The kids swam at home yesterday afternoon… we actually had a relaxing home day for a change.  Lance had been trying to fill the pool with water… and it didn’t take them long to start playing with the hose pipe that was in the pool.

I just love these images of the boys. Just being boys…

I was completely inspired today by videos that I found on Deb Schwedhelm’s blog.  The YouTube videos are called What Remains, and are documentary films about the life and work of Sally Mann leading up to her exhibition called What Remains which was a series of photographs of death that she took over a period of 4 years.  Now, I’d actually never heard of Sally Mann before this morning… possible because I’ve never studied art… but WOW, these films just resonated with me today.  So much so, that I knew that I wanted to take moody black and white images tonight.

Some things I learnt today… to carry on taking photos of what I love and the people I love and how that inspires me in everything else that I do.  And if something gets you down, and you get rejected for something or something fails… do something you know… and that’s what I did today at work as a result of the videos and what I did when I got home with my photography.

My idea when I got home was to get the boys to stand on the paving and to just take a photo of their feet.  They didn’t quite like that idea, and sat on the wall instead… which I was quite happy with because I thought that would work even better.  That’s the first image and my idea for my photo today.  Love that they naturally placed their feet in the same way and that they were connecting with their hands… both without coaching…

Then the magic happened. I noticed what they were doing and how they were talking to each other so I just took photos of them interacting… I love the result…

This is the first in the series of videos and it’s mostly about the photos she took of her children…

And here’s Part 2 and Part 3… if you have an hour spare… watch them.

Bradley went to his first dance this evening… the school’s Valentines dance. I seriously didn’t think this would happen for a few years, but he had fun.  When he got home he rattled off about the smoke machine and the lights, and the loud music and which songs they played.  And he kept bopping down the passage saying “you’re sexy and you it…”

Can’t believe I’m at this stage already with the kids… I’m really not ready for this!!

He even asked a girl! He’s 8! LOL!! He told me that he did dance one dance with her, and then spent the rest of the evening with his friends. LOL too cute!

Bradley’s theme at school this week was “Marvellous Me” and he needed to take a photo of himself to school.  After looking through my hordes of photos, I realised that I haven’t done a proper photo of him in a few months… that’s just not on!!

So, this was a good opportunity… even though you can see he’s not all that happy about this

The boys decided that my TV program that they were being “forced” to watch was far too boring for them, so they got the checkers board out

I used the opportunity to test the Sony A77 (I’m reviewing it for Girl Guides) in low light… I think I pushed it too far for the camera, ISO 2000 is far too grainy.

* My Every Day project is my 2012 year-long project reflecting my life and things around me