Wilder Ranch

I took the kids to Wilder Ranch this week on a day off to play - and take photos!  I know, here I am with a day off and what do I do...take photos of course.  It was actually a 'scoping out' mission to see if this location would be a good place for me to bring my clients.  Turns out it is a photographer's playground.  A gold mine.   I dressed Ellie in one of her Matilda Jane dresses.  I didn't think about what Gavin was wearing because he never ever lets me take photos of him anymore.  Of course, that would be the one day that he actually was totally letting me do my thing - figures!  I didn't care, I was so happy just to have some recent and nice photos of my sprouting boy.  He may only be 5 yrs old (he'll be six this summer) but he is growing so tall so fast that he is already at my chest level and I'm 5'8.  Seems he grows another inch every month.  And my 'baby' Ellie, at three years old, is really not a baby anymore, I think I need to come to grips with that as well.... sigh.

Anyways, we had a blast and ended up being there two hours just walking around and exploring.  There is the world's GREATEST climbing tree down by the Ranch area and it was hard to pull them away from that but I eventually tempted them away with the lure of chickens, goats, horses, and abandoned cabins!

Ellie is my little tree-hugger.  She goes around hugging trees and saying "thank you for the air I breathe."

She's also my little monkey.  She's not yelling in this one but making "oo-ooh-ooh-aah-aah-aah" sounds.

Then suddenly a "don't take any more pictures of me!" mood came about.  So I stopped.  After getting in two quick last shots of course...

Before long she had granted me permission to start back up... Here she is doing her version of an Arabesque ballet move.

I *love* this face!

Here she is doing her "oh where oh where did my little dog go?" dance routine from her ballet/tap classes.  She LOVES her class and her fantabulously (I know that's not a word) amazing teacher Annie.

And my boy.  My love.  I think he's gorgeous.  Total mama's boy and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So then we hiked down the trail a bit to this abandoned cabin.  I was so excited about the next series of pictures when I saw them on my LCD but when I pulled them up the indoor ones were terribly noisy.  Which really, really bummed me out.  My ISO was 640, my aperture wide open at f2.8 and SS at 1/200 because they were moving around and dancing.  I'm not sure why they were so noisy except that the meter was definitely thrown off by the backlit one little tiny window in a dark cabin setting and it messed with the camera and messed with me too.  But still, noisy at 640?  Grrr.  So these are not printable quality but still so much fun.  The kids had a blast dancing in their "spotlight" on the cabin floor.  I plan on coming back to this location and bringing either a reflector to bounce light back on them or an external flash for some very slight fill.  It's on my to-do list...

Gavin, who usually dances kinda sorta alot like Elaine from Seinfeld was actually busting out some serious dance moves.  It's possible I never appreciated his 'gift' before! :)   I just LOVE how the dress is beautifully lit up by that window backlight and poofs out perfectly as Ellie spins with it.  Magical.

 

It was sooo crazy windy the pinwheel tops blew off several times!  In this next shot Ellie finally notices that her brother has both his and HERS.  She is screaming "that's mine!" and running towards us at Mach 3 speed.

And with this last shot my memory card read "full."  The End.