a sun soaked afternoon

Man, I love light. I just love it.
I love that when we wake up every morning, Austin exclaims: "Momma! Momma! Sunlight!!" That's how I feel when I see beautiful light...all colors, all angles of it..


I guess I would have to say the biggest sign to me that I've made progress as a photographer is my relationship with light. I used to absolutely avoid it: shooting only in the shade or only at "magic hour." Armed with my trusty reflector and a pretty decent understanding of all the things that come together to create a great exposure (ISO, shutter, aperture, I can have a great shoot in the wide open, at, GASP!, noon!. This would be unthinkable for me only a couple of years ago.

But, proper exposure wasn't really what I was going for when I took my boys into this field filled with wonderful Louisiana wildflowers. I wanted to catch just how sun soaked and beautiful this field is in the evening...all that light filtering in through the golden grass. And catch it on the golden hair of my beautiful boys. These pictures are by no means, technically great pictures. We've got lens flare and blown out spots galore. But I love them! It was exactly what I was going for--caught the mood perfectly!

Before you get to thinking how idyllic all of this sounds, let me tell you what happened after we got done running around picking Black Eyed Susans: I went and buckled Anderson into his carseat, leaving Austin in the field. It took me awhile to retrieve Austin since he was having such a blast and didn't want to leave. By the time we got back to the car, Anderson had managed to lock himself in my car with my keys and cell phone inside. I immediately started thinking, "WHAT IN THE *&^% am I going to do!!!??" We were in the boonies..no houses around. I had just about decided I would have to break the window when I was finally able to coax Anderson into opening the door. Situation solved. My blood pressure was through the roof! I was so flustered that I ended up leaving my galvanized tub there in the field. Good thing I went back a couple of days later to shoot little Ryleigh. (see above post)

Pretty typical, really.


The last image is so becoming a 30 x 40 gallery wrap canvas for my bedroom. Yes, that's obscenely large. And I love it!