I heart faces–beautiful eyes

I know some people with some pretty amazing eyes, but my older daughter’s eyes are definitely right up there. When she was six months old they’d already established themselves as a dark, moody blue. They glint with mischief, and they cloud over and darken when she is angry. I’ve had people ask what color they are, since they’re quite dark but clearly not brown. I’ve had a sales clerk gasp in shock when my toddler’s lovely blue eyes turned several shades darker with a sudden tantrum. I’ve had people accuse me of heavily retouching her eyes. I honestly don’t even know what to do with her eyes, really, when I’m editing. A sharpen and that’s about it, because I don’t want to lighten those unique moody blues. Sometimes almost violet, others nearly teal. They remind me of an ocean storm, wild and energetic… so fitting to her personality. She is sweet and spirited and kind, but oh she has quite a load of sass.

I always feel very lucky when I catch a great shot of these eyes. As I learn to conquer my manual settings, manual focus, and lighting, I get luckier more and more often. (:

I Heart Faces–Bright & Vivid

As soon as I saw this week’s theme I knew I would enter and I knew it would be a picture of Nicole. I was a bit torn up between a few of them, and narrowed it down to this one or a wacky one, but in the end I went for this one. I just loved this whole shoot. I even love her bloodblistered lip, my little bruiser, although I’ve forgotten how she got it. I kind of love how the focal point in this picture wound up being her smile (I say ‘wound up’ because I was just getting to know my manual focus when I took this picture, I’m getting much better at it now)

And now I’m rethinking the bangs thing again, maybe they make her look younger. Or maybe she just looked younger in March than she does now. Probably that. Kids grow like weeds.

Man, this kid is a totally different color right now than she was in March… she’s got her Daddy’s coloring, she looks out the window and BAM! She’s dark. And then her tan fades sometime in February. No joke.

I Heart Faces–best of may

(I normally don’t do this, but if you click on this picture you can see a larger version of it. I can’t crop it down, I think its just lovely as-is, but the bigger this one gets the more I love it.)

This photo, hands down, no contest. I love her moody blues, I love her thoughtful expression (and really, you need a fast shutter speed to catch something like that on this one, she flits from one expression to the next so quickly) I even love her messy hair. I especially love that she miraculously is free of snot, chocolate, strawberry, blueberry, or any other sort of face-debris. Amazing!

If I had to hate something it would be how grown up Nicole looks here. I’m fighting off her impending fourth birthday, obviously a losing battle, and sadly she is looking quite intent on growing up, as kids are so prone to do.

The boring bits: Manual focus, 50mm old hand-me-down Pentax lens attached to my Canon Rebel,  ISO 200, 1/640, f-stop ummm, I can’t recall? I set it manually and don’t always even look.

IHF - Slice of Life

Okay, I’m going back and adding words to this post. I actually did the whole thing with my mouse, as I had a sleeping baby on my lap and my laptop was on the table a few feet away ;) This picture is one of many shots I have of Nicole baking with me, she just LOVES to help out in the kitchen. She even knows how to operate the mixer, under supervision. Here we’re making our chocolate chip cookies, which I kid you not, she loves making even more than eating. (I enjoy the eating. And the cookie dough, yum.) I love how seriously she takes her job. And when her daddy gets home? “Papa, I made you cookies today! Mommy helped. Little bit.”

I Heart Faces–best in February

There is no contest on this one. From my little photoshoot with the manual-focus 55mm lens I inherited from my hubby’s Opa (attached to my camera with an adaptor) (my button is not working? Or at least not showing up? I tried a different button and still no luck so probably not my fault. Hopefully.)

Speaking of Olivia. She is broken tonight. She keeps going to sleep and then waking up crying two minutes later. She’s smiling and talking to me from in her exersaucer right now, and it’s very cute, BUT DON’T LET HER FOOL YOU. She has slept like 40 minutes in spurts in the last five hours and this is not likely to end well for either of us. We had both girls fed, bathed, jammied, prayers-ed, and sleeping by 7pm today and we were all like, high fives all around. But no. It was a trick.

iheartfaces–anything but a face

I haven’t posted for iheartfaces for a while, but i could NOT resist this week.

So, what’s the opposite of a face? A BUM! or maybe feet. This is both.

I Heart Faces – Self Portrait

This week’s theme for iheartfaces is Self Portrait. Since I am all about looking as terrible as possible in public lately (ask me how the transition to going shampoo-free is working for me. Just kidding, don’t; I’ll slap you.) my mind’s eye immediately flicked to one of the most recent self-portraits I’m in. This one is actually Chris’ photo, not mine, but he has no blog so here it is. (and no, I have no idea what is going on with his neck and head there. Perspective is a funny thing. Usually his head is the bigger of the two.)

I call it “Waiting For An Epidural” and it is one of Christopher’s “traditional” self-portraits that he likes to take when he is masked up while I wait for epidurals (all two times it has happened.) He takes these because the first time around “Honey, take a picture of me… I look like a doctor!” did NOT go over so well. (As in like… “ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?!?! I AM GETTING AN EPIDURAL FOR A REASON.) I had much more of a sense of humour this time around, as you can see in the “Labor Lite” post from last week, This Will Not Scare You Into Chastity.

I heart faces – Over My Head

This picture of Nicole trying to capture an elusive kite is a pretty obvious entry into this week’s iheartfaces challenge. Hopefully I’ll be able to do something more clever for my next entry… I was going to enter a much cooler picture of my sister and Nicole on the trampoline where Nicole is over my sister’s head, but both of their faces are totally covered with their hair so that’s out. Ah well, this was a fun day, so it’s still worth my own self pausing to smile at it.

(If you’re curious, she did eventually manage to catch it, and then she didn’t want to let it go again!)