Enebo Photography

We went from snow on April 30th to spectacular on May 1st.  Nice timing Mother Nature!  Just in time for our annual doorbell ditching.

This year we needed to wedge it in between home work and track and small group so everybody was a bit more cranky stressed out but as soon as you start handing flowers out how can you hold on to that bad mood.  You can’t!  Add to that all of us humming the Mission Impossible song and we were good to go.

Since we’ve been doing this so long we were trying to come up with ways to be sneakier with our delivery.  We’ve had stalkers waiting for us on the front porch before so we thought carefully about the best way to handle that.  Most houses we went the traditional route but our last two ‘victims’ happened to be outside so we did a drive by.  We threw the flowers out the window of the car and yelled Happy May Day!  through the sun roof and open windows.  (No pictures of that though since I was the get away driver.)

One thing different for us this year was that WE were doorbell ditched in return.  Unfortunately I happened to be out on our front deck when one of our recipients pulled up to the front of our house, four boys piled out of the car and barreled up our front stairs depositing a bouquet of tulips on the front doorstep all with military precision.  The youngest one (age 10) looking at us saying ‘You saw nothing!’  It was AWESOME and Kate (the only one home with me) talked about it for the rest of the night!  Thanks Brueckmans!

Maybe next year we should try parasailing in from Poo Poo Point.  That sure would add the element of surprise!

A few weeks ago I started playing soccer again. I used to play soccer all the time but I haven’t played since I got preggers with dear daughter #2. 12 years ago!

Clearly I would need some new shoes for this indoor soccer endeavor. This was the first pair I found at my local sporting goods store. They are purple and sparkly and I wasn’t sure I was worthy enough to wear them so I sought out the council of the sales gal. ‘Do you have any other indoor soccer shoes?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think I’m good enough to wear these.’

‘Sure!’ she said and held up a pair of flourescent orange and a pair of fluorescent green shoes from the clearance rack. One thing I new for sure was that I WASN’T good enough to wear those!

One of the best parts of this whole thing is that all of the players are bringing their kids. I think my kids really enjoyed watching us and cheering US on for once. I also think it kind of blows their mind to see me run. On more than one occasion they have mentioned that I don’t run. Really? I think I must keep the running for times when I’m not with them. Kind of like eating chocolate after they go to bed.

Unfortunately I slightly tore a muscle in my first game, thus making my leg the same color as my shoes. Thank heavens I didn’t buy the orange or green. I can only imagine what kind of injury THOSE would have led too! I played in the next game, though, because I decided I needed to shake it off. Just like I would tell my kids to do from the sidelines. Turnabout is fair play!

I hardly ever shoot in full Manual mode.  My theory is that I’ve paid big money for the computer in this camera, why not let it do some of the work?  That’s my big dirty secret as a photographer though.  That I hardly ever shoot in Manual.

I decided to challenge myself to shoot exclusively in manual to see if I could get it to feel more natural to me.  I’m fairly certain you blog readers won’t see much of a difference and, honestly, I didn’t notice much of one either.  But it was a good exercise.  Oh, and this year I actually remembered to take a picture of my three girls together!  Bonus!

Clearly the pictures with me in them weren’t taken by me.  The family shot was by Stephen and the other pictures done by one of my girls.  Not sure which one because they all wanted a crack at taking our picture so I had plenty to choose from!

Here are a few more that have all sorts of technical problems but hey…it was dark…and I wasn’t using a flash…and now I’m all out of excuses.

Not sure if I will officially start photographing clients in manual now, but at least I proved that I know how to do it.  (To myself anyway!)