Little Corner of Ania

The day before the Ascension (Christian holiday, last Thursday) me and my oldest went to Oslo. I’ve brought Amalie alone with me before, so when we were gonna break the news to her that this time, Adrian would go with me, she quickly asserted that yeah indeed, it was his turn now since she’s been with me before. Phew!

Here we are at the airport in Oslo.
The reason for us going to Oslo was because my step-sisters daughter (which I guess would be my step-niece, if we’re gonna think in terms of family-relationships) was going to have her very first Communion. 
Attending a Mass (?) isn’t something I do like, every day, and the little rites and stuff that differs from what I’m used to are both beautiful and intriguing.

Like using incense, quickly filling the huge church with the familiar scent. When I was little my father liked to use incense once in a while when meditating and stuff :p

Here she is, walking down the aisle in her beautiful gown looking very very happy… “Oy look at this candle I’m carrying!”…or something like that :p
The Catholics who did their first Communion this Thursday was a mixed bunch with different traditions as to what to wear for their first Communion. I thought everybody (well, at least the girls), would be dressed like Zara, who’s Polish Catholic, with minibrides-dress and headgear – but no – the Italic Catholics seemed to have different dress-codes, aswell as the Asian Catholics and so on and so on. Most were dressed prettily though.

Adrian admiring the architecture of the Church.

I love such stained glass windows. I’m pretty sure I could get lost in such a Church taking in (and shoothing!) all the little details. :) (Only, I’d bring a tripod if I had the time & space I guess :) )

Ey, that’s my father checking out what I’m shooting. In this example, him :p

Peeking..

“Immagonnaeatit!”  
Walking past with the Body of Jesus :p

Love this twirl of her hair :)

 Tuva – sorta finding the whole Mass pretty……boring. Rebecca too in the background.

  Love this shot! She looks so grown up and so confident :)

“Oooh auntie, this is sooo boring!”. Poor thing :)

Her dress was special-ordered from Polen. Beautiful :)
(not too fond of this kind of editing, w/soft light turning the photo slightly blurred, but figured it sort of fit this particular photo..?)

All done – on the way out :)

“We’re soon done, Tuva, soon…”

I was fairly bummed because they said they would have a group-shot in front of the Church (St. Olavs Church), but as I was coming out from the Church (not being one of the last ones!!) I heard them do a countdown – and hurried down the stairs – only to snap this overblown photo (serves me right – for such hurried moments I guess using aperture-mode would be best instead of manual when not being really good at adjusting from indoors to outdoors in a snap..at least I got the ISO down :p) just as the group dissolved – duh. Ahwell.

Got this one of Zara and her mother on the way to the car, though:p

No idea why Tuva is giving Adrian the look here, but found it pretty amusing :) We had some time to kill before the dinner started, so we waited at a nearby Cafe for some Latte/Mocca/cocoa :)

I did all the indoor-Church-photos w/ISO1250-1600, but am thinking I could probably have done ISO2000/2500 and instead tried to make sure to expose them correct/overexpose them slightly to minimize the noise. Hm. Definitely needed to up the shutterspeed at some photos, which turned slightly blurry, bleh. Oh, and WTB 70-200 f/2.8, I used my 24-70 f/2.8 during the whole trip – and from where I was placed I guess a 70-200 would have been quite handy. Also, I need to get some sort of noise-reducing program (or at least CS5 - *drool*). I used to have Noise Ninja, but it wouldn’t work with CS4 so it’s a bit bleh having to load CS3 for NN only sorta. None of the photos were run through any noise-red. program, which shows in some of the areas, but ahwell. It’s sorta charming no? ;p

Anyways. Slightly annoyed when people kept telling me to not use flash, when I DO NOT USE THE FLASH.AT.ALL. I am aware of the customs of photographing a Mass (or inside a Church for that matter) thank you very much, and it’s surely not to use flash (ok if you’ve spoken w/the priest in advance + it’s like, the bride walking the aisle or something like that, but that’s another case. Still prefer to not depend on the flash).
Also, sort of wished I could move around as some other (with on-camera-flash!) did, but I was a good girl and stuck to my appointed bench. I guess it’s ok to not work for once too, although I did take a few photos still :p

Right.

Tomorrow’s the National Day of Norway, I’ve got three cakes to bake and need to get some scrappy stuff done aswell. Off to “work”! =)

Ps. Am sorta feeling unsure re the Live Writer and how it treats my photos, I’m sharpening and saving them for web, doing my best to optimize them for display, but I feel they look diff and slightly off / not too sharpened when online. Could it be something that’s happening when Live Writer posts the pictures to the web? Something with the blogformat? Hmmm. Prob just me who sees the diff, but it’s annoying :/