Three on Thursday {Cottage Grove, Oregon Photographer}

1) It’s Z-day! We are heading to the Oregon Zoo for a few hours today with Paige. I hope she naps well on the way to Portland so she is well-rested when we get there. She has spent a lot of time the last few days looking at her animal books and naming all of the animals. About the only one she can’t name on her own is a goat.She even knows the difference between lions and tigers, so it will be interesting to see how her love of book animals translates to the real thing!

2) I have been enjoying my new Canon 5d MarkII and learning how to use it for video. I didn’t necessarily want a camera that shot video, but there’s really no other option anymore. I figure since I have the option now, I’d better get used to using it! It takes some time to figure out how to pan & zoom at the same time while also keeping everything in focus, since auto-focus doesn’t work in video mode. I’m hoping to start incorporating a little video into my sessions soon.

3) I really can’t believe summer is almost over. In less than 2 weeks, David will be back to work and getting ready for the students to start arriving. It will be very strange not to be going back with him this year. And, typical for us, we just decided to take on a pretty major project at our house that needs to get finished before school starts. We have a fireplace with a cracked chimney that is not usable and takes up a huge amount of space in our house, so we have decided to take it down to make more room for storing all the photo props I keep accumulating… Of course, taking down the chimney means we have to repair the roof, the ceiling, the floor, and the entire wall of faux brick on the front of the fireplace. We are eventually going to be adding built-ins to the wall where the fireplace is now, and I know it will look great when it is done, but we really should have thought about starting this project in JUNE!