropped the ball on my Project 64 posts for now (although I hope to catch up soon), I don't want to miss out on the Quarterly Top Five.








Of course, this was tough!

 

Here is Earnest, on our vacation when we made a stop at the USS Alabama. I really liked how he had a flag T shirt on and was playing with the bell.  I didn't realize it until after I was looking at the photos, or I would have made more of an effort to not cut the flag off.

I love this photo of Imp. There is such a fun memory associated with it as well. He loved, loved, loved the birds and couldn't get enough of them. 

This photo was taken at a local farm.  Imp was being tough, but then he just stopped and decided to pick some flowers.  I figure he won't be this sweet forever, so I may as well enjoy it now.

This was taken with my new Smartphone. I'm still getting the hang of it (this was taken about a month ago) but I like Trust in her glasses.

This photo just makes me laugh.  Look at the expression on Trust's face.  We were on a swamp tour and we all got to hold a baby alligator. 

Quarterly Top Five Photos

These three months have flown. I can't believe it's time to post our five favorites from April-May-June.

As I am sure it was for you, this was difficult. I don't think it's a coincidence that four of the five photos that made my favorites list were from June. I've only been really working on my photography since January (doing a 365 project, shooting in manual, etc.) There were other photos that didn't make the cut, mainly because they were too dark or not quite right technically in some way. The ones I've selected are definitely not perfect, but I'm happy with these as my favorites.

I think my next big project will be to learn photoshop or lightroom or something to help me do a little bit of processing. All of these photos are straight out of the camera, since I don't know how to do any of those fancy edits.

Anyway, here we go:

This is my youngest son, Imp, back in April. We were trying to feed the ducks, but the ducks were overfed and couldn't care less about bread. There were entire pieces of bread just lying there, untouched. My older two and my husband were spring skiiing this day, so yes, this was awhile ago.

Imp again, at the playground. I love the colors and his expression in this one.

Imp and Earnest at the farm. I like the softness of this one, but I'm bummed that Imp is out of focus a bit.

This one took my breath away in real life when I caught them snuggled like this on the couch. I guess they really do like each other, which is every mom's dream, right? I love it despite it not being super sharp--I think it gives it a bit of a dreamlike quality.

Obviously you don't know Trust in real life, but when I looked at this photo, I swear I can see what she's going to look like at age 14. Do you ever get shots of your kids like that, where they don't really look quite like what they look like now, and it makes you think that you've just seen the future a bit? I just shot this one three days ago.

Quarterly Top Five Photos

This isn't a photography contest per se, but rather a chance to share favorite photos from the first three months of 2011.

So, in no particular order:

 

My daughter with her American Girl doll in matching outfits that my mother-in-law made them for Christmas.  I thought they both looked cute together.

My older son at the playground. He takes after me in that in many photos, he is blinking or his eyes are closed. In this photo, I managed to catch him with eyes open and he just looks healthy and happy to me with those rosy cheeks.

I like how I've caught my younger son just having what looks like the time of his life on the swing.

Love the concentration and determination on his face.  Also pleased that this was shot in manual with no flash.  This family room is so poorly lit and I often have to resort to using a flash if I want to get anything decent. 

This is one of our cats, Moe.  This is taken near the same window as the previous photo, and again, I was so thrilled that I caught a decent photo with no flash and in manual mode.  I also like the warm colors (and how Moe coordinates with the color of the woodwork surrounding him).