Dancing in Wonderland

Hello there friends! It is the day before the official beginning of summer and I am finally feeling relaxed.  My last day of school was last Thursday and my girls’ last day was yesterday.  Phew!  70 days off to enjoy.  In addition to the end of school, we are also at the end of the dance season.  This past Saturday night was our recital.  I took LOTS of photos at dress rehearsal.  My daughters and I were in a total of 14 dances: 8 for Meghan, 4 for Sarah and 2 for me.

To anyone who doesn’t consider dance to be a sport, I beg to differ!  Check out the power, beauty, grace and concentration in these photos.

Meghan dancing to “Glitter in the Air” by Pink.

Sarah dancing to “Clocks” by Coldplay.

Meghan dancing to “Painting Flowers” by All Time Low.

Sarah dancing to “Bad Influence” by Pink.

“Alice in Wonderland” was the theme to recital this year.  All dances had some connection to the tale.

As I said, I took many more photos (if we are friends on Facebook, you can see more there) but these are all that I’ve edited so far.  And I have the feeling a couple more just might make their way into this month’s photo hunt!  Are you working on yours?  I can’t wait to see what you shoot.

I can’t think of a title for this blog post

Remember the 124 pictures I told you I took at dress rehearsal last week?  I finally got around to editing yesterday.  I cropped and brightened and un-red-eyed 23 of my favorites and posted them in an album on Facebook.  Are we friends on Facebook?  If we are, you can see those pictures here if you’d like.  If we are not, maybe we should be!

With recital, also comes flowers, and we received many lovely ones.  On one of the few afternoons that wasn’t rainy this week, I took the flowers outside on my deck and placed them on the table for a little photo session.  I found that late afternoon with my umbrella in place made for lovely picture-taking lighting for these very willing and cooperative subjects.  First I played with my extension tubes.  I was too lazy to get the tripod out, so I sat and used my elbows on the table to gain some steadiness:

 

Next I decided to try the 50mm 1.8.  It turned out to be a nice choice for showing off pretty color with that sharp-but-soft-at-the-same-time focus:

 

I hope that your summer is off to a wonderful start.  Today is the first day that neither the girls nor I have to go to school.  So far it hasn’t been the lazy non-schedule that I usually look forward to at this time of year.  Yesterday was the girls’ last day, but it was Sarah’s “Final Assembly” at middle school – or 8th grade graduation as we used to call it when I was a kid.  Sarah received two certificates for academic achievement – the President’s Education Award for being in the top 10% of her class and an excellence award for achieving all A’s for her final grades of 8th grade.

Forgive me for bragging a wee bit!  I’m very proud of my little girl – who isn’t so little any more!

After Sarah’s ceremony, we all went out to lunch in celebration.  Yesterday afternoon and today too, I will continue to wear my invisible “Mom’s Taxi” cap, which I’m sure will remain in place for the summer. 

 In between, I’m hoping to have plenty of reading time out on my deck.  I’m looking for reading suggestions for the summer too!  Please leave any suggestions you may have in the comments.  The next book I am planning to read is book 3 in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  Have you read those?  That is my suggestion to you if you haven’t.

I’ll be back with other rambling blog posts soon.  Don’t forget about the photo hunt!

The Elements of Dance

Tonight is our annual dance recital, and the main reason I’ve been away from the blogs this week.  I did pop around and comment to many of you this morning!  The theme for recital this year is “The Elements of Dance”:

 That is the very cool t-shirt our dance teacher had made up this year.  All of the dances relate in some way to either earth, air, fire or water.  My girls have been working very hard both on their dances (14 dances feature one or both of the girls or me!) and with helping out getting ready for the recital.  Dress rehearsal was last night, and the only time flash photography is allowed.  I took 124 photos last night!  Here are two of my favorites:

This is Meghan in a beautiful layout-prep for her jazz dance, “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” by the Scorpions.

This is Sarah in a wonderful heel-stretch during her jazz dance “Firework,” by Katy Perry.  Sarah worked hard stretching all year to be able to achieve this dance move.

I am MUCH happier with my camera this year than I was last year at this time, BUT I’ve made a new discovery.  I think my next purchase for my camera will have to be a Speedlite flash.  The built-in flash cannot keep up with the speed at which I was hoping to take photos.  Lighting conditions are absolutely terrible at a dress rehearsal and I could not find a combination of shutter speed and aperture that would have allowed me to go without flash AND have decent stop-action, at least with the lenses that I currently own.  I have the feeling that a lens that might allow such a combination is likely out of my price range.

I’m sure I’ll be sharing more photos when I have time to do some more editing.  In the meantime, wish us luck tonight!

Hatin’ on my Camera

I probably shouldn’t be saying this because the gods of Olympus will probably make me pay, but last night I was really hating my camera.  Granted, the situation I was trying to photograph was a difficult one: poor lighting and fast-moving subjects.  Then I went over to Scott’s site this morning and saw a beautifully exposed, complicated lighting situation, which made me dislike my camera even more!  Now part of my bad experience last night with my camera, I know, was because I didn’t take the time to go back to my camera manual again and review manual settings and what I have learned about exposure.  Why not you may ask?  The situation that caused my poor  photographing conditions was dress rehearsal for my daughters’ and my dance recital  tonight.  I was more concerned with making sure we had all the stuff we needed for the night ready to go, than thinking about my camera.  Instead of adjusting shutter speed, aperture and ISO myself, I tried two different settings I thought might work: the “sport” setting and “quick shutter.”  Those both sound good, don’t they?  Well, they weren’t.  The lament of point-and-shoot photographers everywhere, shutter-lag, confounded me on so many attempted shots.

Sarah’s back…

Sarah’s back…

Sarah’s back!

Sooooo frustrating!  Luckily, while the shots are so very far from perfect (these are also S.O.O.C. – I’m not in the mood for editing today, recital is tonight!) I managed to get a few that made me happy enough…

I liked the motion of this shot.. (Sarah is on the right in the foreground )

..and of this one.  This is my older daughter, Meghan.

Here she is on pointe; I’m very proud of her abilities in the beautiful style of dance.

A few other various shots from last night:

Another lady there last night was busily using her Canon Rebel to shoot away.  As I heard its shutter sounds behind me, the jealousy grew!  Sigh!

There are some other shots from last night on my Flickr photostream if you care to check them out.  Sorry, no pictures of me in my costumes – such is the problem for the family photographer; we are rarely featured in a photo unless we ask.  Wish us luck tonight!