Hello everyone, Welcome to day three of my “Through my child’s eyes” project.  I am really looking forward to sharing today’s images. I decided to write first, then fill in the pictures, only because I’m so exhausted if I don’t write now, you may not be able to make out what I’m trying to say, by the time I get done!

I think its so neat the feedback I’m getting already only on day three of my journey. Especially tonight, I got to talk to my mom and had a conversation that meant alot and I think has opened up a new door in our relationship. She told me she’d been reading my posts, which means alot to me I might add. She started to ask me questions about if I remembered this or that about my childhood, and started to remind me of things I had forgotten. Then mentioned things I could definitely not remember, such as the car accident she had when she picked me up from elementary school one day. I have no clue about that! I did remember some of the things though, like the little crushes I had on boys, go figure huh! 🙂 I asked her to start texting me or emailing me if she thinks of a memory I might like to hear, so I think this could be really fun. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, go back and read the Day One post,. It talks about my memory loss.

I sort of have a new goal in mind for this project. Not only do I want to grow with my children, become a better mom, a better listener and watcher of my children, but I want to document their memories.. Help them to preserve what might be forgotten later. This may sound simple and easy, but actually, what we photograph commonly is our perception of that moment, not exactly their take on it. I’m going to try to take it that extra step and photograph it from their angle, their feeling, etc. Maybe one day I can show them these and it will spark their memories back to life!

So on to today’s photographs!! Well, if your in Georgia or anywhere that receives my facebook’s or tweet’s you’ll see that we have SNOW here! Lots of it! It happened quite quickly actually. One moment it looked just barely a drizzle of snow on the ground, a hour later it was like a couple inches!! Here’s a shot from my bedroom window looking out to our street and my honda.

When we awoke, the first thing I did, like a kid, was look out the window!! In excitement I began opening all the blinds and curtains in the house so that when the kids woke up they’d see the snow and beauty right away! Then it hit me, “I need my camera when they see it!! Shoot…” I run downstairs to find my camera, thought it was where I left it last night and that was on the table… Nope..Run back upstairs, sort of quietly so I don’t awake them and then miss the moment! Find it in my office, duh! I put it there, then I run downstairs to switch lenses, and realize, CRAP i don’t have a memory card in it. Run upstairs get a card, back downstairs, start making coffee (Can’t believe I ran so much already before coffee!!!). So then I hear footsteps and excited voices and they are awake! I run up, hug them and say come on come on, come see the snow. I open the front door, so excited to get a picture of them and the snow and they’re faces…Poor Logan is FREEZING so he runs to the living room, avalyn is my dare devil, she grabs some snow off the ground outside…I try to get a shot, and realize oops one shot left, didn’t format the card… Shoot, then I think, did I transfer those pictures already or not, hmm.. can’t take the chance, so i run UPSTAIRS AGAIN, get a card and back down.. Guess what..THE BATTERY DIES!! I think all this happened to tell you what I’m about to tell you!! So I switch the batteries, put the other on the charger and take a deep breath! Go in the living room, turn on the fireplace and collapse! LOL. I grab this shot of avalyn looking at the snow out back.

Then I decide to take it easy, im like exhausted already, and its like 8am…So I go make some breakfast, and then after that I’m like ready to sleep, but i have a horrible headache! I decided to just lay on the floor by the fire w/ the kids and since we have no cable, they find a way to watch TV still w/ movies, I told them no more TV for a while, so I shut it off and we all lay on the floor. Its a hard transition because we’ve used it so much and they’re addicted i’m sure. Avalyn wasn’t too happy but I held strong. Told them to get a book or something to do right there w/ me on the floor. Logan decided he wanted to draw. He is so good and loves it so much. They’re both super creative. So Logan is wanting to know what I’m doing… I was writing in my personal journal that my husband bought me for Christmas. I just started it the day after Christmas, and I already missed 8 days… So I am not on the right track, but i do what I can! I was trying to catch up so I was writing alot. He wanted to know why, and if daddy was allowed to read it, etc.. I told him sure, if he wanted to. Then he wanted to write a journal and wanted to know what to write. I told him to write what he was thinking in his head.. Then he broke my heart… I love him so! *Deep Breath* Literally, i took one. You take one! Let me make the scene a little better, we were all three very close, laying on the floor on our tummys or sitting up, and right by the fire and window over looking our woods and it is all snowy… Logan starts writing… I’m like AHHH gotta start taking pics, duh! I can’t let this moment pass.. I grab the camera (I am coming back to the part about what i think i’m supposed to tell everyone)…Start trying to be right over his left shoulder so I could capture exactly what he was seeing, as he was doing it.. I got this:

Then I started to play a bit and get different angles of him.

Back to what he was writing…Again, deep breath..He wrote, “My dad was not here when it snowed….” Then he began to draw the earth as he sees it, mind you, and where he was and where daddy is…. To keep from crying out fully I had to break my thoughts and correct him, *Slap on hand, bad mom*, but I told him, daddy’s here, and we’re here, so he erased the initial arrow and drew a line around the earth to where he was. Just broke me… that was what he was thinking about apparently because I said, you write what’s on your mind. It truly is what had been on my mind as well, in between running up and down the stairs, I had a “Notebook” romantic moment where I felt like it was so dreamy out and why couldn’t he be here.. Then I get text’s from him showing snow where he was, it made me feel a little closer…

So… We all still layed there for a bit and logan began to draw some other things like Star Wars, using the Wii game to go off of, he made what he said were birthday invitations for some friends of his for his upcoming birthday party (unbeknown to me, I have not even went there yet, lol). Love it though because its actually exactly what Craig was doing somewhere around that age. Drawing, tracing, being such an amazing artist! Will have to share some of his drawings sometime! If I was awake enough I’d do it now…

So then my little girly girl wanted to fully be in the moment by the fireplace, she HAD to have some hot cocoa.. So she begged and begged, only because I was consumed in photographing brother, then finally I gave in. She feels like a big girl cause she has a coffee mug and she told me it tastes like coffee to her, ?! okay 🙂 So here’s little miss enjoying her cocoa! 🙂

As you can see, I had alot to share today! It has been a GREAT tiring day! 🙂 I didn’t forget, I wanted to share some things that might help mom’s out there, or photographers who are doing this or other projects similar. I ran into ALOT of common problems this morning that did delay me from capturing the initial moments for them seeing the snow. While that may not matter to others, the point is, you never know when a moment is going to happen. I read this year while in class, that you have to anticipate the moment before it happens. How difficult, but yet how interesting huh! So here’s some tips:
– After using your camera, put it back to a neutral setting, ISO 100 or 200, F stop 2.8 or 4, and Shutter Speed 1/200 or something like that.
– Take your card out and back it up after your using it that day. You never know when you want to pick that camera up and then realize its full and the moment is gone! Back it up, and wipe it after you’ve double/triple checked and double backed up your memories. Then put back in camera or storage place, already formatted.
– After you use your camera for the day, take out the battery, charge it, and stock it w/ a fresh battery! Just do it 🙂 You won’t regret it!

Just a few obvious things but things I didn’t do and will from here out.

Also, a couple tips for getting some awesome shots of your kids:

– Get down LOW, lay on the ground, get to their level, their head level.
– Use as wide of an aperture you can (Bigger opening, smaller f stop, i.e. f/1.2 my fav, 2.8, etc) that will bring the background out of focus and have a pretty blurry bokeh.
– Avoid flashing them straight on, try bouncing off the ceiling or side white wall. Careful if your walls are painted, that will cast a color on to them, think of it as a gel on your flash.

That’s all for tonight! Oh wait, here’s some of us in the snow 🙂

Yes, that is my guard dog, He’s so awesome! 🙂

Now if you read all this, you mean the world to me! Love you and appreciate you! I know this is alot, and really it felt great! Thanks again for reading. It would make my day tomorrow morning to wake up and find a bunch of comments here, so if you do read, please let me know 🙂

God Bless.

Katrina