What has Amber been up to?

Mostly stuff like this work:

I'm still running through some touch-ups on it, like trying to fix that fox's shadow.
I've been doing that, and figuring out my life and the such. I'm considering working as a librarian quite seriously these days. Just trying to make it through the winter, I guess.

Woodpecker

Shawn and I went hiking yesterday and found this tree. He says the holes are from woodpeckers, and that some native legends attribute the inspiration for wooden flutes to woodpecker bores like these.

Edited Photos

Every once in a while I decide to have some fun with the minimal editing software that I have, namely Windows Live Photo Gallery, which came with my computer, or Gimp, an open source editing program (I don't really like to spend money). Here are some of the results I end up with:

Snow, snow, snow

Is it still Christmas? This is the longest holiday I've had. We drove downstate for my mom's birthday on the 22nd, got together with my dad's family early on Christmas eve, and then my mom's family that night. We exchanged presents with the folks on Christmas day and then drove 2 1/2 hours across the state and caught a late night get-together at my fiance's Aunts house. Today we had a 6 hour get together at his grandparents house. At the rate we're going it's going to be Christmas until New Years!
It is nice to see family, even if all the to-do wears me out a bit. And of course, I love exchanging gifts. Being poor college kids, we had to be sort of creative this year in flexing our thrifty muscles. For my parents I painted an old jar and stuffed it with candy. We told them they can re-purpose it for just about anything, it works as a vase, or a holder for spare mechanical parts, since my dad is a mechanic. We stuffed stockings with an assortment of cheap junk food, which is the norm for my family, and fruit, which is traditional for Shawn's family. We dropped a little bit of money on each other, I got him a tool kit for around the house and working on his car, and he got me an adorable fox puzzle and some paintbrushes. For my mom's birthday we framed this picture since she loves cardinals:

More Winter Pics

More pictures, less writing. Happy Holidays!

Winter Wonderland Adventure Part 2

Here's part 2 of my winter wonderland adventure! Click here for part 1

As I said last time, I decided to investigate the rustle of noise I had heard ahead of me on the trail. Sure enough, when I got close enough to see, there were brand new deer tracks all across the trail.

Winter Wonderland! Part 1

I found a unique way to celebrate the first "real" snow of the season. Most of you know by now that my "Fish" (Click to read about how mushy and disgustingly adorable we are) works at the county parks and rec. I decided to tag along with him on his early morning trek to work. After dropping him off at the shop, I took the car down to the visitor area and set off on my adventure. The story is posted in two parts of 20 pictures each. Here's part one:

Come adventure!

Not a Daffodil

This is not a Daffodil.

Neither is this one.

That should be all for the flowers series. Thanks for checking it out!
Also, Finals week is totally over! I hope everyone enjoys break as much as I have so far. Shawn and I rented The Sims 3 and stayed up all night playing it for like, two nights in a row. Today I got up at 7:00 with him for work (ouch). I dropped him off at the shop and headed on over to Deerfield. I got to spend two hours taking pictures! Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to get nice lighting on an overcast day >.<' but I did encounter a furry friend! More details with my next post this Wednesday.

Flowers part deux

Purple!!

Friday Flowers

White flowers today, purple tomorrow (maybe)

Landscapes

Two similar landscapes in different lighting.

Gleam

More of those Vine-ish plants. And shiny!

Happy Finals Week!

In honor of finals week, and of finally being DONE with this semester soon, I'm posting every day this week. Also because I have a bunch of extra pics. Mostly from going on shooting sessions and then barely ever posting for the past month. Heh ^.^'

Anywho, hope you like it.

Seeds

What would you wish for?

Overgrown Leaves

What type of plant is this? I'm tempted to just call it Ivy, but I feel like I have friends who know much more about the botanical world than I do.

Pond and Birch trees

Can't decide between these two. So I figured hey, I'm an amateur, I don't have to! I like the color in the second, but I dislike the framing. It seems to me like the picture stops at the treeline. Love the frame in the second one, yet I didn't catch the same color content. So, there you have it. Lesson for the day: watch the lighting.




Choosing between pictures is a lot like making choices in real life. Just like you'll never have that "perfect" picture, you'll always have different choices, and taking one over another will always have its benefits and its losses. Every day I make an active choice to face the normal adversity of day to day life.
I don't think a lot of people know how hard that is for me. I don't think many people know who I used to be, hiding away in my room behind my books and my oversized hooded sweater. Not daring to express my real emotions to even my best friend. Changing all that was hard, heck, even something so insignificant as cutting my hair was a challenge! Not having those long sheets of dirty blonde waves to conceal my face was an act of pure rebellion against my inner nature. Yet for some reason, I did it. Some days I ask myself why I'm pushing myself so hard, why I insist that I change the prefix to my "-troverted", and some days, I don't have an answer, just like some days I can't choose just one picture.

Mid-September Leaves

Just some quick camera-phone shots I took recently. The yellow/brown/blue really caught my eye today, and the red tree still looks like it's on fire. Enjoy!

Shiny Things and Silhouettes

Not much to say today, just some pretty pictures.

All Things Green

I feel an almost constant need to be surrounded by nature. It can be hard, living on the third floor of a big apartment complex in the middle of a college town, to find real, abundant nature around here. Thankfully, campus has some kind of incredible landscaping crew and of course, there is always the escape back down to the lakeside neighborhood I grew up in. These pictures are a small sample of the hundreds of pictures I have taken of plants, grass, trees, and almost anything green.

The next two in particular remind me of my childhood, they are strikingly similar to the first attempt I ever made at an "artistic" photograph. I was working on the photography badge for girl scouts. The assignment was to take a picture from an unusual angle, so I decided to see what the world must look like to ants. I got down on the ground and snapped a photo with my disposable camera. And here I am, some 10 years later, doing just about the same thing:

Glad to know I haven't changed too much.