You Capture : Happiness

This week's You Capture photo challenge was happiness.

Happiness is universal and yet personal. My son came home with a project from school today. It was a piece of paper with a star at the top and a "poem" underneath it. The star had the phrase "I Wish" written on it. The poem read

Star Light, Star Bright
I Wish I May
I Wish I Might
Have the Wish
I wish tonight

Many of us have looked upon the vast night sky and recited this phrase, sending up a wish to the universe. My son's wish was "I wish I had presents all the time". A purely materialistic wish but it clearly spells out when he feels happiness.

For myself, my star wishes are simply for the feeling of happiness (honest). I experience happiness when I look upon the smiles (impish or pure) of my family. I'm filled with happy contentment when my husband's arms are wrapped around me. I delight in watching people letting loose and being a little silly. I'm giddy when delving into chocolate...cake, cookies, bars, beverages (you get the idea). I feel happy when I am close to nature.

This week I captured the smiles of my family.




But today on my bike ride to work, I felt happy. The air was crisp and smelled of fall. The trees are starting to display their glorious fall colours. The sun shone upon the earth making the dew twinkle and my heart rejoice. This picture captures the morning for me. My bike and nature.

Camera Play

SORRY if I sent you on a wild goose to find this week's Happiness photos, please go here

I want to take my photography one step further. My goal is to truly understand and utilize apertures, shutter speeds, ISO, etc. Thankfully I have a very adept husband who is willing to share his passion (and camera lenses) with me.

My desire to make some changes in my photography have been further peaked from all the information I find on different blogs. I specifically like some of the challenges out there. So I've decided to take the plunge and I will be attempting to keep up with the weekly challenges from

Photobucket

This week's challenge: Macro. Get up close to the object.



This is a close up of a spider web attached to our peony and lily plants in the front yard. I tweaked the pic in lightroom with a preset titled Velvia and played around with the brightness. I love playing with effects. Lightroom along with photoshop are becoming my new favourite tools. Hope you like my macro picture. I do.

Late summer memory


The weather this summer has been downright crappy. More rain in July than normal and cooler temperatures for August except for one horrendous week that forced everyone into air conditioned buildings. September is upon us already and with the last rays of sunshine basking our land we embarked on a trip to a beach on Saturday afternoon. We piled the kids into the car and drove a mere 30 minutes to Rideau River Provincial Park. We dragged our friends into the adventure and found that we practically had the beach to ourselves. It was warm but not overly. The water was still and inviting. The kids and J plunged themselves into the water. They floated, swam, played, chased gulls, and tried catching minnows in the shallow waters. An elaborate moat system was created on the beach and overflowed from the buckets of water. We capped the afternoon off with a picnic supper. It truly was a wonderful homage to summer.

New job - 1st day

Spent most of the day orientating myself. First there was a session with human resources where I signed my name on the dotted line too many times to count. Next I meandered into the library and what may be the locale for the next chunk of my working life. I'm not sure what to make of my decision now that I have taken the plunge. I was so excited to remove myself from an insane situation and take on a new challenge that I forgot how taxing it is to try to absorb new material and figure out your place in a new place. I met with my new boss, received a brief run-down of library, took a library tour, and spent time with another person getting an overview of one aspect of position. Then the day was done. It was weird not actually doing specific work. I felt a bit out of my element.

It was also odd to be constantly introduced to people as Pam, the new reference services administrator, she use to work in interlibrary loans, do you remember her (egad that was 10 years ago and at the time I holed up in the ILL office). Makes you wonder if they were trying to justify my hire and make me an instant part of the climate. I think that may have been part of the case since there are two contract people on staff who applied for my new job, currently work in my new job but didn't get it. The reason is that they do not possess the Lib tech diploma, while I do. Talk about a potentially awkward situation, especially since I will be trained by one of them. Oh well, one day done and a few hundred more to go before I can retire.

I think the stress of the day was compounded by my lil bug having a nasty cold and fever. It was hard to leave her all day and not be there to comfort her. Thanks to J, she was in good hands though and managed to have a 4 hour nap...yep she must be sick cuz this girl does not normally nap. Ah, the joys of parenting while working. Not always the most ideal but a decision I have made for my sanity.