Giving Thanks

We celebrated early this year because Connor had to work on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2016 from Vanessa Rutters on Vimeo.

All of our holidays have turned into super low key affairs in the last few years. And that's the way I like it.

Laid back. We all had a good time and ate way too much.

XOXO, Ness

Selfie Portraits

The art of the self portrait. I'm still working on it.

I don't know why I kept fidding with my hair, but it gave me something to do.

This is oddly my favorite. I don't know why, but I really like it for some reason!

I'm not a huge fan of self portraits. Mostly because it's hard to take a good one. For me at least. I'm just not very good at it! Not that I care that much, I'd much rather be photographing other people instead, but it's nice to know how to do sometimes. Selfies get old...

Anyways, I had my backdrop up, so I figured why not give it a try? My mom and I (and I guess Connor helped a little) worked hard at getting that thing up and looking good for Christmas pictures. And it really did look cool! But it's such a pain to get all set up, so I wanted to get all the use out of it I could!

There were a surprising amount of pictures that I actually wound up liking.

I used all three of my lenses, and once again, the 50mm prevailed! That one has been my tried and true from day one. I'd love to upgrade it, but that probably won't be happening any time soon... 50mm f/1.2, you are on my list!

My zoom lens and my 18-55mm were so hard to focus... My camera has autofocus, but it really only works when someone is actually pushing the button to take a picture, so I had to guess, and I was wrong a lot. Ha!

 A lot of the photos turned out blurry or grainy. Which was a bummer when I uploaded them because most of them looked good on my tiny camera screen! But I had a bunch that did turn out so I can't really complain.

That said, when you take 400 photos, some of them better turn out or you're doing something very wrong!

I doubt I'll be doing it again for a while. I feel so vain taking self portraits! But they look so much better than selfies! Til next time! And let me know if you have any tips!

XOXO, Ness

Fly, Girl. Wings Over North Georgia

It blew my mind how close some of the planes flew to one another! Crazy!

Captain America plane?

Me: Smile!
Grandpa: Look an airplane.
This is why I prefer candids.

Mr. Happy

Upside down. Makes my stomach do a somersault just thinking about it.

Our setup. 😂  We should have brought a few beach umbrellas for shade.

FALL PLEASE STAY PLEASE IT'S BEEN SO HOT.

This bird was quite the source of entertainment between performances. And he just sat over there the whole time! We must have been too close to his nest for him to come back.

I'm pretty sure this plane had "Jelly Belly" on the wings.

Lucas... Oil?

My dad said it was a World War II flag. I couldn't see it.

The coolest part of the parachuting was the pink smoke.

The first Thunderbird got there early and basically gave us our own personal show! He flew right over us a couple times. My grandpa said, "You'll hear them when they get here," and he was not kidding! They were so loud! It was deafening!

Just flying upside down. Casual.

This was crazy!!

Wings Over North Georgia Air Show from Vanessa Rutters on Vimeo.

I love airplanes.

Well, I love watching them. I don't actually know anything about planes, but they do fascinate me. I have always loved watching airplanes land and take off, and I've always wanted to go to an air show, so I was excited to go to one. But to clarify, we didn't actually go. We parked on some road my grandparent's knew of and watched it for free.

I can't imagine that we would've seen much more in the air if we had actually bought tickets. I know there would have been a lot more on the ground we would have seen, but I don't feel like I missed out on anything.

And it was super cool to have the Thunderbirds fly by us. One of the Thunderbirds got there early and flew right over us a couple times! It was awesome. My grandpa told us the highlight of the show would be the Thunderbirds and he was right!

They were so loud. I can't even describe it. Deafening. But only when they wanted to be because they were also completely silent. It's crazy!

All those planes doing those things though... Upside down. Loopty loops. Coming straight down looking like they're gonna crash. And those crazy pilots that cut their engines part of the way down. NUTS! I would poop my pants for sure.

It was SO HOT. I should not be getting sunburns in almost 90 degree weather at the end of October. That's ridiculous! We were okay for the first few hours because we had some shade, but in the afternoon, it was brutal. 

This was by far the hardest thing I've ever tried to film. I wanted to use my zoom lens to get close shots, but when I was zoomed so far in, if I lost the airplane, I couldn't find it again! I brought my tripod but couldn't use it because some of the planes flew literally right over our heads and I couldn't see what I was filming with the camera on the tripod. So it was all freehand.

I thought it would be an easy, fun little thing to film. I should know by now that there is no such thing.

One thing I've noticed with my camera... There are little spots on all my photos and videos. It doesn't matter what lens I use, but I did notice that it tends to be worse when I'm outside? I have no idea what it is, but I'm guessing it's something to do with the actual camera. It's so annoying though! I guess I'll have to do some research and see if it's a thing or something I'm doing, but again, SO ANNOYING!

So I did some research, and apparently there's dust on my sensor, so I have to very carefully clean it. Yikes. Wish me luck!

XOXO, Ness