Photography: Weekend Love

It's been a slow creep, a slow thing to accept, but we're there.

I'm officially a homebody.

I love being home, and I will move mountains! skyscrapers! to be home.

It was a great weekend. It was also another ridiculously beautiful fall weekend (see morning pictures above!) Friday night happy hour was spent with my best best best friend to celebrate our 10-year-friendiversary! Saturday, I spent pretty much all day happily pinballing around my place.

Today I ventured allllll the way to the west loop (this is like a $7 cab ride or a 25 minute CTA commute, basically nothing, I am just that used to being within a .5 mile radius at all. times.) to meet my SCFWSC cohorts at RM Champagne Lounge for brunch.

Because I am still a huge pansy about taking my camera out in restaurants, I have zero/zilch/nada photos of this very fun brunch.

Instead, I have photos of the rest of my day: hanging out with my sister and her manfriend for Sunday night pot roast followed by a looooong walk home. That eternal journey turned out to be a great chance to practice my nighttime photography skills. It also was actually all of 15 minutes, but thanks to daylight savings time (the end of DST? the beginning of it? the second coming of it?) it felt like a million-mile-hike because I am old, and it is past my bedtime.

I hope your weekend was every single thing you wanted it to be!

My weekend in 11 photos

 

Every photography tutorial/blog/etc that I read says that you MUST SHOOT IN MANUAL, at all times, to really learn how to use your camera.

That... is difficult. The pictures turn out so nicely in any of the helper modes! (Aperture priority, I'm looking at you.)

BUT! Those photographers, those tutorial-writers, they know their stuff... because it's true. The more I practice and play in manual, the more I learn and the easier it gets. Also, some really fun stuff is starting to happen.

I had no. earthly. idea. my camera could take a photo like the one I took above of the lake at night! And I'm pretty sure that never would have happened in automatic.

So, I pretty much snapped away all weekend.

1 // Fact: cloudy days make better sunrises

2 // Tortellini, mozzarella and tomato skewers with balsamic glaze for game night 

3 // New print from a small boutique just outside Chicago (read: Ikea) -- a series of animal sketches by Picasso

4 // Saturday nights in + practice practice practice 

5 // Officially fall

6 // The Chicago skyline from Olive Park

7 // Loving the (city-sanctioned) street art at Illinois + LSD

8 // Olive Park walking West

9 // Old and new: animal-print Turkish jewelry dish + a landscape from my grandfather

10 // Pumpkin seeds with S&P, garlic powder + smoked paprika (the trick is not to wash them first!)

11 // Jack-o-lanterns! 

Unpictured: Cards Against Humanity (yikes), strawberry + balsamic pastries by my sister, multiple trips to Dollop, Portillo salads, Ikea madness, Uncle Julio's carry-out, my first Divvy ride ever. 

I hope your weekends were great, too :)