it started...

"Cabin Trip"

Back in 2004, my husband (boyfriend at the time) bought me my first digital camera from a wonderful windfall.  I had been taking pictures for many years, but not that many because film can be expensive for someone with no money.  Obviously, I started taking a whole lot more pictures and got nice encouragement from my friends and family.

Two years later, we took a trip to my husband's family cabin about four hours away with some good friends from another city.  The cabin is a vertical log cabin, located in north central Wisconsin, with no insulation besides the chinking between the logs.  In the area between the kitchen and the dining area, you can lift up the rug and look through to the ground below.  This was in February and it was -20 degrees F during the day and we had arrived around 3pm. The sun was just starting to set.  The cabin is heated with a wood stove and a wood burning cook stove if needed when it gets cold.  We made dinner and waited with just about all of our winter clothing on for it to get a little warmer. The light in the cabin at sunset, and the cabin itself, is just about my favorite thing in the world. We tried for hours, but couldn't get the mercury to go above 40 degrees.  We eventually bailed for the smaller, and easier to heat, bunk house.  I took this picture just before we packed everything up.  I wasn't taking pictures.  I was just sitting at the dining room table, but when I saw the fading sunlight on Eric's arm, I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped this picture.

This picture was a turning point in my photography.  I entered it into a few shows and won a little prize money from it.  I started taking even more photos and entering those into shows.  But, lately, I have been in a slump.  So, this is going to be your standard I'll-start-a-blog-and-post-a-picture-every-day-to-get-my-mojo-back blog.  I don't know if it will work.  I don't know if it works for other people.  But, it sounded fun to a amateur photographer sitting around the house by herself one Saturday.