Lance let the kids play with their paintball gun this afternoon… and shoot the garden wall.

Connor got the gun as a birthday present from someone, and we actually hide the paintballs away until he can play with it with us around… just in case…

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 just love how Connor’s thriving at school this year, and he’s bringing home the cutest things that he’s made.  Today, it was these old man glasses made out of paper and cotton wool.  My mom said he wore them all afternoon… even while he was watching Bradley play soccer! LOL! He’s such a funny child.

Of course, by the time I wanted to take a photo, he wasn’t happy with me… and only let me get one shot…

Love this child to bits!

“Snow angels” on the grass

… then watching the clouds and making out dinosaur shapes in them and weaving that into a story

… and refusing to look at me…

… a perfect start to an evening after I get home from work.

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.