A day with my biggest girl

I got to spend the whole day with my girl today - just me and her.

It seemed fitting that since I love taking pictures, and she loves posing for pictures (and taking them too), that we should get outside and go have a photo shoot!

*disclaimer - prepare to be bombarded with pics.  I couldn't help myself. 

There were too many that I loved. *

If you remember, I've been learning how to use the manual settings on my SLR - I've not had much chance to try at all - in fact this is only the 2nd time I've spent any time outside really playing around with it.  I love the feeling tho, as over and over that light bulb in my head lights up and something is clear - or clearer.  I feel as tho one could never stop learning where photography is concerned - I love that!

She still loves to hug trees after all these years

(she used to hug the sad lonely telephone poles when she was a little girl )

:)

She's really fun to photograph!  She is quite comfortable in front of the camera - as I'm sure most teens are these days with the explosion of photos on facebook....

Isn't she beautiful???

I really want her jacket.  Badly.  I might actually have to go searching for a similar pattern.

We had so much fun, being silly and giggling.

I love that I accidentally overexposed this!  It's a bit tricky to get used to changing settings when you're used to just pointing and shooting - it's a good kind of tricky tho - makes my brain happy - even if it is at times frustrating.  I was taking pictures of her in a hollow tree trunk, and completely forgot to check the exposure - they all turned out really dark.  That's ok tho - the beauty of digital photography is that you can take as many shots as you like!  I think I took around 250 shots today, so missing those wasn't such a big deal...

I'm fairly certain that I have an identical shot of Little Miss A running at this very spot with her nearly identical hair flying just like that....

The feet - an exercise I was trying from a photography book.  I didn't have the book tho, and I'm not sure if I did it right!  It was sooooo hard to get a shot that was focused clearly on the feet.  The background is super fun tho - I'll be playing around with this more for sure.  

I'm one of those people that loves to read really long novels - the longer the better - a whole series of long novels is even better.  I love to be fully immersed in pretty much whatever I'm interested in.  So instead of feeling overwhelmed by all there is to learn in photography, it just feels like my own personal playground!  Always new, and always getting more interesting, more fun and rewarding.

I'm so in awe of this fairy girl of mine.  Almost 16 now - she's matured so much and just continues to amaze me with her loveliness every single day.

It was a close call getting to this spot - she very nearly took a plunge !

Eventually she decided that it was my turn to have pretty pictures taken of me - if she got to have so many - then only fair if I had some too.  And besides - she was just itching to get her hands on my camera ;)

Considering how few pictures there are of me - it was nice to be on the other side  of the camera for a change....

tho I'll admit to being a bit nervous in front of the camera - coming from the film generation and all ;)

The day ended with mochas at the local coffee shop.  With real whip cream on top :)

When we have a day together it's pretty much just assumed that coffee will be part of the picture.

She loves her coffee.....