Happiness, in Pictures

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.

- Ernst Haas

This week's assignment was: "shoot what makes you happy." Leaving class last week, I thought this would be the easiest thing ever. After all, we were headed the very next morning to Ohio to see family and puppies! As it turns out, I, along with my peers in class, found it very difficult to shoot pictures of the people/places/things that make me happy, and have the pictures themselves make me happy from a photographic standpoint. After all, it is fairly difficult to tangibly capture "what makes you happy." So I struggled all the way through today to find shots that achieved their stated purpose, and the results are below (as always, with the voted class favorite first). Of course, these photos are by no means inclusive of all the things that make me happy. :)

As you can see, I played with editting colors and dimensions a little more to make the pictures I would submit this week (in Picasa, because Elements and I do not yet see eye-to-eye). Note: I have decided that for all intents and purposes, I hate using flash. I am really struggling with letting go of Auto-Focus, though, and on top of that, verrrrry unsure about how to approach the assignment for next week. But the class is halfway over and I insist on coming out of this class with all of my goals met. So, onward! Let's see where this week takes me...