I'm watching you

Our six month old has started noticing there is a world outside his crib. He pulls down the baby bumper (for my single friends, there really are baby bumpers -- ours is something softer than rubber. It has turtles on it). He pulls down the turtle baby bumper and peeks over the edge of his crib. It's hard to leave him in there, if you see those big brown eyes looking at you. This was taken by my wife. She got some shots of him standing up in his crib too. She put an oscillating table fan in his room. She read research that keeping the air moving reduces the chance of SIDS. When he wakes from a nap, he likes to stand up and watch the fan going back and forth. Everything is exciting when you're a baby.

Here is our oldest with the camera her aunt bought her for Christmas. We were geocaching and looking for nature pictures at Stillwater Prairie Reserve. She got the princesswear for Christmas too.

geocaching at sunset

It's fuzzy -- I know. This was taken with a self timer and the thing focused on the pylon in front of the girls. You can see a screw in the lower left corner that is in perfect focus. As proof, my shoulder is in the upper right corner. This isn't to say that i don't take out of focus pictures -- I just wanted to post this one because I like it despite its deficiencies. The daughter on the right was nervous of the deep ditch on the right. She really didn't want to be that close to the edge. I think (despite the haze) you can see the concern in her eyes. If it was clear -- I could have cropped it in closer, but I think it would have lost some of the intrigue. We were at a bridge near the Stillwater Prairie Reserve for a geocache -- one of the few we've found.

My piano-playin' girl

Our daughters have this anxiety over talking to people. That's what makes this short video amazing to me. This is our oldest daughter playing "Ode to Joy" at our church... in front of about 50 people. The girl can't bring herself to say "thank you" to a bank teller who offers her a piece of candy, but she can play the piano in front of a church full of people. Taken with a fuji finepix j10. It does pretty good in a  dark church. Most of the still pics on here will have been shot with an old Nikon D50. It has no video capability and, though I've owned nothing but Nikons since my dad bought me an FG for my birthday, I'd definitely suggest a Cannon for the auto focus.

Lighting

I'd like to say I took these with some real sepia-tone film, then developed them -- truth is I used Picasa. I love the lighting in this coffee shop. It's an old downtown department store with big windows facing west I believe. The interior is dark colors making for some nice lighting.

Tic Tac Toe!

The girls like a giant tic-tac-toe board at a local coffee shop. We spent time there getting some pictures Saturday.

large format

If you've ever seen a picture of Ansel Adams taking a picture -- he used this large box with a wooden tripod. The whole thing looked like the guy was hiking through the desert with a microwave oven and accompanying stand on his shoulder. I've been interested in photography since I was about 12 years old, but I saw my first large-format camera this week. A crusty old guy was taking a picture of a local church with one. I'm not sure how you would even go about finding a developer, but it was so neat to see someone doing things the old fashioned way. I don't miss the anger that came when you got that little Kodak pouch and found you'd left the exposure compensation was off-set by three stops and a 24-exposure roll was ruined. I think he can keep the plates and long hours in the darkroom -- I'll keep my D50 and ability to delete my bad shots.