Back into Routine

School started today. Actually I'm excited for this school year, I think it's going to be the best one yet. I'm homeschooled, but I go to a two day a week homeschool co-op, so I still have teachers, classes and classmates (although to put in perspective, the entire highschool at the co-op has 33 students). It was a little nerve-wracking in English, because we're already talking about SAT's, actually, our the point of our whole English class, for the first half of the year, is preparing and practicing for them. (Then starting in March we switch to a pre-thesis class). I feel like Harry, Ron and Hermione at the beginning of the 6th book when professors start talking about the OWL's right from the very first class and Harry keeps thinking how far away the OWL's are, and yet the creep up on them so fast :) lol... I'm a total Harry Potter lover, in case you didn't know. :D

I do love summer, but in all honesty, by the time Sept. rolls around, I'm ready for school. I like the order and schedule the school year brings. And I like to learn - I don't like all the hard work, but I do like discovering new things. 



I'm excited for the debates we'll be getting into later this year when we read Martin Luther's writings. I'm excited for the creative writing assignments we'll be given after reading Dante's Inferno, Utopia and Shakespeare's Henry IV.
I'm excited to read Utopia simply because it's in one of my all time favorite movies, Ever After. "The Prince as read Utopia?" (Danielle) "I found it sentimental and dull. Honestly, the plight of the everyday rustic bores me."(Henry) :)

And most of all I'm excited to grow in my faith and relationship with our Lord.
~Mary Kate
(As a side note, the first picture was taken this past spring, the second picture was taken last fall with my old Kodak p&s and the last picture was taken at the end of this past July)

Looking Back

Recently I've been thinking about when I started to love photography. I think in my "about me" page I said about 2 years. Which is how long I've been knowingly loving and obsessing with photography. But actually I have  loved cameras and pictures since I was a little girl. I bought my first camera at 7 years old, it was a small, cheap (I think $5 or $7) plastic film camera. I remember that the only thing I wanted was this $20 Barbie camera but I didn't have that much money and my mom said I had to pay for it myself if I wanted it. Then when I was 11 years old, right before my mom gave birth to my  5th sibling I bought my very first digital camera, I was very excited and had saved $100 to buy a Kodak point and shoot on eBay. I remember looking on eBay at expensive cameras and telling my mom "someday I'll have one of those big black cameras", I didn't know that in 4 years I would indeed have one "of those big black cameras". :)
{Two picture from my $100 Kodak p&s}

Then my mom lost my camera (she dropped it in a parking lot and forgot about it) so she had to buy me another $100 camera, but even a year a half later, the new $100 kodak camera, was better than the first.
{Two photos from my second $100 Kodak camera}
These two were some of the very first "photography" photos I took:

 Then in last year at the very end of May '10, I upgraded to a $400 Kodak point and shoot, it took great pictures if the light was great but not so great in bad lighting.
{Two photos from $400 camera}

And then this past March (2011), I finally bought a DSLR, a Canon T2i.
I've happened to take a lot of similar photos with my DSLR as I did with one of my old cameras, so I've put together Then and Now collages:

It's fun to see how my skills have grown with more practice, better editing and better equipment. Be sure to let me know if you do something similar, I'd love to see how your photography has grown!
~Mary Kate