Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}

Soccer Saturday

I learned a little something today...

I made the right choice in my career path, because I am NOT a sport's photographer.  lol.

Grant's second game was today and I finally got to use my super cool extra big new lens.  The canon 70-200is L lens.  At first I felt like a fool carrying a lens that is over a foot long into the park where five year olds are playing, but the results were so much better than my old cheap zoom.  With my last lens I could never get a shot that wasn't blurry because the lens just couldn't focus fast enough for the action going on. But this lens is so much smoother. I loved it.  Don't get me wrong it has a few down sides to it, like the fact that is weighs a ton and the size and gray color draws a lot of attention from people around you.  I am not used to having to hold onto the camera and the lens but since this lens is heavier than the camera you have to hold it that way.  It definitely has a learning curve to it, but I am excited to practice more.  Here are some examples, from today ( ignore the fact that the color is all over the place.  I am trying to figure out what I like!):

Start of the Game! Yep, that's my little guy with his foot on the ball.

A corner kick

Okay, so now comes my favorite part.  Grant is a great soccer player, really good on defense but he is also very dramatic.  When we started soccer last fall if the other team made a goal he would fall to his knees and cry out..."why? why? did they have to make a goal! What am I going to do!" It's funny now, but it wasn't so funny the first time it happened and all the parent's and coaches turned to look at us like we were the evil parent's that are all about winning.  The truth is we aren't like that at all in fact Mark and I are very laid back about things like that.  We wanted Grant  to play soccer to get exercise and have fun but try to explain that when your child is rolling around the field crying. 

  As time went on and we had several, several talks about how soccer was about fun not about winning Grant finally seemed to get over the emotional flopping.  Instead, he came up with a really great dance that he does when his team scores.  And it's an even bigger performance when he specifically scores.  Now, we have tried to explain that it's okay to cheer but he shouldn't really make a production about it because it makes the other team feel bad, but he seems to have gotten around that argument because today he did this...

I like to call it "The Victory Fly"

Nice.  Can you tell he got a goal today?  You gotta love him.

Temporarily out of order

Oops, I was afraid I would start a blog and end up not following through.  It's been a busy few day's. Grant had his first soccer game, it's been like 80 degree's the last week ...until yesterday.  Yesterday it was 38 degree's and pouring rain and they don't cancel games unless there is lightning. So, we all went and suffered the wet hour together.  Grant was such a trooper!  He played so well and even told me at the end of the game as he was shaking from cold that he loved playing soccer in the rain because the mud was Awesome! Total boy thing to say.

  On a side note, I have been super busy working on my classes for CKU-Provo. I get so nervous about them, I really want people to leave feeling SO excited that they will want to grab a camera and have a photo shoot right there in the lobby.  Think that's to much to ask?  Okay, so maybe it's a bit much but I really am working hard to make them fun AND informative. Here's one of the photo's I'm using for the lighting class. It's of my baby sister Marissa.  She came to visit a week ago!

Okay I'm off.  Grant want's me to watch his new favorite show with him.  Old school cartoons of Richy Rich. Good times!

One of my favorite Photographers

When I started blogging, I totally knew that I would want to randomly post little tributes to inspirational people in my life. I was going to start off with Mark, but my dad sent me some news this weekend that was so exciting that I decided to start with him.  That's probably the right thing to do anyway since he was the first man in my life.

M. BRETT BORUP-

Let me start with this, my dad is the greatest dad ever!   I honestly couldn't wish for anything more in a father.

He is a professor of environmental engineering by trade, and he speaks at EPA and environmental conferences all over the world about environmentally safe water-treatment plants. When people find out that my dad teaches about the environment, they always ask if we were one of those chain-ourselves-to-a-tree-to-protect-it kind of families, but he was never that way.  Like I said, he specialized in water treatment so there was no tree hugging in our family (although I have visited more sewage plants than I would like to admit, and my dad does celebrate Thomas Crapper's birthday (the inventor of sewage systems) by giving out apple juice and Baby Ruth bars.  Nice! )

Anyway, I am digressing.  What I wanted to talk about here, is that even though my dad is very successful in his field, his true love is very different; his true love is photography. My mom said he always loved photography but gave it up when I came around to pursue a more dependable career.  And I do vaguely remember watching family slide shows my dad put together of his latest shots of trees and moss.  It makes me sad to think he let go of something he loved for us, but that's what makes the rest of this story so great.

I started out in college as a theater major.  I even went to

London

for a semester to study Shakespeare.  But I realized that I was taking more pictures than watching plays so I decided I would change my major to photography.  I got home and I did just that.  I was worried about what my parents would think, but I shouldn't have been.  They were so supportive.  They are my biggest fans, and they’ve encouraged me in so many ways.  My dad even started taking classes with me.  Now as a 20 year old girl, attending college classes with my dad wasn't so appealing at first.  I mean having your Dad sit between you and the cute boy you've been crushing on isn't the ideal.  And I was so worried about how things would go, but honestly it couldn't have been better. My dad was an awesome photo partner.  He'd get up with me at the crack of dawn to go shoot in the mountains in the right light or drive for hours so that we could get to a cool location. He gave me advice on my work and I could borrow equipment from him! Other people in the class kept commenting on how cool my dad was, and how lucky I was to have a parent who didn't think that photography and art were a waste of time, let alone a parent who totally got it!

(Picture of my Dad at the Freedom Festival, camera in hand)

(This is a picture of my Dad.  One of those times I made him drive for hours.  There is a photograph from this shoot in Tracy White's new Photography book.)

Anyway, as time has gone by, he has continued to study photography.  He knows my old professors better than I do now.  Last year he decided to take things to a new level, and he applied to the University's art gallery to be considered for a faculty art show. The gallery has limited space which only allows for shows for a few of the professors each year. He was chosen as one of the faculty to get to have his own show!  Which is so awesome because there were tons of fine art and design teachers who applied so it says a lot about his work that they chose a engineering professor.

Now we are back to his news this weekend.  My dad decided to enter some of his pieces into a juried art show this year.  It's called the Spring Salon.  It's the real deal.  A lot of very famous artists including the Illustrator James Christensen entered pieces into this show, and my Dad just found out this weekend that one of his photographs made it!

( Here is one of my Dad's photograph's.)

( Here is one of his flower series)

I am so proud of him!  I so glad that he has taken the leap and invested in a passion that he has always had, but put off for us! It can be scary for an artist to put work out there into the world and wait for a reaction but my dad is finally living a dream, and in my eyes that is the most awesome thing anyone can do!  He is such an inspiration to me.

For anyone that wants to see more of his work, here is his Web site.  He's pretty brilliant:

www.mbborupphotography.com

Dad, I love you!  I would be who I am without you!  I'm glad you are finally getting the chance to be the artist YOU are!

Ohio University

Thought I'd post this photo from today.  It's my boy's at OU's upper campus. It's been so beautiful lately with all the flowers blooming.  Plus, I love OU's campus it's so old and has so many amazing buildings.

 

Title

Okay, so I wanted to explain the name of my blog, “Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}”.  Any of you out there that love photography know that an aperture is part of your camera.  It is one of the main controls for the depth of field in your final image or in simple terms, it controls how much of your picture is in focus.  An aperture at 1.4 is wide open, and the results of that is an image with only a little bit of the photo in focus while the rest is blurred.

I thought that it was the perfect blog title for me because I'm a very open person, but on the web you really only get to see a small piece of the depth within a person. So here you'll find Focused Blur! Isn't life that way for everyone really?

I also wanted to say that all the brushes used on my banner are from Rhonna's "Old Stamps" brush kit at 2peas!  They are so fabulous!

Disclaimer and other such things

"Even Brad had to break a tooth to join the fight club"

   Yep, that's right.  I just started my very first blog post with a quote from the Black Eyed Peas.  Nice.  And what do I mean by it you ask?  Well apparently you are not a serious scrapbooker if you don't have a blog. So Brad had to break a tooth to be a fighter and I have start a blog to be a scrapbooker.  Which is good because I'd much rather post online than be hit in the face and go to a dentist.  Although starting a blog is something I have avoided for quite sometime but now my sister and parent's have been asking if I was going to start one so that they can hear what's going on with us and our crazy household.

  So here I am a new typepad client.  I guess I should start out by giving a few warnings:

    1st- I am the worst speller in the world.  Seriously bad. ( This was one of the reasons I resisted starting a blog for so long)  so if you hate grammar mistakes or bad spelling gives you a headache this is not the place to be.  Luckily, I have one of the best editors in the world when it comes to the writing that I have done for books and articles...My sister Stephanie Ford!  She is awesome and proofs everything I do before I send it in.  Alas, I don't feel that I can make her edit my blog on a daily basis so I coming to you live people! You were warned so no making fun!

2nd- If you are not a scrapbooker and/or photographer this blog will be extremely boring to you.  Seriously.

3rd- I have a tendency to ramble, about anything really when I get nervous and well writing things that random people are going to read makes me nervous so I'll be rambling on and off here. :)

Anyway, if you made it through the disclaimers, WELCOME!  I hope to post lot's of pictures and fun stuff like that.  Tomorrow I'll explain the blog's name. Bet you can't wait, right?