special days – Page 5 – monadnock mama

admin / April 28, 2014

new lens // nikkor 105mm 2.8d

My husband, who is always amazingly supportive of all of my hobbies & whims, got me a new camera lens for my birthday — the Nikkor 105mm 2.8d — and it is wicked cool (pardon my New Hampshire-speak). Can I just say that I am so grateful to be married to someone who not only knows what I want, but knows what I want even before I know that I want it?

I’ve never used a macro lens before, and this one is manual focus on my camera body, so I’m anticipating a bit of a learning curve. Numerous wise people have noted that it’s not just how much you practice, but how far you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, that makes the real difference when it comes to getting better at something.

I give you my inception — withering tulips.

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admin / April 28, 2014

today’s my birthday // i’m 33

One cannot love without suffering or suffer without loving.

Look at the mothers who truly love their children: how many sacrifices they make for them. They are ready for everything, even to give their own blood so that their babies grow up good, healthy and strong.

–St. Gianna Molla

Today is my birthday, and I am thirty-three. I share my birthday with many notable figures. But, today I learned that my birthday is also the feast day of St. Gianna Molla, an Italian wife, mother, and doctor who discovered in the second month of her pregnancy that she had a uterine fibroma but refused surgical interventions in order that she might carry her child to term. She successfully delivered her full-term baby daughter, Gianna Emanuela, but died seven days later on April 28, 1962. Although I am not a Catholic, and thus do not celebrate feast days, I do place an enormous value on motherhood and I strongly identify with the all-powerful love for one’s children that St. Gianna embodied; I am honored to share my birthday with the feast of St. Gianna Molla.

You can learn more about St. Gianna Molla here.

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admin / April 28, 2014

today is my birthday // i’m 33

One cannot love without suffering or suffer without loving.

Look at the mothers who truly love their children: how many sacrifices they make for them. They are ready for everything, even to give their own blood so that their babies grow up good, healthy and strong.

— St. Gianna Beretta Molla

Today is my birthday, and I am thirty-three. I share my birthday with many notable figures. But, today I learned that my birthday is also the feast day of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian wife, mother, and doctor who discovered in the second month of her pregnancy that she had a uterine fibroma but refused surgical interventions in order that she might carry her child to term. She successfully delivered her full-term baby daughter, Gianna Emanuela, but died seven days later on April 28, 1962. Although I am not a Catholic, I do place an enormous value on motherhood and I strongly identify with the all-powerful love for one’s children that St. Gianna embodied; I am honored to share my birthday with the feast of St. Gianna Molla.

You can learn more about St. Gianna Molla here.

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admin / April 21, 2014

our easter dinner

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admin / February 23, 2014

happy birthday, olde shoe!

Last night we celebrated my father-in-law’s birthday (albeit a little belatedly), and I took my camera along. I haven’t been doing as much photography lately, and I’ve missed it. I have been experimenting with shooting in “RAW” mode — actually RAW+JPEG — and using Adobe Camera Raw to make adjustments in post-production. I may never be able to go back to shooting straight JPEG. Many of these images were blown out or too dark because of the indoor lighting (a combination of “tungsten” and “fluorescent”), and I was able to fix that in ACR.