>better late than never, right?

>i’d promised that i would share with you all my photo in sean’s ULTIMATE PHOTO SHOWDOWN Season Two! tonight. sorry i’m just getting to it now, but i always feel the need to get through updates on other people’s pages first. and sometimes i just need to work up to doing a post anymore. i’m still not feeling all that great right now, so i’m kind of lacking motivation in the blogging department.

well, enough of that. you came here to see what i posted. i think i’ll start off with the photos i didn’t go with. as you may know, the theme was trains. not terribly hard around here as there are still trains that run through town. a lot of times i will hear them late at night. i’m not really in a position, though, to go out at night and get photos so i was going to wait until sunday to sneak out of the house on my own and see if i could find some. great idea except that i felt so crappy sunday i ended up staying in bed til about 4:30pm. that evening i sent sean an email saying that i would probably be skipping this week because i didn’t think i’d have time to go out.

you know what’s funny about that? you’ve all been witness to my whiny reveal blogs from season one. i’d moan and complain about how awful i did and how crap my photos were and blah, blah, blah. do you think that keeps me from trying to submit at least something for the contest, no matter how bad? anyone remember the theme animals from last season? i am totally obsessed! i can’t not enter something. so monday afternoon, i picked my son up from school and started driving around town. i knew where several tracks were, but the problem a lot of the time, at least around here, is that they’re not always all that accessible to get photos. as i drove by a few of them, i realized that i really had no place to stop and pull over so i could get photos. after a while, i thought, “my kids are really going to start to get anxious being cooped up in this car.” so off to mcdonald’s i went to get happy meals in the hopes that it would keep them occupied and happy for another hour or so.

i know, you’re wondering when you’re going to start seeing some photos. just bear with me. so, i started thinking about the abandoned rail tracks that i visited over the summer. i was running out of ideas and i needed to get home. so i drove up there, took a few photos that i hoped wouldn’t look exactly like the ones i took a few months ago, and drove home again.

so, say it with me. BORING! i suppose a couple of them weren’t that bad, but i was mostly using the digital zoom which really cuts down on the quality of the photo, at least with my camera, and technically, the theme was trains. i really wanted to have a photo of an actual train.

so the next day, the deadline, i grabbed the camera as i headed out the door to take hubby back to work after lunch. i knew i’d have about an 40-45 minutes to try to find a worthy photo to enter before i had to pick g up from school, so i headed towards an area that hubby used to work before our eldest was born. not only did i know there was a track there, but there was usually a train sitting there for whatever reason.

i drove down there and yes! success! there sat a train. only, how do i go about getting near enough to photograph it? i turned off on a side road with hopes that it might take me near enough the track to get some shots of the train, but also have some place that i could pull off the road and hopefully get the shots without getting out of our car. hahahaha! so silly of me.

there was a place to pull off, but there was also a great big chainlink fence in the way. still, here’s some shots i got, again, using the digital zoom.

i just wasn’t feeling it with these. i didn’t even have to wait until i saw them on my computer screen to know they were awful. so i got back in my car to go pick up my son. as i was sitting at the light waiting to turn the corner, i looked over to my left and realized, if i sort of put the camera over my shoulder, i might get something.

this was actually a contender for the contest. it’s not very exciting, though. i do find the fact that it’s under warranty amusing, however. don’t ask me why.

now, as i had been driving hubby to work, i was talking to him about my ideas for the contest. we’re both participants, but i can’t help but run ideas off him. as i was telling him what i was thinking about doing, it suddenly occured to me that my youngest, k, had been taking a couple toys with him whenever we had to make our daily runs dropping off and picking up. and they were train toys. so i said to hubby, “what if i took one of the toy trains and put it on a track?” he thought that was a great idea. since i wasn’t that crazy about any of the shots i took of a real train, i decided to try out my plan.

i picked g up from school and, again, thought it might be a good idea to use a little bribery so that i could take the time to drive back up to the abandoned train tracks. i got the boys some icecream and headed off on a mission.

i’m making this sound much more dramatic than it was, aren’t i? i’m going to blame all the cold medicine i’ve been taking. it’s making me loopy.

anyway, i drove up to the old tracks, grabbed my sons’ toy train, and took a few snaps.

the focus on this one was really lousy, plus that glare from the sun…yuck. so i tried again.

this one above is better, but there’s still a lot of glare on the roof of the toy. and when i look at it now, it just doesn’t really do much for me, though at the time it was also a contender.

it finally dawned on me that i should put the camera down on the rail also so that it would be at eye level, so to speak, with the toy.

now this one i really liked. i thought it had a certain something. it’s a little grainy, but i don’t think it takes away from it much. i will admit that i did crop this one, but i think i chose the wrong way to do so.

and now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for! here is the photo i submitted for sean’s contest:

i liked the idea of doing this shot in black and white to give it an old feeling. the fact that toby, from thomas the tank engine, is an old fashioned kind of train, also made it seem fitting. plus, even thought the sun had eventually come out, it was such a grey and overcast day. the sky was coming out so washed out and colourless, that i thought it best that i shot most of the photos in black and white.

so, there is my very long, rambly, confusing reveal post. aren’t you sorry you asked which photo was mine? 🙂

better late than never, right?

i’d promised that i would share with you all my photo in sean’s ULTIMATE PHOTO SHOWDOWN Season Two! tonight. sorry i’m just getting to it now, but i always feel the need to get through updates on other people’s pages first. and sometimes i just need to work up to doing a post anymore. i’m still not feeling all that great right now, so i’m kind of lacking motivation in the blogging department.

well, enough of that. you came here to see what i posted. i think i’ll start off with the photos i didn’t go with. as you may know, the theme was trains. not terribly hard around here as there are still trains that run through town. a lot of times i will hear them late at night. i’m not really in a position, though, to go out at night and get photos so i was going to wait until sunday to sneak out of the house on my own and see if i could find some. great idea except that i felt so crappy sunday i ended up staying in bed til about 4:30pm. that evening i sent sean an email saying that i would probably be skipping this week because i didn’t think i’d have time to go out.

you know what’s funny about that? you’ve all been witness to my whiny reveal blogs from season one. i’d moan and complain about how awful i did and how crap my photos were and blah, blah, blah. do you think that keeps me from trying to submit at least something for the contest, no matter how bad? anyone remember the theme animals from last season? i am totally obsessed! i can’t not enter something. so monday afternoon, i picked my son up from school and started driving around town. i knew where several tracks were, but the problem a lot of the time, at least around here, is that they’re not always all that accessible to get photos. as i drove by a few of them, i realized that i really had no place to stop and pull over so i could get photos. after a while, i thought, “my kids are really going to start to get anxious being cooped up in this car.” so off to mcdonald’s i went to get happy meals in the hopes that it would keep them occupied and happy for another hour or so.

i know, you’re wondering when you’re going to start seeing some photos. just bear with me. so, i started thinking about the abandoned rail tracks that i visited over the summer. i was running out of ideas and i needed to get home. so i drove up there, took a few photos that i hoped wouldn’t look exactly like the ones i took a few months ago, and drove home again.

so, say it with me. BORING! i suppose a couple of them weren’t that bad, but i was mostly using the digital zoom which really cuts down on the quality of the photo, at least with my camera, and technically, the theme was trains. i really wanted to have a photo of an actual train.

so the next day, the deadline, i grabbed the camera as i headed out the door to take hubby back to work after lunch. i knew i’d have about an 40-45 minutes to try to find a worthy photo to enter before i had to pick g up from school, so i headed towards an area that hubby used to work before our eldest was born. not only did i know there was a track there, but there was usually a train sitting there for whatever reason.

i drove down there and yes! success! there sat a train. only, how do i go about getting near enough to photograph it? i turned off on a side road with hopes that it might take me near enough the track to get some shots of the train, but also have some place that i could pull off the road and hopefully get the shots without getting out of our car. hahahaha! so silly of me.

there was a place to pull off, but there was also a great big chainlink fence in the way. still, here’s some shots i got, again, using the digital zoom.

i just wasn’t feeling it with these. i didn’t even have to wait until i saw them on my computer screen to know they were awful. so i got back in my car to go pick up my son. as i was sitting at the light waiting to turn the corner, i looked over to my left and realized, if i sort of put the camera over my shoulder, i might get something.

this was actually a contender for the contest. it’s not very exciting, though. i do find the fact that it’s under warranty amusing, however. don’t ask me why.

now, as i had been driving hubby to work, i was talking to him about my ideas for the contest. we’re both participants, but i can’t help but run ideas off him. as i was telling him what i was thinking about doing, it suddenly occured to me that my youngest, k, had been taking a couple toys with him whenever we had to make our daily runs dropping off and picking up. and they were train toys. so i said to hubby, “what if i took one of the toy trains and put it on a track?” he thought that was a great idea. since i wasn’t that crazy about any of the shots i took of a real train, i decided to try out my plan.

i picked g up from school and, again, thought it might be a good idea to use a little bribery so that i could take the time to drive back up to the abandoned train tracks. i got the boys some icecream and headed off on a mission.

i’m making this sound much more dramatic than it was, aren’t i? i’m going to blame all the cold medicine i’ve been taking. it’s making me loopy.

anyway, i drove up to the old tracks, grabbed my sons’ toy train, and took a few snaps.

the focus on this one was really lousy, plus that glare from the sun…yuck. so i tried again.

this one above is better, but there’s still a lot of glare on the roof of the toy. and when i look at it now, it just doesn’t really do much for me, though at the time it was also a contender.

it finally dawned on me that i should put the camera down on the rail also so that it would be at eye level, so to speak, with the toy.

now this one i really liked. i thought it had a certain something. it’s a little grainy, but i don’t think it takes away from it much. i will admit that i did crop this one, but i think i chose the wrong way to do so.

and now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for! here is the photo i submitted for sean’s contest:

i liked the idea of doing this shot in black and white to give it an old feeling. the fact that toby, from thomas the tank engine, is an old fashioned kind of train, also made it seem fitting. plus, even thought the sun had eventually come out, it was such a grey and overcast day. the sky was coming out so washed out and colourless, that i thought it best that i shot most of the photos in black and white.

so, there is my very long, rambly, confusing reveal post. aren’t you sorry you asked which photo was mine? 🙂