Winter at George Washington’s Mt. Vernon
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Arlington Cemetery is one of those places that you have to visit when you come to Washington DC. The cemetery is beautiful, peaceful, saddening and yet hopeful. Visiting with young kids takes away a bit of the opportunity for contemplation, but my hope is in a trade off of small seeds of impression planted in
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The kids each received a few packets of hot chocolate in their stockings for Christmas this year, and we’ve slowly been working through them. Some days have definitely not been hot chocolate days, recently. High of 82 in Virginia? In FEBRUARY? Can’t complain about the sunshine, though ;) (PS- these were edited with the Ruby
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Recently we drove several hours south of DC to pick up a tabletop that my husband had commissioned from custom woodworker. The woodworker’s son is a colleague of my husband’s and we were graciously invited to enjoy their farmland and lumber mill. Our boys didn’t want to leave. ;) Yet another indication that our eventual
Pin ItThe last day of our Disney World trip was spent in Animal Kingdom, and it was awesome. In general, AK felt less crowded than the other parks and we enjoyed the variety of rides and attractions. The new Avatar, Flight of Passage ride had opened shortly before we visited, so the plan was to head
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We bought 5 day park hopper passes for our trip to Disney World, which meant that one park could be repeated. We chose to spread Magic Kingdom over two days and I’m glad that we did. The park is full of rides that appealed to everyone in our group and we were able to repeat
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The third day of our trip to Disney World was slated for Hollywood Studios. We found that we only needed a few hours at the park with the kids, and their time was better spent on an afternoon nap. Thankfully, our traveling companions- my parents- rescued their tired little grandchildren and accompanied them back to
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After our first day, at Magic Kingdom, we were ready to tackle Epcot. We walked from Yacht Club, where we were staying, right to the back gate, which was super convenient, but also put us on entirely the opposite side of the park from all of the rides. Semi-undaunted, we walked all the way around
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Our Disney trip was months in the making. I think we started officially planning in March, and we traveled in October. Astonishingly, we were barely early enough, as some hotels were sold out already for military rates for our dates, and reservations for certain activities opened up within a month or so of our booking
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I’ve learned something new about film. Portra 160 doesn’t like quite as much light as Portra 400 and the other higher ISO films I’ve worked with. Exposing for the shadows leaves me with more highlight brightness than I’d like. Filing away “meter for midtones for Portra 160” for future reference. Has anyone else experienced the
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All indoor self portraits for October. Even though it was still pretty summer-like for the majority of the month, the beginning of fall always finds me retreating indoors. Maybe I’m looking forward to the holidays? Speaking of, I have started listening to Christmas music almost every day now that Halloween is done. 2 months per
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Our ‘great summer road trip’ rounded out with a few nights spent outside Boston. We found an AirBnB close to a Subway stop and spent a morning and afternoon walking around the city. First- figuring out the ticketing system. Not so self explanatory. A nice transit employee leaving her shift happened to walk by and
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After New Hampshire, we were headed down to Boston to see some family friends and check out the city. However, we want to hit as many East Coast states as possible, while we live in Virginia, so we made a side trip to the Southern coast of Maine for the day. Our first stop was
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After the epic one day road trip from Western upstate New York, across Vermont, to the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, we had settled into our rental for the next two nights and were ready to explore New Hampshire. The state has long been on our list of possible places to land after we’re done moving
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Place, chase, joke, replace, shoot 1 frame. Repeat the first 4 steps in order to get to the 5th… over and over. That is how my sessions with all three of my boys at 4 years old have proceeded. Worth it in the end though, for pictures that help me to remember what their soft
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On our summer vacation this year, we spent our first few nights in Ithaca New York, then drove across the state, and Vermont, to Meredith New Hampshire on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. The drive was beautiful, but, let me tell you… don’t get off the highway at the wrong exit in rural New York.
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I love living in an area that has four seasons. Fall and Spring are my favorites, and I look forward to fall activities all year long. Over the past two falls we’ve visited several farms in the Northern Virginia and I wanted to share three of my favorites. Fall Farm Activities in Northern Virginia |
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A week from today the last run of 2017 for Mastering Natural Light Indoors begins. I’ve been teaching this workshop for Click Photo School for over 5 years, now. I remember the nerves I felt creating the materials, wanting so badly to create an experience that would make a difference for photographers. After instructing hundreds
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While I was shooting my self portraits in September, I didn’t feel like they were incredibly inspired or creative. But now, as I look at them as a group I can see how I was experimenting with different techniques and I can appreciate the creativity that they do contain. This ability to see my work
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College towns all have their own unique feeling, don’t they? I managed to attend 3 colleges in the 4 years it took me to accomplish my bachelors degree. The first was a community college in my hometown (so the vibe felt… nonexistent? ;) ), the second was a mid-size state university in the last dry
Pin ItWhen trip planning, I start with the locations, then fill in the details. When we decided on a road trip through New England it didn’t take long at all to choose to include a stop at Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York. We were booked to stay just outside Ithaca, and
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Routine, everyday life is busy, sometimes chaotic, but also very normal. That normalcy sometimes soothes me into complacency and I stop taking pictures of what daily life looks like at our house. Unfortunately, the stages of interest, and even the way my children look, both change extremely frequently and when the urge to document does
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August was a rough month for self portraits. The end of summer seems to drain me of creative energy. Still, 2 portrait sessions are better than 0. {Morning Routine} Clearly, I was trying to squeak in under the wire for this prompt. I do like to fit in a bit of yoga and stretching to
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When we lived in Sicily we wanted to ease our kids into the European travel scene. We decided that traveling to a location with English speakers and an easy-going culture would be the perfect fit. Malta was the perfect fit. A bonus for our plan of visiting Malta with kids was that the flight from
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