Day 15 | January 15th

      Gavin made “Lucky Hats” last week to help him when he needs a little extra nudge. He colored it, taped it together and added a string to go under his chin so it wouldn’t fall off. Today he had a harder math lesson (multiplying and dividing fractions) and decided that his Lucky Hat was necessary to get him through it.

       

      Day 16 | January 16th

      The boys have been going outside and playing in the afternoons that it is dry out. Mind you, it is still in the 40s and cold and I have no idea why they are in shorts, but I am done fighting them on it. Gavs and Cart-o were making a pine cone course in the cul de sac when I came out and my Carter wanted to show me “butt boarding.” I asked him to go by a few times so I could practice panning and this was my favorite shot of the bunch.

       

      Day 17 | January 17th

      Oh the faces this kid makes. I was doing more studio lighting work and got him to sit for me and he has the hardest time not making goofy faces. This is his impish side peeking out.

       

      Day 18 | January 18th

      Shooting only in black and white is starting to get old/hard, but that is why I did the black and white challenge this month. Today I busted out one of my prisms to play with and Carter grabbed it and started to turn it while he looked through. It ended up being a fun, funny collaborative effort between the two of us to get this shot. And his attention span is all of about three minutes … which is probably a minute longer than last year, haha.

       

      Day 19 | January 19th

      It was one year ago today the first US Covid-19 case was reported. That case was just barely north of where I live. It quickly spread to a long-term care facility five miles from my home.⁠

      In one week my parents are scheduled to receive their first dose of a vaccine. My father is incredibly high risk, so this news is met with so much joy and relief.⁠

      Today I am specifically grateful for the tireless hours scientists have dedicated to finding a solution to this pandemic. There is finally some light shining through in what has felt like a darkness.⁠

      {I set up this self portrait with my camera on a tripod outside of the window looking in. I turned off all the ambient lighting in the kitchen except for the light directly over me and the candles/fairy lights in the window. I used a flash light on the counter to point directly at me, lighting up just my figure/face so that the rest of the room remained in darkness.}

       

      Day 20 | January 20th

      I have been watching a lot of off-camera lighting videos lately and at the boys bedtime I realized I had not taken a photo for the day yet. I grabbed my flash with a shoot-thru umbrella on a stand and went upstairs where the boys were happy to help me in order to avoid going to bed. I set the flash to the camera right, slightly above where they lay. I turned off all ambient light in the room with the exception of one small lamp directed away from them. I had to manually focus as the lighting was so low that my camera couldn’t find the contrast to be able to do it.

      They laid on the bed, me directly over them, where I would like to say I happily snapped away. The reality of the situation was they were totally keyed up, bouncing all over the place. I was lucky I didn’t fall, they didn’t hit the light stand and there may have been some threats issued about losing video game time. BUT! I got some super cute shots, especially this one where Gavin was completely belly laughing. And they were being good sports (more or less), so they happily went to bed afterwards with no consequences.

       

      Day 21 | January 21st

      Gavin is desperate to whittle sticks these days. He is only nine (almost ten!), not a cub scout, so you can imagine that he has to do it under supervision and the knife is stored where he cannot get to it. Usually Jeremy is the one to oversee what he is doing, but today it was my turn. I will admit I almost had a heart attack a few times, but no blood was shed and the sticks are nice and sharp now. I feel like I should issue the “don’t poke your eye out” warning and don’t run with sharp objects. But he is a nine year old boy and will promptly ignore me.

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