Photo Blogging Challenge (December 2013): Festive

Can you find a more festive month than December? What a great topic for this month's HooHaa's Photo Blogging Challenge. I like it when I have more pictures than I need than when I'm scrambling to find five that fit.  On to the photos.

I started out December on an annual trip to the city. We have some business partners that have an annual Holiday party in New York City. It gives me the opportunity to spend some time running around town. We had less to do this year which gave me more running around time. I walked close to 15 miles one day. The lions at the Public Library were in a festive mood.

I always enjoy hanging out a Bryant Park and watching the skaters.

 

Upon returning from New York, my Baylor Bears had one more game in their old Floyd Casey Stadium. A new stadium is being built on campus. Our first game of the season, the temperature was over 100F, 125F on the field. Our last game was well below freezing and a freezing fog settled in. In an upset, the Oklahoma Sooners had defeated the Oklahoma State Cowboys just before our game kicked off. That upset turned our game into the Big XII championship. After a close first half, my Bears kicked it into gear and defeated the Texas Longhorns. It is our first Big XII championship and our first outright conference championship since 1980. A ceremony followed the game and the lights were turned off for the last time.

 

Fast forward to Christmas, because it really seemed to happen that fast. We had some office parties and such in between, but they seemed to have happened so long ago. We have all the family at our house every year. It's works out well with all the steps and in-laws. We were very low key this year. I'm happy to have my dad with us another year after his heart issues plagued the last two.

We had planned on being in our new house this Christmas. The weather this summer was wetter than usual and delayed construction. While I wish we were in already, it was nice to spend one more year here. I hope that this is the last time you see the view below.

That's the five I pulled out. Feel free to visit my flickr stream here to see more. And check out the rest of the participants at a lil hoohaa's blog. Until the next time.

Film is not dead! - 2013 HooHaa Challenge: My Life

I'm lazy. I admit it. And I procrastinate, too. I waited until almost the very end to get started on this project. Then the deadline got extended, sweet! I'll shift gears because December is no time for Hallowe'en pictures, right. Then lazy kicked in again. It mixed with busy and here I am, 10PM CST, I should be packing to leave but I'm writing this post instead. (Procrastinating!)

So let's pretend it's early November. Let's pretend I wrote all of this then. And let's pretend I got 15 usable shots. I really had a good time using a camera I haven't used in forever. I was going to start out by saying that I cheated a bit. I didn't have B+W and Color film in the same speed. I had made the choice to use some expired stock I had in the beer/film fridge. The B+W is Fujifilm FP-3000B Professional Instant Black & White Film. The color film was the last pack of Polaroid 669 ISO 80 instant color film. The camera for this project: A Graflex XL with Polaroid back.

The challenge topic is My Life. If you are a regular reader of the A 'lil Hoohaa, you know that in October, Hallow'en is pretty much my life. You can read my guest post here. So all my photo's were taken while setting up and taking down my Hallowe'en set up this year.

Focus was a bit of a challenge. I took the B+W in the dark. My DOF was pretty shallow. But I like the look.

John, my oldest, dressed up as some sort of ghoul or banshee. He had built some graves and left the shovel in the yard. When the kids would come to the door, he was standing perfectly still, leaning on the shovel. Many people asked me where I bought the decoration and then he'd start to move. He got a big kick out of scaring some older kids.

I got me a couple of new ladies in my life this year. This is actually a double exposure. The Graflex makes them a breeze.

I tried a few more double exposures but could never quite get it right. This one is close. The boys are just ghosty too.

The color was all right, but I really like the B+W. I read that they were discontinuing this film now. I hope I can find some more.

This next one is another of John's annual setups. I moved it around a little, but he builds this Punkin' Headed Boy for me every year.

And this last one is of the porch/graveyard setup. I normally cover the porch in black fabric so you can't see what's there until you get there. I think I scared too many kids last year so I dialed it back a little this year and left it open so they could see form the street.

My plan was to break a few more rules and take some of the Christmas lights. That would require a couple more film packs. I used all my color film and I don't think B+W and colored lights was a look I was going for. So here are the best six.  That's about the lot of it. I like the challenges. I sometimes overload myself with them but keep 'em coming. I'll do what I can. Sometimes better than others. While you are surfing, visit the other entries a a 'lil hoohaa. Until next time.