I have a boner for vintage cameras.

The good thing about some of your best friends selling everything they own to move overseas?  You get their stuff… and you can get it for cheap.  This is substantially cooler when your friends are the type who own cool stuff.  But I digress.

Due to the situation above I recently became the owner of several super funky vintage cameras that I have fallen MADLY in love with.  Like, run away to Vegas and get married, love.

Like most things, the thing that makes them awesome is also the thing that makes them suck.  In the case of ancient analogue cameras that is the fact that you have to tell them Every. Single. Thing. you want it to do.  Modern cameras are way smarter than you realize (or at least than I realized).  Smart enough to know what kind of film you put in it, how to focus on what you’re shooting, how much light is in the room.  And that’s just the $40 camera that your grandma got at Walmart… my DSLR is so smart it could take the freaking SAT for you.

I tell my normal camera “Hey you, this is the picture I want to take.” and it responds “Awesome Jenna, I’m on it!”

I tell one of these new guys that and it shoots me a look of dire confusion while responding “Picture?” like it doesn’t speak English.

Anyway, it’s a giant pain in my ass.  It’s also awesome because by having to think through every little piece of a photo before I take it instead of just spinning my camera around while holding down the continuous shooting button I am learning so much about the basics of photography it’s unreal.

It’s like explaining advanced physics to a kid with Downs.

You’ll want to start punching walls because it’s so frustrating, but when you’re done you’ll have a deeper understanding of physics because you had to break it all down to it’s most basic components.

Sorry I don’t have any pictures to accompany this post… almost seems ironic… but everything I’ve been shooting lately has been film and none of it’s developed yet so I’ll get some soon.

10 on 10, June edition.

10 on 10, document one day out of every month.  One picture an hour for 10 hours.  To play along hop over to Rebekah’s blog.  And let me know too, I’d love to see them. 

And yes, the first half were on my phone because I forgot that today was this day until I was alread at church without my good camera.  Don’t judge me.

1. V wanted to sit with Alisha during church.  2. Communion.  3. Indian food lunch… 4. …with fabulous people.  5. Nap time!  6. Some color.  7. Yogurt dinner.  8. Kids, meet youtube.  9. Lazy Daisy dog.  10. Skype date night with wine and somebody awesome.

 

The 10th of March

I found this new photo project, the Ten on Ten.  In an attempt to document the beauty in your everyday life you take a picture every hour for ten hours on the 10th of random little beautiful things in your life.

I didn’t get 10 today, only 4, but since it’s my first time I’m cutting myself some slack.  Anyway, here’s my day.

Hour 4.  When they got up from their naps Verona informed me “Just need some more time snuggling with Finnegan, mom.”  So she crawled under a blanket with him on the couch and they snuggled, giggled, poked each other, and played peekaboo for probably half an hour.  It was beautiful.

Hour 8 (yes, I missed most of the day) bed time!  The kids went to sleep, and yes, Finn still will only sleep in the swing.  The vast concern my mother has for this situation hasn’t managed to rub off on me because, for whatever reason, I don’t see having a 13 year old sleeping in an infant swing as a possibility. 

Hour 9, embarking on a craft project involving multiple tshirts, scissors, and fabric glue… I’ll show you the finished project when I’m done.  Unless it sucks.  In which case I’ll never mention it again.

Hour 10, ending my day the right way.  A slice of chocolate swirl cheesecake and a fabulous drink in my new mug that I found at the thrift store this afternoon.

I haven’t bragged in a while.

I haven’t posted any pictures in a while, so incase you were wondering the answer is yes.

Yes.  My baby is still adorable.

Just incase you were wondering.

You know that thing where everyone sees your butt? Yeah, that.

I’ve been told by numerous people over the past few years that I am, for whatever reason, a magnet for super weird life events.  I have also been told that I, in a good way, totally bring it on myself.

Tiff over at freeplaylife issued those of us in the FreePlayLife Academy a challenge this week to take self portraits which then got upped to take a self portrait… of your butt.  So we did.  A whole slew of us got out our cameras and our badonkadonks and got to clickin.  I put mine on the freeplaylife facebook page, felt a little vulnerable, congratulated myself on growing as a person because a few other moms were going to see this, and went on with my day.

Not long after I was feeding Thing1 and Thing2 dinner, minding my own business, when a friend of mine from 3,000 miles away got a hold of me.

“Hey Jenna, is there a picture of your butt on facebook?”
“Not one that you can see.  Wait, did you see it?  Joe, how did you see that picture?!?!”
“I didn’t, someone just texted me and said ‘Jenna’s ass it blowing up my news feed’.”

As it turns out, even though me posting the picture doesn’t show up on my timeline or anyones news feeds or anything if someone comments on it it will show up in the ticker feed… the ticker feed of everyone I know and everyone the commenter knows.  Every comment made puts it on a few hundred new people’s feeds which entices those people to “like” or comment which… well, you get the point.  And as you probably guessed, a picture like that gets plenty of comments.

I was officially facebook’s newest unintentional porn star.

My first thought was “I need to take it down right now!”  But then I thought, no.  No, I’m not gonna do it.  The whole point of this was pushing our boundaries, stretching us and whatnot.  I’m not ashamed of my ass!  Granted, it happened to be a very good picture of said ass, one that made me look quite skinny and cellulite free, and I may have felt very different if that weren’t the case… but none the less I decided the picture was staying as a matter of principle.  I’m not entirely sure what principle that was, maybe self esteem, or loving our bodies, or promoting different body types… or something.  But principal none the less!

(It also may have just been me being a stubborn.  Shhhh.)

I didn’t realize the full extent of it till I went to church this morning and the first person I talked to immediately asked “So was that actually your butt or someone elses?  Cause it was really nice.”  I blushed and told them it was mine, then started to give the sparknotes version of this story to the few other people standing by us to catch them up on what we were talking about but was informed “Oh no, we’ve all seen it too.  No worries.  And nice ass.”  And that was more or less how the rest of the morning went.

Did I mentioned I go to a Mennonite church?  A religion where in many circles seeing a womans shoulders or knees is a big fat scandal in and of itself?  Yep.

So I held my head high.  And I smiled.  And I looked everyone in the eye.  And luckily everyone I talked to thought it was funny or was just curious.  But it made me feel more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt in my life.  The whole experience was weird, and uncomfortable, and so incredibly liberating!  I mean, once everyone you know (and half the rest of the world) has seen your butt there’s not a whole lot left to be shy about.

So if you want to get over yourself, show a few people your ass.  You might regret it, but you also might not.  Who knows.  Life is ment to be lived.

Photo shoots, new businesses, and things that go bump in the night.

Howdy everyone!  Sorry I haven’t been around much lately, I been busy.

Not long ago I met a lady who owns a small business here in the valley, A Blissful Life, making the most adorable acessories and kid things.  One thing led to another and she ended up asking me to do some photography work for her website.  My first professional photography job, falling into my lap… awesome.

So last Saturday we met up at a park between us with a bunch of her merchandise plus our kids to model some of the stuff and had us a photo shoot and through the course of working together for the afternoon discovered we were kindred spirits in so many ways.

Anyway she said she would advertise my photography business for free on her site and when she goes to craft shows since she liked my work if I would just send her my website and some business cards.  To which I laughed quite a bit to myself… then went home to make a website and some business cards for a business that I wasn’t even aware I had until right then.

So that’s what I’ve been up to.  Go check me out if your little heart desires, Jenna Boring Photography.  (I’m open to a better name if someone has one in mind by the way.)

Also, in the interest of looking at least the least bit professional I should probably have more people in my pictures than just my kids and dogs.  So if anyone in the valley wants some pictures taken in exchange for letting me use it on the site let me know.  I’m doing family portraits for some friends and their two pugs this weekend, and a maternity shoot for a very very pregnant friend and her husband… unless of course she’s having the baby because it’s three days before her due date.  Needless to say, I’ve been busy, I’ll be busy… but I’ll try to make time again for my dear blog and both of it’s faithful readers.

DPP :: V

December Photo Project

I love this girl.

DPP :: Santa

December Photo Project

We saw Santa and Mrs. Claus today at Castles and Coasters.  Verona was a little freaked out by these strange people in furry red outfits so I went up with her.  At the time I thought maybe I was having more fun than she was, but the story about how she met Santa and the declaration “Santa nice guy” have been cropping up all night so I guess I wasn’t.

Merry Christmas!

 

DPP :: Heat tolerance

December Photo Project

I sometimes live under the delusion that I am one of those crafty, organized, on-top-of-her-shit moms.  For the record I definitely am not, but if kids are allowed to pretend an empty box is a spaceship I should be allowed to pretend this.

In the midst of one of these fantasies I decided I was going to melt all the tiny crayon bits back together into bigger crayons so they stop covering ever square inch of the floor in my house at every moment of ever day… including the moment 30 seconds after I put them all back where they belong.  Sigh.  Kids.  Point being I’m tired of stepping on coloring instruments.  Moving on.

So I went out and bought one of those silicone muffin pans thinking it would be better than a metal one so I could bend it and pop the brand new, multi colored, giant crayons out when they were done.  It was adorable.  It was red and the muffin holes were shaped like hearts.  I carried it around Ikea like a baby with a smile on my face that said to everyone I passed ”I’m a crafty mom and am going to do crafty yet simultaneously functional things with this muffin pan.  It’s no big deal though, I do things like this all the time… because I’m one of those ‘got-her-shit-together’ moms.  Don’t worry, I’m sure if you try hard enough you could be like me too one day.”

When I got home I tore the wrappers of approximately 90 million broken crayons (that picture is maybe 1/4th of my total pile) and carefully organized them based on the knowledge of the color wheel that I acquired in 3rd grade so each crayon would only have shades that complimented each other in it.  My child deserves only the best in upcycled coloring materials!

Then I stuck it in the oven.

Then my kitchen smelled like burning.

Then I looked in the oven to find melting silicone and colored wax dripping all over the place.  Turns out the muffin pan I bought was in fact not a muffin pan but an ice cube tray.  Seriously though, who makes a square ice cube tray!?!?!  That’s just asking for confusion.  Well ice cube trays do not have the same heat tolerance as muffin trays.  Go figure.  I’m sitting on my couch in the living room now and can still faintly smell the odor of burnt crayola.

Sigh… the dangers of delusion I suppose.

DPP :: Darla and Christmas Drinks

December Photo Project

Sorry, I don’t have a good story for either of these pictures.

Darla.  Darla is fun.  Darla likes coffee drinks.  Darla just had a birthday.  My goal in the next few weeks is to get a portrait of each of my close friends that shows a bit of who they are.  Here is Darla’s.

Christmas+Drinks= Christmas Drinks.  Christmas Drinks+Good People= Good times.   (Also, Christmas Drinks+Christmas Trees= Good Pictures.)