Genius Hour: Motivation

This week was hard to stay motivated, and I don't see it getting easier anytime soon! Life just kind of got in the way last week and I wasn't able to take photos and edit every day like I had planned on. Next Friday is the end of the trimester, so it will be assessments, grading, and report cards aaaaaall week. That means, to make up for the time lost during the week, I need to double-down on the weekends.
Last weekend we went outside to sled in our backyard (the ONE advantage of having a hill behind our house) and I took some photos of the kids just having a freaking blast. That's really been my primary motivation behind choosing photography for my project; capturing photos of my kids being kids.

It was really tricky taking these action photos in manual mode with the sun starting to go down. I had to keep readjusting my focus, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I think a couple of them turned out a bit blurry, but I love the candid poses that I got!
I decided that for my "final project" I want to try to take a candid-ish photo of my whole family (including myself) using my remote. I would love to have an updated, quality family photo of all of us and I think it's the right challenge level where, if I succeed, I'll be really proud of myself! Let's see how it goes...

Genius Hour: My Routine

Setting up my photography routine has been difficult and inconsistent. I'm sure everyone else can relate how challenging it is to add something new to your already packed schedule. Between schoolwork, running the kids around to activities and events, keeping up with my exercise routine, and just the everyday-life stuff like making dinner, helping with homework, etc., there is no. time. for something new. BUT I had to make time. So the 30 minutes that I gift myself after the kids go to bed is now going towards mastering my craft instead of drinking wine and watching "my shows." I have to admit, I'm sad about being behind on This Is Us. But now I can binge after this class is over, right??

On Sunday I took my daughter to her friend's pink princess birthday party and she had a blast. I took photos of the girls with props in front of a unicorn backdrop. It was actually a sunny day (the first time we'd seen the sun in about 2 weeks - darn Chicago winters!) and there were no curtains or blinds in the living room, so it was challenging to avoid shadows on the girls' faces. I don't want to post pictures of the other girls without their parents' permission, so I'll share the test photo that I took of my daughter while I was adjusting my ISO, shutter speed, and focus (don't I sound like a professional already??). I was easily able to shoot the photos in manual mode, which was my goal, because the girls actually did a great job of standing still for the mini photo shoot. However, if I had tried to take candids in manual, I imagine it would have been a lot more difficult.

Well, the big problem with choosing photography as my genius hour topic in winter is that there is veeeery little daylight to work with. Especially because my free time to work on this is at night after my kids go to bed. Something that I've found that works pretty well is to try to take photos as soon as I get home before I need to chauffeur my kids to their various activities, and then edit at night when I don't need the daylight. While my kids were eating one day, I snuck out to the lake in our backyard to take some pictures of the geese resting on the lake in the fog. What I was seeing with my eyes was beautiful, but every picture I took failed to capture what I was seeing in person. It was really frustrating.  I'm guessing it's because my camera lens wasn't able to zoom in enough, but I don't have an extra thousand dollars available for a new lens, so I'll have to push distance photography to the backburner for now.

Can you even see the geese?? Better try a magnifying glass.

So in summation, my routine isn't perfected yet, but I'm finding the time to research, learn, and practice. I'm excited to continue on my journey!