Wordless Wednesday...Snowman Cookies

My daughters Snowman cookies came out perfect this year:

You can see last years very melted snowman here.

4 yr old Photographer

My little sister has got her work cut out for her. She has two very strong willed and intelligent kids. I love the fact that they are able to come over and visit when she is next door taking care of mom.

This kid is a character (sorry don't remember who I stole the pic from, let me know and I'll link it):

He has been picking up my camera since he was able to walk. Some of his pics turn out really good:

In other pictures it's just interesting to see the view point of a 4 year old:

Little sis Lexi

My daughters behind.

My husband and his always interesting facial expressions.

A very good composition, I think.

And like I said these kids are intelligent. The memory card ran out of space, so he walks up to me and says "Tia, it's down to 0, I can't take anymore pictures, how do I fix that." I'm sure I could have shown the kid how to make some room, but I can just see me screaming my head off in a future date saying "Who deleted my pictures I hadn't downloaded them yet." So needless to say we have shown him the sequence of buttons that deletes pictures - and I'm really glad it is a sequence because he clearly recognized the trash can icon!

Wordless Wednesday...Whitewater sand storm

Our Photography class went on a field trip to White Water Preserve in Southern CA. It was a very cold windy day. I was photographing with the Black and White Film camera and my daughter was photographing with the Digital. This is me, in a Sand Storm:

Trying to get these pictures:

I'm not sure I have it in me to be a Landscape Photographer.

Free Digital Scrapbook kit

I love Free stuff. I seem to be acquiring plenty of Digital Scrapbook kits. The one below is courtesy of  MyMemories Suite Digital Scrapbooking Software, but you don't have to own the software to use the Free templates below. They are in .png and .jpg format you can use them in any software that you might own.

They have started a program were they will be sending me new kits every 14 days, so that I may share them with you. The kit below will be available for 14 days and will then be replaced with a different kit, so go grab it now if you like this one.

If you would like to see what the MyMemories Suite software can do feel free to click on the link on the side bar, and if you order don't forget to use the Code for $10 off.

I can wait to get pictures to put in these new templates! I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Feel free to post a link in the comments showing us what you have done with the Scrapbooking kit.

Scanning Film Negatives

I have shot rolls up on rolls of Black and White film for class. I love pictures, and for some reason feel that every picture deserves a chance to be printed and shown, but at $1.00 or so for each sheet of paper and the fact that I ruin 2 or 3 sheets to get a good printed picture plus the fact that it takes me at least 30 to 40 minutes of working with the image to get it right, I didn't see how each of my pictures were going to make it out to the light.

Until I saw one of the 2nd semester students scanning his negatives, at least that is what it looked like he was doing, and sure enough when I asked him what he was doing, he said "duh, scanning my negatives" gotta love those 19 and 20 year olds. And then I asked him a question that I knew was going to get me a stare down, but I was ready for it. 'How do you scan negatives?'

Sure enough he looked at me funny the whole time he was attempting to show me how to scan negatives. I'm very competent with computers so his words didn't need to make sense, and believe me they didn't. I was able to see what he was doing and come to my own conclusions.

First you need a special scanner or a scanner that has the ability to change, the one in the classroom is a scanner that adapts for scanning negatives.

The scanner comes with a special tray to place your negative strips on.

Then you use the scanning software (or Photoshop) the same way that you would scan any other item. EXCEPT because the image is so small you need to scan at a really really high DPI if you want to end up with a picture large than 1 inch wide. My 19 year old tutor neglected to mention that. To be honest I don't think he knew why he was doing things he just knew the steps someone else showed him.

I have come to the conclusion that a dpi of 4800 will get you a good 8 x 10 printed resolution. This was learned by trial and error so if someone has a text book answer for this please let me know. I couldn't find the information any where. Needless to say it takes for ever to scan at that dpi but I'm not wasting paper and money! It will be worth the invested time, all of my pictures might just end up seeing the light.

I love these that I snapped when I was trying to get my Action assignment done:

A Teacher's Quote to live by...

I came a cross a quote on a blog a while back that can apply to our every day lives not just those of Teachers.

"I have come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crises will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."

~Haim Ginott

I'm not entirely sure who the author of that quote is, but it make for the best of life motto's.