the joy of love {days 1-4}

I found out about this free online photography class for the month of February from my cousin's blog a few days into the month. I've been wanting to learn to use my camera (really use it, not just on the automatic settings) since I got it, but haven't managed to take the time to do so yet. Well, that's not completely true. I started a photography class a couple weeks ago, but so far have been thoroughly disappointed by the content; just to give you an idea, we spent two hours this week practicing using the auto focus and transferring pictures from our cameras to a flash drive...I'm going to stick it out a little longer in hopes that it gets better, but we'll see.

Anyway, I am excited for the daily "assignments" from this class - something that won't take long (so I can squeeze it into my busy days) but will give me a chance to spin the dial out of the "portrait" mode on my camera.

So here are the pictures from the first four days' prompts...my attempt to capture a bit of the joy that radiates from some of the people I love.

01: what they do

read together

02: how they look

proud

{choosing a sticker for her "poop chart"...and hugging Oopsie Bear - her reward for getting 5 stickers on said chart}

03: then and now

then...

...and now

{this may not be an amazing photo, but I am quite proud of it; I took it at 2am (after calming Cailyn down from a nightmare) with no flash - the only light was from a nightlight across the room, which involved me playing around with a few manual settings!}

04: what they wear

on her fingers

while baking