Category Archives: Lyrebird Images

Looking For The Angle

This week’s I ♥ Faces photo blog challenge is angles – a subject close to my heart. When I decided to start my own photography business last year, I realized that my biggest challenge would be to come up with new and interesting to help share a family’s story through photographs. Thankfully my photo subjects usually help me in that area by all being so wonderfully different, but I am always looking for ways to stretch myself.

So when I went back through some of my sessions from last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of shots and angles. My favourite angle is to get down at the eye level of the children that I photograph, but I was looking for something a little different. This one jumped out at me because my goal was to capture the name of a favourite location with my subjects in an interesting way. I really hope they can look back on this photo in many years and it will remind them of the time they spent at this restaurant, rather than just the day we spent together taking a few photos.

Pretty Things

Today was a whirlwind. I drove to Seattle and back for a meeting and returned just in time to put Thomas to bed. 7 hours of driving. I am officially ready for the weekend.

To celebrate the sunshine that was streaming through my car windows today (and making my drive a little more pleasant) I thought I’d add some colour to the blog. These images are from a recent visit to Portland Nursery – a place I walk into with big dreams for the garden and then leave empty-handed because I am so intimidated by the abundance of choices. Next time we’ll take the van and I WILL buy my eucalyptus tree for the backyard.

In the meantime I’ll just enjoy the pretty things through my camera lens and just wait for them to magically appear in my garden.

Monday Mosaic: A Splash of Colour

For the past few days I have been contributing my own splash of colour to a Flickr pool started by Maine Momma. If you haven’t checked out her blog then you should definitely do yourself a favour and take a look. Her photographs are simply stunning and a great source of inspiration.

The Flickr pool is highlighting a different colour each day and today’s mosaic shares some of the photos that I have contributed to the pool. Go here to see some more dazzling colour – and great photography.

Jump!

The new challenge for I Heart Faces is jump for joy. I will probably be disqualified because this is technically more than one image, but I just couldn’t resist. This was the first image that immediately came to mind and she is clearly jumping for joy in that puddle.

Note: adorable child on loan from a neighbor. There is no way you would see that much pink on one of my boys.

Waving Goodbye to Rain…Soon.

Samuel has always been very good at his greetings – waving and saying “hi” and “bye” to anyone that crosses his path. Lately the greetings have gone in another direction. He likes to sit on his little bike and push himself around the house singing “GOODBYEEEE! GOOOOOODBYE!” at the top of his tuneless voice while he waves and pushes himself into the next room. The blame lies with a revival of Yo Gabba Gabba in our house.

I asked Samuel to look up at me and he immediately gave me this cheesy grin which made me think 1. The kid knows how to perform in front of a camera and 2. He no longer looks like my baby – he is a little boy. Makes me sad and happy at the same time.

I had to run an errand in St Johns the other day and took the opportunity to walk quickly down to the bridge and take a few pics. I have driven past this bridge many times and taken photos out of the car window as we drive by at 50 miles an hour. Such a beautiful landmark that I’m sure has been photographed many times – but not by me. It was nice to be able to take my time and compose my shot without having to stop my children from running into traffic.

I picked Thomas up from school today and noticed that one of his teachers had already decorated the classroom door with a few Sakura (cherry blossoms). I also noticed that our sunny days have ceased for the time being and the rain is back. This decor reminds me that the sunshine WILL come back soon, although it didn’t quell Thomas’ requests on the way home that we move to a different country where it doesn’t rain.

Warm Hands

It seems silly that I chose a mittened hand photo for this week’s entry for the I ♥ Faces photo blog challenge. We are enjoying an early Spring in Portland so mittens are the furthest thing from Thomas’ mind. As soon as he sees the sun he tells me it is warm outside and insists on wearing his Wiggles tank top, despite the fact that it’s still only around 50 degrees.

Still, although I am not a huge fan of Winter (we really don’t get along), I find four-year-old mittened hands holding cups of Hot Chocolate to be adorably warm and cozy.

Airport Adventures: Monday Mosaic

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to San Francisco for the day. For the record, my 10 minute meeting in the city resulted in two new passports by the end of that very same week. 4 days to obtain two brand new passports. Gotta love that Aussie efficiency.

Most of my time in San Francisco was spent in the airport due to a chronic fear of missing my flight. I can’t remember the last time I was able to just hang out in an airport without having to occupy two small children. For the record it’s overrated, especially when the airport is Oakland. I spent most of my time working and then decided to wander around and take a few photos. Warning: airport photos give me license to be creative with post-processing. 🙂

Seeing the Light: P365

Portland has a bad wrap when it comes to winter. We see a lot of rain and experience grey skies for about four months. But this winter has been relatively kind and a few small signs of spring are already poking through the drabness.

If you’re snowed in on the East Coast of America right now then you might want to look away from some of my most recent P365 pics. I’m so sorry.

The first one is relatively safe – taken at our monthly excursion to see a local (family-friendly) band. It’s at a local pizza place and this shot jumped out at me from the many I took that night. It even beat out the disco ball.

Sunshine streaming in Samuel’s room on Saturday morning. BOTH children slept past 8am. It doesn’t happen oftenbut when it does it’s a beautiful surprise.

Kei had a couple of friends over for Superbowl Sunday. I am not really a football fan (actually not at all) but I have to say that I was glad when New Orleans won. I have no idea what the score was or who was named MVP (or even what MVP means), but everone was feeling so warm and fuzzy afterward that it felt…well…not like a football game.

I warned you East Coasters – don’t hate me. The cherry blossoms are already beginning to bloom at Thomas’ school.

And this one just he’s cute. And sneaky. Samuel called out my name about thirty minutes after I put him to bed tonight. I thought he may have lost his binky (as he does too often) but he just looked and me and said “head” meaning “I hit my head”. Then he put his binky in his mouth and laughed at me like we were both in on the joke when in actuality he was the only one who found it funny. I told him to lie down and go to sleep. He kept laughing. I left the room and haven’t heard a peep from him since. So I suppose we both win.