posed or unposed? a little adventure in California

It’s close to midnight and I don’t usually post this late but I’m trying to be scheduled this week for our “family challenge” we are doing and it all starts tomorrow so I’ve got to slap some things together here on the blog speedy quick so I can still keep up on my recording!

I’ve been thinking about posed vs. unposed pictures lately.

But first a preface:  we snuck the girls out of school for a few days last week and headed over to California to bask in family time.  I guess we are in a new phase of life where we have to call it “family” time even when someone isn’t there…otherwise we’d never have family time!  Gosh dang Hawaii took our Elle away.  But we were SO glad we got her when Max actually arrived.

And we were so thankful to be in this beautiful place with everyone we could get!

…riding around on bikes, the wind playing with our hair making us feel alive.

While we were there Grace and I had a little conversation about posed pictures vs. candid since she’s trying to get a little more photography under her belt.

I personally love love love unposed pictures.  Sure, the posed smiling ones serve a purpose and seem to be easier in lots of ways…especially since I’m in a rut with those puppies.

But there’s just something so beautiful about a non-posed picture.  Dave is personally really biased towards those ones.  Grace loves them too.  So I’m trying to get more of this:

 Rather than this:

 (Although Lucy’s still rocking the “candid”…she could NOT seem to pull her nose out of that book!)

 And this:

Ok, yes, those girls are darling and I love those smiles.  But I think it’s interesting as I look through the pictures we took…I’m so drawn to the more candid ones.

(Although come on, that last one was pretty cute.  LOOK at that BOY who’s with us!!  Still makes me smile every minute.)

Here are some good old iPhone pictures to show how foggy it was one of the mornings:

Max was teaching Claire some volleyball moves so they could get hot enough to scramble right into that freezing ocean in the fog:

Each of us came up with an exercise to do in each corner of this field.  For example, I started in one corner and chose 30 burpees.  So we all did those and then we ran to the next corner where dave picked jumping lunges and told us how many.  Next corner Max picked, and so on.  We did that twice around and ran to and from where we were staying so it was a good one.  

Why do I get so happy working out with my family?? 

It’s the “deck of cards” workout.  We divided our family into two teams and each team had to pick cards from the deck to figure out what they had to do.  You could do it with any exercise, but we chose to do sit ups when you drew a heart, jumping jacks with spades, squats with clubs and leg lifts with diamonds.  (The amount is determined by the number on the card you pick…and the jumping jacks were x2).  It was a contest to see who could get through the most cards first and Lucy was ALL OVER IT.  In fact, I think she came up with the idea.

Made me happy to have us scrambling all over the place, moving, breathing, working hard.

We spent one day at Knott’s Berry Farm where I think we waited in one line the whole day.

 That place was empty!

“Ghost Rider” was the ride that surprised us all…we weren’t expecting much but it was awesome!

 (Dave didn’t advocate very well for his position in that last picture…maybe he was protesting because it wasn’t candid 😉

Lucy was a good subject for a candid one though:

 (She did NOT want to go on the “scary” rides and was pretty content to wait for us with her book.)

Tea cups and swings were her favorite and she got her fill on those ones with no lines I tell you!

I thought the amount of timber used on Ghost Rider was pretty amazing.

 Here’s Max wondering if his mother really was going to talk him into going on the “Supreme Scream:”

 …which looked like this:

 That sucker was HIGH!

And it was SO fun.  I think everyone was glad I talked them into it.  Man, I really love a good amusement park I tell you!

I love riding bikes in California.  Especially when this is at the end of your ride:

 (Grace was working on her candids for that one above;)

 Lucy finished yet another book:

 Not much could pry her out of that thing…except for cards of course:

That girl is ON when it comes to those things.

So, back to the question…candid or posed?

HA!

We do love the family selfies in this family as inspired by that handsome guy up there in the middle.

Grace and I did do one night with more unposed experimentation in that beautiful place.  No posing allowed.  We need to do that more often…that’s kind of a fun challenge.

I’ll post those pictures tomorrow.

Until then, good night!
xoxo