California Day Trips!

Anyone who knows me really well, knows how much I love a good adventure!

Over the past three months, I have spent a lot of time outside, exploring the beautiful state where I live.

Living in the Central Valley of California, I have access to the coast and the mountains, all within a couple of hours drive in each direction.

One of my dream jobs would be to take people on day trips and take candid and portrait photos while we explore some amazing parts of California.

Since this is not really the best time to be starting some sort of travel-related business, I decided to start a new Instagram account highlighting some of my favorite places close to where I live.

One of my most favorite day trip destinations is Yosemite National Park. Even with all the times I have been here, I still have not explored and discovered all that this park has to offer.

As I mentioned in my Instagram post, the current reservation system prevents us from making a spontaneous trip to Yosemite, but now is the time to head up to the mountains and explore this park, especially if you have never been here.

Normally, Yosemite Valley is very crowded during the summer months with thousands of international visitors. As much as I miss chatting with international visitors, I am enjoying the less crowded park.

Have you been to Yosemite? What is your favorite part of the park?

What is your favorite California day trip location?

Books + Photography = Instagram Fun

Last month, I decided to join in an Instagram photo challenge put on by Fat Mum Slim. For October, the prompts were each letter of the alphabet, one letter per day. Rather than just randomly try to find something each day that began with that letter to photograph, I decided to do a book theme. Some letters were very easy to find books for, others, well...I am sure you can imagine how interesting it would be to find book titles that begin with Q or X. And because this was a photography challenge, I wanted to take photos of books we have in our home, some of them in very creative ways.

So what were some of my favorites?

Books starting with the letter 'C' formed into a letter 'C'.

'Emma' should be enjoyed with a cup of tea...any Jane Austen book for that matter...

'Harold and the Purple Crayon', just love his imagination!

Just Me books by Mercer Mayer, we have just a few of these...

Math plus chocolate, yes!

Nancy Drew...yes, I read quite a few of these as a young girl.

And my favorite...

Yosemite, of course!!

Do you have an Instagram account? I would love for you to join in the fun! You can follow my account here.

What book titles would you choose for your favorite letter of the alphabet?

Paths of Life

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iPhone 4s photo, Snapseed and Rhonna Designs edit

"You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence." - Acts 2:28

iPhone Photography

One of my goals this year was to 'improve my photography by working through books and tutorials'. Of course when I wrote that goal, I fully intended to be working with my Nikon D3100 camera. But life gets busy and I have not put in the time I was hoping to when I initially wrote that goal.

What I did discover recently though was an iPhone photography course by David Molnar which has really changed the way I think about photography and editing. When I first starting shooting pictures with a digital camera, I was all about trying to shoot the best picture I could without having to do any editing. However, what David teaches in his course is that you edit to recreate the feeling you felt when you took the picture. So sometimes that means a bit of tweaking. 

Let me show you a couple of examples:

Here is a before photo of cream puffs...

...and here is the after. Which ones would you rather eat?

Before photo I had to stop and take on our way home from my daughter's class. Not really anything wrong, but...

...I love the way the quick edit transform the basic photo into something much more beautiful!

So you may be asking what apps I am using on my iPhone to take and create these photographs. Right now, I have an iPhone 4s and I must say I am really happy that when we got these phones about a year and a half ago, I went with the 4s over just the 4. Most of the time, I use the native camera that comes with the iPhone, but in some cases, I do use Camera+. The Camera+ app gives you more control over your settings than the native camera on the iPhone. And they have even just added a macro setting in their latest update which I am hoping to experiment with more soon.

For editing, Snapseed is my go to app. For one, it is a free app! And there is so much you can do in this one app to recreate what you saw when you took that photo. Even just minor adjustments to the brightness, contrast, saturation, and ambiance of a photo can turn your blah photo into something you want to share with friends.

Speaking of sharing, my favorite place to share my photos has got to be Instagram. As a photographer, I love to see the bits and pieces that my friends share, as well as having a place to quickly share something about my day. Whether it be books that I am reading, some project that I am working on, and the glimpses I see on the day trips we are able to take.

Even though I still love to use my Nikon D3100, I sure do love the convenience of using my iPhone for my daily photography habit.

Compassion Hunt

Have you been able to participate in Compassion’s Photo Scavenger Hunt?

Here are the photos I was able to capture and share on my Instagram account:

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This has been a fun scavenger hunt to participate in and I hope you enjoyed my photos! But if you are not currently sponsoring a child through Compassion, would you consider looking through photos of children who are waiting to be sponsored?