I happen to think shadows look more powerful in black and white photography, but that is simply my personal opinion. I've seen some amazing color photos with shadows, I just don't happen to have mastered that skill . . . yet. I'm not great at beautiful shadow photography, so this photo challenge was good for me as it really did challenge me to do something different . . . to think about things a bit differently and look for shadows in my everyday life.

Sadly, it rained this past week for four days straight and the past two days have been less than appealing to pop my head outdoors. Instead, I opted to search my house for some appealing props and cast some shadows myself. My kids thought it a great adventure and helped me set up a small studio in my dining room while we searched out shadows in our home.

Normally I would not seach out shadows and if I am being completely honest, I certainly look for ways to lose shadows all together in my photos. However, do you know that shadows are virtually everywhere you look when you are looking for them? Mastering shadows in photography is all about lighting skills. Lighting skills is not something this gal is great at because I really depend on natural lighting.

However, I enjoyed this challenge and actually picked up my camera with a great incentive to take Black and Shadow photos this week. Below are my efforts.

I literally took about 100 photos of these tulips at varying angels with the light equipment at every angle and location that I could possibly place it. My son was a great help in moving around the lights! There are plenty of dudes, but I actually captured some beautiful shots as well.

My son really enjoyed this sets of cups and moving them around for me in my quest to capture heart shadows with the handles. Again, this was a great lesson with lighting equipment and angles.

I was getting a bit frustrated with this shot as I could not locate a "circle" in my house to save my life. I either located too large or too small of a circle. My son told me to use one of my rings, but they all have stones so I didn't think any of them would work. He pointed out that I should use my wedding band as it is completely round and without any stones.

Today we said prayers of Supplication. This next set of photos I took on Saturday with my kiddos as we trudged through the snow on a frozen pond looking for an adventure. I was looking for shadows and black, but my kiddos were looking for sticks and animal tracks. I took this photo a couple of weeks ago, but simply had to include it.

However(and this is a huge however for me), I have never {NEVER} taken my wedding band off since it was placed on my finger 12 years ago. NEVER! I refuse. Call me weird or skeptical or whatever, but I will not take my wedding band off, not even for a great photo op! I used my engagement ring instead and it turned out okay. I placed my ring on the page we use for daily prayers. Each day the children and I say a prayer together and pick one of the ACTS mnemonics {Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving & Supplication}.

This is my new baby niece who I am missing something terribly. We don't live near my brother and his family and it is sad as we are quite close. We are missing out on all the wonderful moments they are having right now with a new baby in the house. My brother didn't want to take photos holding his new daughter, but I sort of forced him and told him he would regret it later in life. He was very uncomfortable and the slumbering baby could feel his discomfort and she woke and started fussing a bit. I was able to capture some photos and I think they turned out beautifully. He still doesn't like them though.