He's Got Mad Skillz!

Update: What follows is the post I wrote on Monday, to which I attempted to paste some photos, causing my C: drive to get corrupted or crash or whatever it is doing. We are up and running (well, at least jogging slowly) on our spare system until my computer genius husband figures out what is going wrong. At least I can post photos to my blog again...

Michael often has to work on weekend days, and I had the kids to myself this Sunday. I really needed to get us up and out of the house as we had spent much of the week around the house.

I'm getting kind of bored of our neighborhood park, too, so I tossed them all in the back of the van and we headed down the road to a nice park with a playground and lots of shade trees.

Playgrounds are becoming much more fun now that the twins don't just wander away in different directions, not even noticing that they are leaving you far behind. They are finally developing that instinct to stay nearby and are even less likely to fall off play structures. It used to be all about preventing head wounds and was like herding cats. Now, I can spend a bit more time sitting in the shade and enjoying their playfulness than ever before.


I brought my camera along and got a couple good shots of each kid. Then, Noah asked if he could take some pictures. His grandparents got him one of those rugged kid cameras which is built really well, but I have to admit I am disappointed at the quality of the digital images it makes. It's kind of fallen by the wayside.


So with much insistence on carefulness and what not to touch, and how running with the camera is not allowed, I turned my beloved Digital Rebel over to my five year old son and told him to shoot away.

And I have to admit, while its hard for my Most Awesome Of Lenses to take a bad shot, Noah took some really fantastic pictures which I am posting here today. I did fix these up in Photoshop but I did not crop anything. All cropping was done by him in the camera.

I took the shots of Luka in my sunglasses and Noah's blue tongue, but the others on this page were taken by Noah. I have to say, I usually hate photographs of myself, but I think these shots are pretty darn great! Perhaps the best shots of me taken this year!

I may have to take my friend Wannabe Hippie's advice, and forgo the Fisher Price camera for something more breakable but with more quality.

I think he deserves it.

Photo Phriday

Great.

Now my friend Jen has (unknowingly) guilted me into doing another weekly theme (inspired by a snarky remark on my part) that I will feel bad if I don't meet said deadline on.

...sigh...

And it causes me to write rambling sentances that end with prepositions, too!

Maybe this is just my chance. I tend to feel like I can only post pictures here if they highlight what I am writing about. A picture of Noah when I write about Noah, a picture from the zoo when we go to the zoo. But sometimes I just really like a photo and post it to my flickr page.

But who sees that?

Wordless Wednesday, to me, must somehow tell a story wordlessly. If it is just pretty but doesn't tell a story, it doesn't make the cut. So, I am thinking that Photo Phriday might be my chance to post random pictures I just like. The ones that don't tell a story. Maybe a place to post pictures I have photoshopped since I am starting to play with actions and textures and such.

I may have over-shopped this particular picture of the white flower (camellia?) but I didn't have a lot of time as I am supposed to be packing stuff for the troups to go visit Mima to celebrate her birthday.

But then, there was that guilt thing.

Ah, well. Half hour later to Mima's house, I guess.

Photo Phriday

So, my friend Jen, solely on a little snarky remark I made on one of her posts, instituted a new theme day called Photo Phriday! And, like, who am I to not participate? I mean, I kinda feel obligated, ya know?

But also, who am I to look a chance to just randomly post a picture in the mouth? Or put all my gift horses in one basket for that matter!

I have a lot of photos that I like, and I don't usually post them here because they don't apply to whatever I am posting about, but maybe I could use this to remedy that situation!! So, for Jen's Photo Phriday, here on this beautiful Saturday morning, I give you the first photo I have ever sold! (Okay, I am doing the deal still, but hey! Some person in Alaska wants to buy a print of my photo to hang on her wall!!)

(YEAH, REALLY!)

I have been working on plowing through all the thousands of photos I took during the odyssey of tourism I was on during my parents' recent visit, photoshopping the best ones and uploading them to my flickr page. Feel free to go check them out.

And heck, Blogger's spell check ain't workin' again so don't hold me accountable for nuthin'!

My New Baby

Be warned…

this post is filled with photo-tech hoo-hah

and mumbo-jumbo that might be a snore

to people who don’t get off on cameras and lenses.

If that kind of thing bores the bejeezuz out of you,

move on along!

**************************************************

Have you noticed?

I have been drawn away from my blog by a new love lately. Can one cheat on their blog with a new camera?

My (good, dear, sweet, generous) hubby got me what I really wanted for Christmas this year! A new digital camera! Even though we didn't neeeeeed it! Not just a digital camera, but a digital SLR camera!

A Canon Digital Rebel XTi, baby!

But it’s not really the camera that I wanted, it’s the lens.

I love to browse through photos in flickr and I kept finding these photos that I was SO drawn to! They were pictures of a thousand different subjects, but they all had this super-tight depth of field where everything in front of and behind the subject was out of focus. But what was IN focus was SO crisp, and I wasn’t sure how to describe it but what was out of focus was… so… beautifully... out-of-focusy!

(There's the tech-talk I warned you about earlier!!)

Now I have taken a LOT of out of focus pictures in my life, and NONE of them looked good. That’s when, reading up on the Canon lenses these photos had in common, I learned the word BOKEH!!

Say it with me, now... BOKEH!!

I think it means “blurry, in a good way” in Japanese or something.

Folks started describing the photos I liked as having great bokeh, creamy bokeh, and even as being BOKEH-LICIOUS!!

The magic, I found, came from Canon’s glorious skills with optics, and the fact that some of their lenses stop down to 1.4, 1.2 and even 1.0 (their aperture opens REALLY wide!) This also allows the camera to let in more light in low light situations. I take LOTS of indoor pics and DESPISE indoor flash! So, another plus.

Am I boring you yet?

Long story short, Michael decided the expense was worth my giddy happiness, and since I take 99 percent of the family pictures, I should have what I want (isn’t he awesome??). And, reselling our current digital camera would offset the cost. So YAY! I started my research.

I found the lens I wanted… It stopped down to 1.2 and it was $1400!!

Hmmm… I found the next step down was very reasonably priced. No middle ground between them. This one stopped down to 1.4. Very respectable.

I hunted on flickr for pics taken with the camera/lens combo I lusted after could afford, and sure enough, lots of creamy bokeh to go around.

Sold!

I had read that the kit lens that comes with the Rebel is not so fab, so I opted to get the body only, and ordered the lens separately. The body showed up in time to go under the tree, but the lens finally came a few days ago.

I have been in hog heaven ever since.

I took a bunch of pics in the tiny backyard brick courtyard we have, and took the kids to our nearby park a few times, and shot about 4000 photographs. Not a one of them was above f/1.4! Even when it wasn’t the most appropriate setting! I just wanted Bokeh, bokeh, bokeh! Creamy Bokeh!!

So, forgive me that so many of my pictures for the next few weeks are going to have a super tight depth of field while I play and learn.

All these pictures were taken with the new gear. Also, my Wordless Wednesday pic of Noah and his friend in the previous post.

Oh, and just so my camera doesn’t get jealous of my lens… I have to say that the usability and ease of the digital rebel is really finding a sweet comfy spot in the corner of my little heart and settling in nicely.

A Thing of Beauty...

...is a joy, forever.

I am too giddy to write. I must go photograph...

I'm Big in New Zealand!

I got an odd email the other day.

This guy from the "regional council for the Waikato region in the North Island of New Zealand" wrote to me. He is a graphic designer for Environment Waikato, which is a "regional council that manages land, water, soil, air, coastal and geothermal resources in the central North Island of New Zealand."

Apparently, they like to change their banner header every three months and have it represent each season. And this season, being down under and all, is Summer!!

So, this guy asks if I would mind if he used part of one of my photos of Ethan that we took on the beach this summer (our summer, 6 months ago!). I thought, "why not?". They also put a graphic representation of a river through every picture they use. You will see that if you check it out. It should be their page header for three months or so!

So, I'm published! Sort of...

Check it out, here.

Spooky Face

Found this picture today by Irfan Khan via Associated Press . I in no way want to minimize the loss of this family, but THAT is a really cool picture! I love the skull-face in the house. This picture and other very good shots can be found here.

Blast From the Past: September

While looking for topics to write on, I thought it might be fun to post some pictures of our family from a year ago this week. That way we can remember what we were up to, how much time flies, and see how the kids have changed.

So, while going through my old photo files, I thought why not expand that and show a picture from each year. I apologize for the quality of some of these, as I did not have a good digital camera until about a year ago.

The first picture is from Sept 2003. Noah is not quite one year old. Don’t you love the Mohawk? It just did that naturally, and I missed it so much when it finally grew long and heavy and fell over that I occasionally and unsuccessfully moussed it back up. My friend there is Karen Egan who I met back when we went to Orange Coast College. She eventually became involved in Renaissance Faires and spends her life traveling with her kids from Faire to Faire. She homeschools her kids (alongside other Rennie kids) and loves it. Here, she was at an Ohio Faire and we drove down there to see her.

When we were living in Akron I heard about this awesome place called Nelson Ledges Quarry. Its a campground wrapped around a quarry-lake that is run by a bunch of deadheads who throw Grateful Dead type concerts nearly every weekend all summer. You laze on the beach all day, listen to a concert in the evening, and hang with cool neighbors in the evening, listening to the guitar music. We went at the end of that season and LOVED it, and were disappointed that we would not likely be back soon. (Then we got pregnant with twins and camping was right out) That is Noah sticking his head out of our tent, still wearing his jammies. It was September 2004, making him not quite two years old. Almost exactly the age that the twins are right now. He loved the drum-makers stall and the drum maker let him come over and bang away whenever Noah felt like it.

Next up is Noah in September of 2005, in the back room of the "River House", as Noah dubbed our lovely home on the Cuyahoga River (which used to look like this but now looks like this). He is playing on his "dollar store guitar" which was about the best dollar I ever spent. Kept him busy for hours each week. I think he has a bit of a black swollen eye there.

Also from September 2005 is one from the trip Michael and I took to Toronto because we knew we were pregnant with twins and it might be our last chance to go on a trip alone without kids for many years. We were right. That is Niagara Falls behind us, where we stopped on our way to Canada. That’s my big belly and chipmonk cheeks, too.

Lastly, we have a shot from a year ago this month. This is the day we were loading up the moving truck and saying goodbye to our friends before moving west. This shot includes the five of us, my mom and dad on the left, my brother on the bottom right, his kids Erin and Sam in the front row beside my mom, and the other four are the Crow family, close family friends for many years. Forgive some of us, as we were hot and sweaty from loading the moving truck.

Not lookin' our very best.

To say the least.

Hope you enjoyed this blast from the past. I think I might try to do this once each month. My photos are pretty well organized (although they only go back a few years) so it should be fairly easy to do.

Hope your September was lovely!

Technical Difficulties

We have been having some computer problems lately.

My beloved Adobe Photoshop crashed for some reason and then I found that my installation discs no longer would work. Probably scratched. Then, our main computer started to crash too, and so we switched to the laptop for a good long time. I was left with Adobe Elements with which to play with and color-balance my photos.

Elements is a pretty good program with a lot of short cuts that work very nicely to do some adjustments you do manually in Photoshop. It took some getting used to, but in the end I liked it.

But we just brought down our OTHER, other computer from Michael’s mom’s house and while we are on our third hard drive in as many months, we are back to our usual monitor screen.

THE PROBLEM is that while looking back on the photos I retouched and color-balanced while we used the laptop, I see that many of them are way off color, and often horribly over-saturated! Now, I often like to bump the saturation a bit, especially for online use, but that photo down there of Vera and me looks like someone spilled Kool-Aid and Jell-O all over it! I am going to have to go back and re-do that.

But also, over at Mama Says Om, they chose my picture of the twins sweeping to be representative of the weekly theme, "responsibility", and eeeeewwwww, now that I see it on my good monitor, it is a nasty fluorescent yellow. Yuk.

Well, I am thrilled to find that this new (old) hard drive HAS a working version of Photoshop on it, and I am back to my good monitor, so I hope you will forgive the overly-Technicolor pictures of old, and find that my work is looking a little nicer, soon.

I leave you with this overly-contrasty but color-balanced self-portrait of a giddy Michael and I on our little vacation at the Sheraton.

Through the Eyes of a Child

Every time I pull out the camera and take some pictures of the kids, Noah will inevitably ask if he can take some pictures. I usually say yes with the same lecture about how fragile a camera is and "What are the rules?"

"No touching the screen.

No touching the lens.

No dropping the camera.

The camera is fragile."

.

"AND????"

.

"And, a camera is not a toy."

yadda yadda yadda.

When I realized how much he loved taking pictures of the world around him, I started allowing him to use the camera more often. I started teaching him about framing a shot and different vantage points. He takes some interesting shots!

So I finally decided to open an account for him on flickr so that his pics and mine wouldn't get mixed together. I will put up some of his best ones.

He took this photo of Ethan. Yes, that is Luka back there standing on the bench trying to figure out how to climb over the fence.

For more pictures by Noah, check out his Flickr Page by clicking here!!