About Lynda

 Hi there! If you’re new to the site and want to learn more about what you’ll find here, make sure you’ve read About Daily Window! The following is all completely personal information about me.

 My name is Lynda and I’m a cameraholic.

Currently, I live in Fort Worth, Texas with my husband Mark and our two sons. I’m in the process of removing their real names from this site, not because I’m scared they’ll be stalked by creepy people, but because I feel they have the right to clean Google search results for their names.

Boa is our youngest at a year and a half. His real name rhymes with Boa, so I call him this all the time. He’s a very loving little boy with a fierce temper and veracious appetite.

Mr. Serious is a little over three. Though he can be a clown and has a great sense of humor, he received this nickname as a baby as he’s always been very contemplative and observant. His favorite activities are those that require his concentration.

We also have a 7.5 lb Maltese “dog” (Teyla) and a 10+ year old Russian Blue (Leah).

My Love Affair with Cameras

As most shutterbugs, I’ve been interested in photography since childhood. Back then, all I had was a Kodak 110 (coincidentally, I can buy film for this camera, but finding a quality site that explains them is just about impossible.)

Finally, around high school I graduated to an automatic-advance 35mm. My uncle had an SLR of some sort and I thought I’d never own anything like it. I had no idea it was even an option to learn how to be a photographer and didn’t know a lick about it; I just liked taking pictures!

Shortly after I purchased digitalwoe.com in 2001, I bought my first digital camera! It was some 2 megapixel Kodak point and shoot. I fell in love with the instant gratification digital cameras have to offer! Within a year I bought a ridiculously expensive ($1000!) non-SLR: the Sony Mavica CD1000 (Go take a look at that honker! I’ll wait…)

In 2006, a few years and hefty bonus later, I decided to purchase a Nikon D50 with the 18-55mm kit lens. At the end of 2009, my kit lens broke and my father in law so graciously offered to buy me a replacement. (We were more than broke with Mark out of a job and I’d posted to Facebook to see if anyone was interested in buying my camera.)

After diligent research I settled on the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. I love it, but I’m itching to get another lens. We’re still broke as the LHC on day 2, so that will probably have to wait for a while.

I’m making it my goal this year to learn more about photography and photo editing through my participation in Project 365. I do have the basics of ISO, shutter speed and aperture down. I usually shoot in aperture priority mode, but I am comfortable manually exposing a shot as well.

I love to receive comments and I do not mind criticism! If you have any tips or tricks – would like to see the photo taken differently, whatever – please let me know! I will not be offended if you offer constructive criticism on any of my photographs or articles.

I do not aspire to be a professional photographer. I just want to take awesome photos of my kids and our life together so we can leave them something cool for their own families to enjoy one day.

More About Me and My Family

Mark and I met on the internet before it was cool. In October 1999 we met in person for the first time as he stepped off his plane from Texas. In April 2000, he uprooted his life and moved to Atlanta to be with me. Crazy stuff!

We were married at the end of 2002 and after the first rocky year we led a blissful child-free life until I found out I was pregnant at the start of 2007. Not all child-free couples are kid haters. I didn’t have any problem with kids, I just didn’t really know how to relate to them. I never held a baby and they were never around. I babysat for an 18 month old once. I felt silly trying to talk to anyone under the age of 8. Truth be told, I’m still not very comfortable with other people’s children. It’s easier, but still awkward. Hell, sometimes it’s awkward with my own kids.

For the child-free, there are very few things one can do which will completely ruin the child-free lifestyle and having kids is one of them. (Go figure!) I’m not sure about yours, but here are the chapters in my Child-Free to Parenthood Manual:

• No More Sleeping in on the Weekends.
• No More Sitting in Bed, Sipping Chicken Soup and Watching TV When Sick
• Will My Bedroom Ever Be Free of Babies?
• Going To The Movies Is Not a 5-Minute Decision Anymore
• Toughen Up Your Liver; You’ll Need a Lot of Alcohol
• The Sky IS Green: Picking Your Battles
• Better Get Used to Pulling Your Pants Down in Front of People

There’s little I can recommend more for a stable, supportive marriage than to hold off on getting pregnant for at least a year. Not that it can’t work otherwise, but these couples pregnant inside their first year of marriage amaze me. I’m pretty sure Mark and I would be divorced if we had kids so soon. Then again, maybe we both just had a lot of growing up to do.

We were financially stable and had rock-solid support for one another when we learned we were pregnant with Mr. Serious and living high on the hog.

I was happy to give up some of my child-free freedom to become a mother. Once Mr. Serious outgrew being a newborn and I realized I would once again sleep and be able to shower without hearing shrill cries of lonely desperation, I quite enjoyed being mommy. It was a good thing too, because because before he could even walk I found myself pregnant with Boa.

By the time Boa was born in June 2009, Mark lost his contractor job so he decided to become a stay at home dad. While he was a loving and involved father before this, I think this allowed him to bond to the boys, Boa especially, on an entirely different level. Whether he wants to believe this or not, seeing him interact with those boys on a daily basis was the most beautiful thing. He is an excellent father (not to mention a rock of a husband.)

In February 2010 we were presented a unique opportunity when Mark got a job in Forth Worth, Texas. As it’s his home state, we pounced on it and moved the family cross country by March. Everything fell in place as my employers for the past 9 years allowed me to remain on the team as a remote contractor. My mom moved with us and has been helping us by watching the kids during the day.

More About This Site

I’ve had a personal website in one form or another since 1996. In 1999 I began updating my site regularly with blips about what I found on the internet and what things were going on in my life. Back then, this was kind of rare. It may be hard to believe this since you can hardly sneeze on someone anymore who doesn’t have a blog.

A few years before the kids were born, I stopped blogging publicly, but by the start of 2010 I was itching for a new web project. While Project 365 invigorated my passion for photography, I still wasn’t learning as much as I wanted about the art. So in May 2010 I decided to launch this website: Daily Window. It’s a place where I can document everything I’m learning and hopefully inspire others to let their fears go, pick up the camera and learn how to shoot.

I love coding, organizing and analyzing data and to some extent, designing. This project allows me to flex those skills in addition to my writing and photography.

In 2001 I bought digitalwoe.com. I don’t know why I picked the domain name, I just thought it sounded cool. I thought it fit me. I wanted a place to document my life with photographs and stories. Nine years later, I don’t think I would have dreamed it would turn into this!

Over the years, this site’s been run on a plethora of blogging platforms. (Greymatter, Moveable Type, pMachine, ExpressionEngine and finally WordPress) I’ve always taken the time to thoroughly learn each platform, learn how to develop templates to customize my design, tweak the code to do my will and perform other magical feats. I try to share some tips through my blog when possible – there’s a rich world of ways to customize your content while keeping it classy!

Though Daily Window is still a baby, I am excited to grow it further, meet new people and soak up a ton of experience along the way.

If you’ve gotten this far – Welcome to my site! Please feel free to introduce yourself and your site in the comments. I love finding a new good read!