Hello and welcome to my little home on the web. My name is Kelli Ann Wilson (née Copeland) and this is my blog. I’m mama to Lillia (12) and Zane (4), and wife to Damian. I’m also cat mom to an adorable, yet vicious, British Shorthair named Oliver Bear. I work part-time as an editorial assistant for a natural health magazine. We make our home in Walpole, NH, an idyllic town on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River Valley. Walpole is most famous for its chocolates and its award-winning documentary filmmakers. I have a B.A. in European History from Keene State College, but my interests span a wide range of subjects; currently, I’m very focused on photography, genealogy, and cultivating a faith-filled home (you can read more about that at my website around the year — a journey through the seasons & the Christian year).
Here’s what we actually look like (yes, I drew the pictures of us in the header):
20 random facts about the author
// I took piano lessons for eight years while I was growing up, but now I mostly play hymns and Christmas carols.
// My favorite book of all time is The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
// My favorite author is Sigrid Undset.
// I love poetry, but I am shamefully bad at writing it; my favorite poet is Mary Oliver.
// I’m an Anglican, and I attend St. John’s Episcopal Church in Walpole, NH.
// I am obsessed with Scandinavian culture, history & literature, especially the Sagas of the Icelanders.
// My favorite composer is Claude Debussy, and my favorite composition is “Má Vlast” by Bedřich Smetana.
// My birthday is 28 April, the feast of St. Gianna Beretta Molla; I am a Taurus.
// I love period films, but I can’t handle violence, so I have to choose carefully.
// I love small, fluffy animals (i.e. squirrels, rabbits, mice, etc); anything found in a Beatrix Potter storybook.
// My favorite season is Spring.
// I adore children’s books from the early 20th Century; I want to live in them.
// My favorite artists are Maxfield Parrish, Carl Larsson, and any of the Pre-Raphaelites.
// I spent a college semester abroad in York, England.
// One of my biggest regrets in life is that I never learned to draw.
// My middle name is Ann, for my maternal grandmother and for St. Ann, the patron saint of mothers and homemakers, and the grandmother of Jesus.
// My “personality type” is INFP.
// I’m currently enrolled in a postgraduate distance learning course in Parish Church Studies through the University of York (England).
cameras, lenses, & workflow
All photos (unless otherwise noted) posted prior to December 25, 2012 were taken with a Canon Powershot SX10 IS. This camera never actually belonged to me. My husband bought it for himself in 2008, but I think he took maybe a dozen pictures with it, total. Eventually my desire to take pictures, and my ability to take them, exceeded the capabilities of this camera.
I got my new camera, a Nikon D5100, from my husband for Christmas in 2012. When I pulled off the wrapping paper and saw what it was I cried because I was so surprised and so happy. It has been a total game-changer. I can finally take the photos I imagined in my head, but could never get to come out quite right with my old camera. It has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me as a photographer. While I know the D5100 is not a professional model, I still have a long way to go before I can justify shelling out the big bucks to upgrade my camera body. I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near outgrowing my current set-up. After shooting in (A) aperture mode for the first two years, I finally made the switch to (M) full manual mode this past winter.
For Christmas in 2013, my husband gave me a Nikkor 50mm 1.8g prime lens, and it is fabulous. I have been using it almost exclusively since I got it. For my birthday in 2014 my husband gave me the Nikkor 105mm 2.8d micro/macro lens and I have been working on learning how to use it — so far, I’m in love. For Christmas in 2014, I received a Nikkor 55-200mm f4-5.6g zoom lens. I don’t use it as often as my 50mm, but I have had a lot of fun taking pictures of birds and squirrels with it in the backyard!
I edit most of my pictures with Adobe Camera RAW & Photoshop CC (CS6). I use VSCO Film presets to make my photos black & white (or if I want to be extra-fancy). If you’re curious about my camera settings you can click on (almost) any photo from this blog and it will take you to the corresponding page on flickr, where you can view all of the EXIF data for that image.
Fonts used on this blog are Raleway and Dawning of a New Day.