My Pleasure

««Click to the right for the other picture for this post««

It's kind of ironic that I was taking pictures in my car/of me driving the day that my car just completely quit on me... it's kind of like I now have some sort of documentation to remind myself of what it feels like to be driving it during these next few weeks? that I won't get to drive my car.

The other night I was driving to our youth night/young people's meeting at church. It was just me and my bug. To make things more perfect, there was a nice steady drizzle coming down. I reached behind me and grabbed my camera and took pictures practically the whole way. Half of them weren't in focus because I had my lens still on manual focus... and it's kinda hard to notice things like that when you are driving. I really don't care though, I was having fun. 

I set my camera down though, when I came up to the first stop light along the way. And I noticed something funny sounding with the way my car was idling extra loud and clanky. :/ I was kind of embarrassed, but once I got the car up to speed, it sounded normal. So I thought it was maybe just a heater channel that was rattling around since we unhooked it. I was still hoping though, that I wouldn't have to slow down and stop at any other light to avoid having the whole world stare at me and my loud car. 

Ha! Well, I think I had to stop at two more agonizingly long lights, and I just sat there staring at the light... whispering for it to turn green soon!

I was probably two miles out from the turn off to our church when... well, I'm not a mechanic, but I know when to pull over. So I pulled over and called my dad on my phone that was dying. 

The long and short of it: my little car had to be towed home and my sister came to pick me up from young people's meeting.

And now? My engine has to be removed to get some loose part put back together. I have no clue really, but it doesn't sound fun.

-MarLeahJoy

What I'm Loving {Today}

I wasn't really planning on blogging today... at least I didn't have anything in mind. But when things are so good, my heart bubbles over and I have to share somewhere. So I'm just going to share what's making me happy today :)

[1] my open window with the breeze blowing my curtains [2] all the birds making noises outside [3] sunshine/natural light in my bedroom [4] getting laundry done with all the elements from 1, 2 and 3 ;) [5] wearing a super comfy hoodie *which is advertising US-made cars... whoops! I guess I need a VW one ;P [6] using my Lensbaby [7] plans for tomorrow: getting to visit an elderly woman 

-MarLeahJoy

Exploring the Night

Once again, I was trying/hoping to capture lightning... and got this ;)

And of course this one has a story, too. :P

When we left the spot that I took the last picture at, we pulled over here and I had taken two pictures already and I was taking this one when a car literally creeped by us on the interstate. Then Ranelle started hollering at me from inside the car that "that was a cop". So I stopped the shutter at somewhere around 40 seconds and hopped in the car again. She said we better move on because she would hate to try to explain to him what we were doing. :P Alas, so we went home. I guess the lightning was too far South by then for us to continue to chase it, anyway. 

On our way home we were both just kinda like "Humph! This part of the trip isn't half as exciting as it was chasing the storm and turning down any road that would get us closer to the action." :P

The whole night was still fun though, but I just can't wait until I can actually look at the back of my camera and see lightning!! Ahh!

-MarLeahJoy

Passing By

Ranelle and I went chasing after the lightning last night and had several adventures along the way (which always happens any time I take some kind of shot at night - I guess it just goes along with the nature of being out when it's dark).

There were clouds covering most of the lightning from where we lived so we knew we needed to get closer to it so we could have more of a clear sky. As we travelled along some country roads we just followed whatever road we thought would get us closer... until we turned down a dirt road that suddenly got really narrow and was lined by close trees. Somehow, we felt funny as we drove past the first house. Only to soon realize that the road abruptly ended at a really dark, unkept house. :/ Ack! Ranelle threw it into reverse and did some fast backing out of that road!! 

Then we took a Hwy neither of us had ever been on and it landed us on the interstate, so we took it because the lightning looked a little more promising out there.

We were looking for places without any interference from other lights, but I decided that I could maybe just try to get lightning and light trails from passing cars. I took this image and as I was starting to take another (in hopes that some lightning might finally show up really clear), but Ranelle told me to jump back in the car because a car on the opposite side of the interstate stopped exactly in line with us. The only lights we had on were our back brake lights... so we weren't sure if they even knew we were there, but it was just a little creepy to have both of us sitting on the side of the road at night and so close to each other. :P

-MarLeahJoy

Jennifer's First Birthday

It's been a little less than a year since I wrote a blog post about Baby Jennifer - my first time meeting her, a few weeks after her birth. 

And now, the sweet little girl is one year old and brings so much joy to her family!

I was going to take one year pictures of Jennifer until the weather cancelled our plans of going to Kansas City, so I got to take pictures of her birthday party -- equally as fun!! :)

Of course, little Nathan did the honors of blowing out the candle for her :)

She wasn't the type to really dig into the cake, but she humored us for quite a while by kind of playing with it. At this point we could all tell she was done, though ;)

It was quite chaotic to try to get all of them together... but at least one shot of them all looking in the general direction is worth it :)

-MarLeahJoy

If at first you don't succeed, try agian

I got a voice message one day from my cousin's wife asking me to do something for her, that was really for her husband. I was like, "Okkkaayyyy....???" (Yeah, I don't deal very well with the unknowns) When I called her back, she was wanting me to make a business card for him. I am farrrr from a graphic designer, but if someone believes I can do it, then I tend to believe for myself that I am fully capable.

When I thought I was done with the business card, I shared on Google+ the transformation from the original picture to the business card.

After the cards were ordered they wanted some new information added, and they mentioned that the font was a little small. I made those changes and just sent the cards off to be printed this morning.

But, boy, am I glad that I had a second chance at it, because now that I look at the original card and the one I made additions to... all I can think is "Umm... wow."

So here is the comparison, and you can see the difference for yourself.

Before and after, respectively

I'm sure that if I spent even more time on it/actually had some formal instruction in graphic design... I would change a lot more. But I'm happy to see the improvement in these two cards anyway.

-MarLeahJoy

Top Dog

We've been studying studio lighting in photography class, and last week our instructor told us to bring in something we wanted to shoot...

Well, of course, I left the task of figuring out what I wanted to bring in until last night.

And then I was supposed to get it all together this morning.

Let's just say that nothing fell together this morning. I wanted to use a little lego person and have them holding up a fresh flower... After I finally found our legos, I dumped the whole bucket out on the floor (which is still at home waiting to be cleaned up). We only had two little lego men and they were both incomplete. One was missing an arm and the other was missing legs. And they were apparently a different type because the legs of one didn't work on the leg-less man. :P Lucky me!

I also tried making a little wire person who would hold the flower... also a fail!

I saw our game of Clue... "Ah, the little people staged on the board with the knife and stuff will be cool." But I looked inside and our game just uses little pawns instead of the people figurines. Bummer!

I knew that it was time to leave, but when I finally looked at the time and I was supposed to leave 10 minutes ago to be on time to class. Great!  

In desperation I snatched some Monopoly game pieces off of a shelf, stuffed them in my pocket, and then I got the whole board game and ran out the door so fast that my dad had to chase me outside to ask when I would be home. :P

On the way to class, though, I still didn't know what I wanted to really shoot. I thought about using the dog game piece, somehow portray that it was the winner and title the picture "Top Dog". But I looked at the game pieces I had and I only had the ship, boat, hat, and canon. :/ Really!?

So for 25min, my mind was going wild on how I could create something with meaning.

When I arrived to class, I had an idea of something I could do with the ship. But when I was setting up the game I saw that there were game pieces in there. *Duh!* And I found the little doggie :) So I was able to go with my first plan.

That's not even the half of the things that have went backwards today... but really none of it has bothered me, it's still a good day!! :)

Why am I soooo wordy sometimes, and then on other blog posts I have like nothing to say?? Ha!

-MarLeahJoy

Heirloom Seed Co.

Last night I suddenly remembered that I took a lot of pictures at the Heirloom Seed Co. earlier this month, and I haven't really done much with them. 

I decided to upload them to flickr instead of making a whole long post.

So you can hover over the image and click the right arrow to view what I took there at the farm.

We started out with a vegan meal at their restaurant, which was actually really good! Then we went down to another little building there in the "village" where they sold the best cinnamon rolls! We munched on those while we walked around and looked at the animals. After being in the seed store a while, I started to feel a little conspicuous with my camera when a worker made a comment to me (a nice one) and then asked if I had got any pictures of myself. "Well, no." So she took the picture of us three. Haha :) And when I realized that my mom and her friend were going to spending hours (literally) in the seed store I escaped outside to just walk around some more.

The very last panorama of these pictures was actually taken a little ways from Laura E. Wilder's house. Once again, my mom and her friend were doing something that really didn't interest me (going to the museum that was next to Laura's house). So I just took the car and drove the time away. :)

-MarLeahJoy

Thinking

Here she is again. 

Little Lacey :)

-MarLeahJoy