this or that thursday

I don't have a lot of really old things. I try not to keep a lot of stuff because I don't like clutter, but I still manage to fill up every available spot in my closets. 


This is an old jar that belonged to my grandmother.

And this is the afghan she made me when I was 10 in 1976.

One of the many reasons I love photography is the old photos that help up to remember the things we loved from long ago even if we don't still have them. I'm enjoying all the finds that I'm pinning to my vintage goodness board and there are still lots of things I'd like to find for it.

I really loved Mrs. Beasley when I was little. I don't mind that I no longer have her, but I'm so glad I have this pic from a vacation in 1972 that includes my favorite doll.

I have no idea why my favorite doll was an old woman... 

<a href="http://www.debduty.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g404/dkaym/thisorthat200.jpg" width="200" height="200" /></a>

It's time for you to share your photos again! There are just a few rules.

• submit the url of your blog post, not your home page
• link up a photo that was taken by you
• include a link back to my blog in your post (you can use the button or a text link if you prefer)
• visit a few other blogs and leave some comment love 

Okay, now let's see what you've been shooting!

color me weekly: new leaves

Every year I look for the leaves to appear on my little elm tree. Since I've been doing project life, the arrival of its leaf buds has been my picture of the day. The past two years this happened in early March so I was surprised when I looked out the window and saw green on my tree in mid February. It has been a strangely warm winter so I guess this is the result.


I'm joining in Rosie's color palette linky today. Sometimes when I make one of these color collages, there's a surprise. Who would have thought these clouds weren't white?

 No surprises here... just some lovely shades of green along with the soft colors of the bark.

While I was getting my close ups of the new leaves, I found this tiny little guy on a branch. I thought the colors in this image were a little blah until I sampled them and found these beautiful shades of red and green and grey.

If you would like to make your own color palettes, you can download templates from the coffeeshop blog here. Just scroll down to the bottom of the post to find the download link. Even if you don't have a color palette to link up today, be sure and check out Rosie's blog. She's sharing links to some wonderful free textures and actions today.

tips for basketball photography

Now that basketball season is over for us, I wanted to share with you what I've learned over the past couple years photographing Mason's games.

Taking photos in gyms is a challenge because the light is rarely good. Not only is there a lack of quantity of light, but the quality of light is awful too. Setting a custom white balance would be a good idea. But I usually just use auto white balance and correct in photoshop. Clearly, not the best method. I'm going to try to remember to bring that grey card to the games next year!


I use my 85mm 1.8 lens for basketball. Since I have a full frame camera, the 50mm would be very close to this focal length on a crop sensor camera. If you have a 50mm with a wide maximum aperture of either 1.4 or 1.8, that would be a good choice. I keep the auto focus point in the center. I don't have time for creative composition or focus and recompose so I just follow the ball and frame the shots so that the player with the ball is in the center. I shoot in ai servo mode which follows movement for focus. I do have the drive set to continuous, but I try to just take one shot at a time at the right moment... just because I don't want a ton of shots to have to upload. :)

With the 85mm I have to crop in camera a little sometimes, but I'd rather do that than use a zoom with a 2.8 maximum aperture. That would require an even higher iso.


I shoot in aperture priority mode. I set my aperture as wide as it will go and then I set my iso to the lowest setting possible that will still give me a shutter speed of at least 1/200. A faster shutter speed would be better, but the gym I shoot in is pretty dark so I'm already at iso 2000 and I don't like to go much higher unless I have to.


I stand near the corner of the court and I shoot mostly vertical shots. My favorite shots are those that include the player, the ball and the goal.

I sometimes shoot horizontally if I decide to shoot the action at the opposite side of the court. Oh and my other favorite shots are the ones that include Mason! He didn't get too much playing time this year, but I was very proud of him for getting asked to play up on the high school team as an 8th grader. He loved it.

I'm no expert at sports photography, but this is how I do it. Maybe there are ways to get better results? I will keep studying and practicing and of course I'll share if I figure out a better way!

project life: weeks two and three

The second week of the year included a visit to an antiques store, a day trip to New Orleans for Imagina USA and another visit to the ER for Mason. I managed to use my dslr a little more this week, but the iphone still played a big role in documenting our week.

I love using the stickers that come in the kit. My layout is not complete without them. I just randomly use either the day of the week or a number sticker for each card along with an arrow pointing to the appropriate photo.

The boys had Monday off in week three so we went on a little road trip to tour an old plantation home. Other than that just some basketball games and other everyday kinds of moments were included.

The left side is almost entirely about our trip to Nottoway Plantation except for a screenshot showing how warm it's been lately and an instagram pic of my really cute and comfy socks. I edited the screenshot to change the color with pixlr-o-matic. This is a fun editing program that can be downloaded to your computer or smart phone.

The right side photos were just everyday moments - Alec's friend stopping by to show us his new car, going to basketball games and the boys sitting out on the back porch and watching funny youtube videos together.

Because I had so many little instagram pics to fill up the journaling cards, I journaled about the three larger photos all on one card using number stickers to correspond to the photo.

I hope you other project lifers are having as much fun as me getting your memories documented! Remember, it's nothing to stress about. Just keep a camera handy... any camera will do. You aren't taking photos for a huge canvas, just little 4x6 slots. If you have any questions about anything I did here or anything else, feel free to ask in the comments or email me.