Cool Black and White

Took this picture of Julia earlier in the week and was playing with it today. I love black and whites.

Poor Julia!

Poor Julia has been sick all week (we are on week 2 of this horrible cough/cold thing) and tonight she took a spill at Mima and Stipa's. She managed to fall on the corner of the ring pull corner of their coffee table and it hit her just in the outer crease of her eye. Could have been a LOT worse.

Neil and I were very concerned b/c we couldn't tell how deep it was and thought she might need stitches or glue. But fortunately her dr. said she could butterfly tape it and it should be fine - not deep enough to warrant stitches.

She was VERY brave while it got cleaned out and patched up. She really didn't want me to take the picture, can you tell by her expression??

She's resting comfortably tonight and Dr. W said she'd be fine for her karate graduation on Saturday. What a little trooper!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We were 50% sick (Julia and I) and had a quiet day at my Mom and Dad's in town. The rest of the weekend was spent drinking lots of juice, resting and giving Julia 'round the clock breathing treatments. Fortunately we both feel better today.

Julia had to label all the parts of a picture of a wild turkey as her homework tonight so I had to find a picture of a real one to go off of. Here is the photo we used. No, I didn't take it myself (I wish), credit goes to John Ford from the National Wild Turkey Federation photo gallery downloads.

Gobble gobble!

Catchlights

I was finally able to get a set of shots with consistent catchlights. Not crazy about the school in the backround (so I cropped it out), but I was so excited about these shots of Miss G. Aren't her eyes the most gorgeous color??

Starting To Take Shape

I'm pleased to report that I caught some "good eyes" today. Here's one of Julia. Not wild about the hair bow, but oh well. I got a few of our friend Miss G that I'm digging too. Could this be progress??

Neil's Yellow Belt

Many, many years ago in a town far, far away a strapping young man named Neil worked his way up in the karate ranks to a status of green belt.

Here, we find our man Neil, not quite as young, a little closer to home and still very strapping -taking karate again. The kicks are lower, the splits not as far down and the muscles definitely don't recover as quickly but here he is doing it nonetheless.

As anyone who has taken karate will tell you, the white belt stands for courage, because it takes courage to go into that dojo for the first time. I would tell you that it takes even more the second time around.

Neil successfully graduated to his yellow belt Friday night. Yeah Neil!! I told him he looks like a fried egg now.

Who's YOUR Candidate???

Ok, one of the coolest websites I've seen and totally used (twice) is this one. Answer a few questions with your own opinions and see which presidential candidate shares most of your views. I apparently like all the dark horses since all of my top choices were people I'd never heard of before. Didn't make THAT decision any easier!

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/page?id=3623346

Week 2 - Feeling Dumber Than A Post

So, I'm starting to think this class is really a big pysch experiment where they strip down your self confidence and then reconstruct you from the ground up. Those of you who know me know that I hate not knowing what I'm doing, NOT a happy place for me. And, here I am.

On the upside, I feel fairly confident that I won't need to use the "green box" setting on my camera for too much longer. I am going to need to start brushing up on my photoshop skills though, because I can't seem to get exposure down with white balance and ISO all at the same time. I know, patience Daniel-San.

Here are a few from today. In an odd turn of events Julia wanted almost no part of this today and Devin was an almost willing participant. The blessing came in the form of some of our friends, adorable sisters Miss E and Miss C. Oh, and a guest shot from Zoey the Dog.

Birthday Party At NBC 30

Here are a few pix from Devin's kid party at our local NBC affiliate WVIT Channel 30. Our host was daytime anchor, Brad Drazen. We got there a little early and between commercial breaks they brought us right into the actual studio. We stood behind the programmed-motion camera (very cool) and got to watch the whole thing. I'm still reeling that all those kids were able to stay as quiet as they did. We got to check out the control booth in action too. The few of us adults that were there thought it was VERY cool.

After the live broadcast Brad talked with us, answered our questions and let the kids sit behind the anchor desk. We saw the teleprompters in action, the cameras, the green screen and the news room. In addition to the live broadcast we watched them tape 3 "Topicals". Those are the brief little snippets you get during commercial time that tells you what's coming up on the nightly news.

Devin got a remote control tarantula from one of his friends. It's pretty realistic and he's been scaring the cats and his mother all afternoon with it. Yuck! I have to say, it's a pretty great boy gift, so keep that in mind as the holidays come up.

After the tour we came back to the house for pizza and cake and lots of outdoor play. All in all a very "newsworthy" day!

Some Finalists For Homework

Here were a few of the ones I considered but didn't use for homework. Julia (and Lamby) were my models.

Model Search

So, I've been snapping away this week with the camera and wish I had more to show for it, but the sun is away and I've not captured any other homework worthy shots. But, I did get a couple cute ones of the cats. Since they get very little face time these days, I thought I throw them up on the blog. I give you Oreo and Max, my fuzzy babies...

Photography Class Week 1

I'm fresh from my first attempt at getting my homework done. On Deb's recommendation I'm taking the Foundations online photography course that she is just wrapping up. My first week's assignment isn't due until Sunday, but I was anxious to play today. Here are some first attempts. I've done nothing to edit them for lighting or color (which is killing me, BTW) as I'm trying to submit pix that are as close to out of my camera as possible. Here's the first batch. What do you think?