Sunday, March 18, 2012

Jaxon's Plane Ride

Our oldest kiddo, Jaxon, is 13 and the only boy scout in his age group in our local troop. In some ways it is kind of a bummer to be the only one, but there are definitely some benefits. One of the main perks is that he got to go for his first plane ride in a small plane owned by the good friend of his scoutmaster. (If there had been more boys, they couldn't have done it.)

It was a beautiful day and I had Jaxon take my little camera up in the plane to document the trip. They took a big loop around our area for a little more than an hour, and as they were up in the plane, he was able to call me on a cell phone. While I was on the phone with him I could hear the plane, but couldn't see it and then at one point, as we were riding our horses, we saw a little red and white speck fly over.


Here are the photos Jaxon took from the plane:




The thing that struck me was how varied and interesting the terrain in our area is.










 gee... desert much?

Jaxon didn't get scared and he didn't get air sick and he made it home safely. Success!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

My Little Budding Photographer

A couple of years ago for Christmas, I gave all my kids used cameras. Brynn got Marty's old Nikon 2 megapixel point and shoot. The other day, she left it on my desk so that I could replace the batteries and I decided to upload all her photos. And I was pretty impressed by how creative and well composed a lot of her photos were. And I thought that little old camera - about an 8 or 9 year old model - did pretty well too.

About 80% of the photos were of Fred. I believe that there are several reasons for this:

  1. He's readily available
  2. She loves him
  3. He doesn't move very fast
  4. He's fabulous
 See that I mean? Pretty good photo, right? And a pretty fabulous cat, too.

There were also quite a few photos of other animals in our lives including Cookie, our neighbor dog (who does move VERY FAST and is extremely hard to photograph) and our good old dog, Maddie, who we lost at 15 last summer - we had her longer than any of the kids.

Awww, Maddie!

And the horses - this was my favorite of her horse, Bo:

Isn't that cute? I've never taken such a fun photo of a horse myself!

This is our miniature horse, Feather, he's actually cuter from further away, but it was probably fun for Feather to look down on someone for a change. (He's 31 inches tall.)


And this is our friend Molly's lovely dog, Ramona. It seems that Brynn's working on mastering the art of extreme noses, but she does take other kinds of shots too.


There were also several photos of her little brother because:
  1. He's readily available
  2. She loves him (although she probably won't easily admit it)
  3. He doesn't move very fast (when he's eating)
  4. He's fabulous

 
I was pretty impressed with some of the landscapes as well:



This is our valley's famous V rock, also know as, "The V". We like to hike up there from time to time. I love the composition on both of these!
And of course, there were no shortage of self portraits on that memory card. Behold, the photographer:



Good work, Sis. You must get it from me. :)