March assignment: Kristine

I didn't get out to take pictures nearly enough. Today was a beautiful day and I'm still not in the habit of grabbing my camera when I leave my front door. Sigh. Here's to hoping for more nice weather--and more photography!

Even so, I did take a few pictures, mostly on a single walk with my (not terribly patient) daughter. My representational is a flower (obviously) that I was so excited to see! I love this part of spring!


I'm going to call the cupcake picture I took on St. Patrick's day my abstract because the focus was supposed to be on the circles (and it's not really a food picture).


My last two pictures are textures (or so I'm claiming) of mailboxes in the neighborhood where I walk.

Rule of thirds: Kristine

I apologize--it's been a rather busy couple of weeks. Here are my submissions for rule of thirds:


This one only follows the rule of thirds in that approximately the bottom 2/3 of the image are taken up by cake.



In these two, my daughter is pretty clearly in the top right 1/3 position. I particularly love the action and the expression of joy on her face in these.

Somewhat by way of explanation, my brother in law got married yesterday and I've been madly getting things done so I could leave for the weekend. Here are a few pictures I took at the wedding:

Intro: Kristine Nielson

I'm a Utah native, though I've lived in California, Pennsylvania, or Indiana for most of the last 12 years. I am a graduate student at Purdue in the department of Earth and Atmospheric sciences, studying (of all things) the Great Salt Lake. Specifically, I'm trying to reconstruct the climate of the region around the Great Salt Lake using the stable isotopes of brine shrimp chitin. I used to grow sea monkies for my PhD, but I've killed them all off for now. They live on in my heart, as I've named my personal blog "seamonkiesrule.blogspot.com"

I have a husband and a 1 year old daughter (Sylvia), and a cat. I used to have a garden, but it's in hibernation thanks to the lovely cold weather.

I think I've always been a bit of a shutter bug, taking pictures mostly of family and friends, and quite a few of stuffed animals as a child. My husband is also an amateur photographer, focusing mostly on nature photography. I like nature photography, especially when we're out west, but I also like to take pictures of people. We got a new camera (a Canon Eos XSI) shortly before my daughter was born, which I use not nearly enough these days.

My husband's making fun of me for not including a picture of me "doing something cool," so here's a picture of me with a very friendly lizard: