Spontaneous Photography Pratice

Home alone with a camera and a happy baby in a particularly cute outfit can lead to lots of spontaneous photography practice. I'm not nearly as good with a camera as I'd like to be, but I'm getting there. Enjoy. :)

Random Baby Pictures

We love taking pictures of the baby and the baby loves the camera {though, ironically, she hated ultrasounds}.

Spending the afternoon with her favorite Auntie is always an adventure for Baby.

They have the same nose.

So cute.

My sister plopped the baby down on the chair for a moment and I was amazed at how well the little one sat on her own so I snapped a well-timed picture.

She loves playing around with her Daddy and this particular day was no exception.

Although she gets very easily distracted by Leo the Lion, as we call her Taggie toy.

Chillaxing and Photography Practice

On a particularly hot summer day, while my husband was off working, Baby and I hung out on the porch trying to keep cool. I decided to get the camera out when I saw a robin hopping around in our flower border. The result was some photography practice.

My favorite subject had a lot of fun getting her picture taken and even made funny expressions for me.

She didn't quite smile though.

Writers Get Their Revenge in Print

Taylor Swift has accomplished much in her whirlwind career. She's a chart-topper and a talented young lady. She's also {to my knowledge} not tattooed, pierced, doesn't drink or do drugs, and isn't in the media for bad behavior. I like to think she's a Christian too, but that's trickier to tell nowadays. She keeps to herself and brings smiles to people's faces. There are heartwarming stories of her helping out children with cancer and doing good deeds. She has an interesting taste in clothing that is usually 90% modest in my opinion. There's always something about someone's wardrobe choices that I don't like. But I generally like Taylor's choices. Her music is uplifting, bright and I can relate to a lot of the songs - particularly Love Story. It's rather uncanny how close that song paralleled my own love story with my husband. Her previous album, Red, was a gradual step in a new direction and contained many wonderful songs that were a blast of fresh air to my musical library.

So why is everyone all up in arms over her new single Shake it Off? In my opinion, I believe it's partly due to the fact that nobody has any real dirt on her to throw around so they pick apart everything she does trying to find some. When you live your life in the media and the world's spotlight, everything you do gets judged, weighed, torn apart and excruciatingly examined. I imagine that this would be a very hard way to live and that many people would crack after awhile. I certainly would. I have days where I just plain hate people sometimes. But Taylor Swift has done a marvelous job of not cracking under the pressure and keeping a straight face in public. That being said, I think that her new video took people by surprise. With her good girl persona, nobody really expected her to do something that "wild." Bouncing around on stage with background dancers wearing short cut shorts, what appeared to be her underwear and this funny-looking gold thing, and dancing in a creative modern way, Taylor Swift openly explores a whole new territory for her. She is trying new things, exploring a whole new world and testing her limits. She's stepped out of her comfort zone and is growing. She has moved out of the country and into the realm of pop.

And this move wasn't an abrupt one either. If you really look closely at he songs in Red, you will see a definite difference between them and her older hits, such as Love Story, Fearless, and Sparks Fly. The happy innocence is gone, replaced with the knowledge of reality. She figured out that life really isn't a fairy tale and she dealt with that realization in musical style, to her fans' delight. One of the things I have always loved about her music is that she draws inspiration from her life experiences. You have to write what you know and Taylor does just that. Some people give her flack for writing about her breakups and heartaches, but I like it. Would you give a writer flack for taking their experiences and writing about them in their books? We writers use writing as a sort of self-therapy and we always get our revenge in print. We also explore new genres, with hit and miss success. That's what Taylor Swift is doing. She has country down and now wants to stretch and explore; if I were her, I would be pretty bored of the same old same old by now. So it's no surprise that she wants a change.

I don't like some of the outfits worn in the new music video and I don't know if I'll like some of the songs in her new upcoming album, 1989. But even if I like just one song, I'll be content because I know that she will have tried something new and enjoyed the experience as well as learned from it. Besides, I'm pretty certain that this new song, Shake it Off, was done on purpose for the shock effect. She did it on purpose! This is her way of going, "Oh, you don't like my music or life choices? Well, too bad." And she just shakes it off, like dust on her hands. This goes back to that self-therapy thing I was talking about. She's not rolling with the punches on this one; she's dancing with them.

I recommend looking up the lyrics here so you aren't distracted by the background dancers. *wink*

I thought this was an interesting article.

A Day at the Store

On the days we man my parents' store, we bring the baby along. She thinks this is a great adventure.

While we open, she flings her current favorite toy around, watches us or sleeps.

On this particular day, we were fairly bored.

So the baby was having some quality time with her Daddy and stealing looks at his iPad. She looks very intense, huh?

She flung her bib around in this shot.

And then resumed her study of the game.

Her Daddy thought this was amusing.

After awhile she was bored with that and began to look for something else to stare at.

She eventually spotted me and settled for making faces.

And moving around a lot, so it was hard to get clear ones at times.

Then she decided to sit with Mummy and got super excited to see Mr. Kitty again.

Such a sweet little baby. She took a nap after this photo session.