Business

Holy schnikes, Disneyland is two days away! Boy howdy that snuck up on me fast. Needless to say, Disney prep is under way. The plane ticket issue (15,000 miles vs. 30,000 miles needed to get half off the fare) has been worked out (in the form of money being returned to the credit card-woot!), our shuttle bus has been selected - and it is a bus so no travel with toddler seat is required, I bought stuff to create our own version of gorp to help sustain us as we march through the land of Disney, and I'm getting laundry done and the house to a reasonable level of cleanliness before we head out. Darr will be enjoying at least one day at the mountain - ski season is upon us, people! But he's committed to getting us to the airport and to be there to pick us up when we arrive home.

In other news, our oven quit on us so I have to stay close to home tomorrow because the repair folks are going to call sometime before 9:30a.m. to let us know the window of time in which they might appear. Great. Also, daycare is closed tomorrow (on a Wednesday?) to observe something (I know it's Veterans Day, don't get your panties in a bunch) and I actually ended up volunteering to watch another friend's kid. Clearly she caught me in a moment of weakness. But I figure with the calamity of errors that has been our life lately, I should take the initiative to build up some good karma. As if that wasn't going to keep us busy enough, my sister-in-law is coming over in the afternoon to work on some decorations for Miss Amels's second birthday, which is rapidly approaching.

Oh, and I just had to stop at the mall this morning to grab a little something for Miss Sofia. Her new parents live out of state so preparing and taking over dinner is out of the realm of possibility but I've found a service, much like Delivered Dish here in P-town, that they can use to order food in the event they become too sleep deprived to whip something up in the kitchen. Good friends don't let their friends cook while sleeping.

So, Internet, how are you doing?

Aperture's my favorite

I shouldn't say this. It's only going to hurt Shutter's feelings. But it's true. Aperture's my favorite. Today, I shot one of the vinyl wall stickers we have up near Henry's changing table in our bathroom over and over again, running through all of the f-stops. Because I need to do this over and over again in order to have the information sink in. The first photo is way overexposed, the last is too dang dark, but some in the middle are just about awesome. Or rather as awesome as a vinyl wall sticker in a bathroom above a changing table can be. When I try to do this type of experiment with the shutter, it doesn't go well because after a certain point, the shutter speed slows down enough to require a tripod or for me to accept defeat in the form of a blurry picture. (For me, that was when the shutter was at 1/10.) Rather than post all 22 pics, here's a glimpse at what my iPhoto library looks like after today's photography fun. Kind of makes you want to run right out and buy your own DSLR so you can join the party, doesn't it?

In non-photography related news...

Miss Sofia Karafezova

Born on November 5, 2009 at 9:40p.m. to our good friends Petar and Svetla. Baby and parents are home and adjusting to life together. We can't wait to meet her!

Is there a dinosaur in there?

Henry recently had a photo shoot and I tried to pay attention to see if there were any techniques our photographer used, besides just being generally awesome, that I might employ later on. Turns out she's noticed toddlers can be a bit dodgy when it comes to posing. But one thing you can do to stop 'em in their tracks is to ask if there's a <insert item here> in the camera lens. I've been doing this with Henry a lot since then. "Hey, Henry? Is there a dinosaur in there?" This makes him do two things that are rather helpful - come close enough to look for a dinosaur in the lens and stand still for a millisecond. But sometimes I still like to catch him when he's just doing general boy stuff, like tinkering with toys.

Shutter 1/200 Aperture f/1.8 ISO 1600

I also noticed that iPhoto has a retouch option in editing. Henry happened to have a bloody nose last night, he gets these a lot, and had a bit of dried blood on his nose. The retouch wand didn't do as good a job as I'm sure you could do in a program like Photoshop Elements but it did the job well enough.

Shutter 1/200 Aperture f/1.8 ISO 1600

Shutter 1/200 Aperture f/1.8 ISO 1600

Salted Roast Turkey with Herbs and Shallot-Dijon Gravy

Um. I just threw up a little in my mouth.

NEVER should you mention turkey and gravy with dijon. Mustard gravy? Yuck.

Weeee! Day 7 of NaBloPoMo and photography is FUN!

Shutter 1/125 Aperture f/1.4 ISO 800 Tungsten

My first week of NaBloPoMo comes to an end. I have taken over 500 photos since our class last Sunday, and I haven't switched the camera to automatic mode once. Yay, me! I feel much more comfortable working with manual mode. Initially I had thought I'd use one of the priority settings but I'm sort of figuring this out just by jumping in. Now when I first break out the camera, I immediately turn it on and adjust the ISO and white balance. If we're in low light situations, I usually go with a lower (meaning higher) aperture setting and take a shot or seven to figure out which f-stop is working before tweaking the shutter speed. I'm hoping Henry will at least become slightly more cooperative when taking his picture as he grows older. It really is a challenge to get this boy in focus lately.

Preserve and protect, eh?

Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, is quoted as saying the following in regards to the restrictive abortion amendment:

"It is the duty of the government to preserve and protect human life."

And I read this and I think to myself, really? Really? Because as she's saying this, she's busy voting against giving all (or nearly all) Americans access to health care. Doesn't giving people access to health care go a long way to preserving and protecting human life?

Whatever.

I'm in a mood. I'm sitting here with a glass of wine, and I'm in a mood. The kind where I'd like to pick a fight. I'm willing to pay more in taxes if it means that me and everyone else has access to coverage. (When I use the word access, I'm not talking about the ability to drive to the nearest E.R. I'm talking about the ability to see a doctor as needed to get treatment without such visits bringing about financial ruin.) Here's what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't use my own moral compass to decide the procedures everyone else in the country should or shouldn't have. You don't want an abortion? Don't get one.

A Dock Story

Today I got to go to the dock with my mom and Bea. Docks are fun. They sit on water. Our dock is made of wood mostly, except for this one part that attaches one part of the dock to the other. This part is made of metal and is the most fun part. I got to slide down it head first.

Shutter 1/1000 Aperture f/2.5 ISO 200*

And then I got to crawl up it.

And then I slid down it backwards.

And I got to lie on it.

And roll on it.

Rolling is the most fun part of playing on the most fun part of the dock.

So, in conclusion, I like docks because docks are fun.

*All pics taken with these settings.

Beauty products

Today's photography post is inspired by the beauty products I recently picked up at Sephora. I wanted to blog about the facial cleanser and makeup remover I bought anyway because they are both AWESOME, but I also wanted to take some pictures to work on my photography skills - this seemed an efficient way to do both. At the condo, impediments to capturing shots include toddlers and cats, as we see here:

Shutter 1/100 Aperture f/1.4 ISO 800 Tungsten*

Shutter 1.3 Aperture f/16.0 ISO 1600 Tungsten

Shutter 1/125 Aperture f/1.4 ISO 1600 Tungsten

Shutter 1.3 Aperture f/16.0 ISO 1600 Tungsten*

The white balance is off. I tried to recalibrate (my descriptive word, I'm not sure if it's the right word) and use the preset setting taken off the lights in our house but it didn't work well. The colors are still off but it's less yellowy-orange than it was so I guess that's better, eh?

*The f/16.0 stop is the highest my lens could go. I'm currently using the AF-S Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4G on the Nikon D40x body.

Photography skill building attempt #4, depth of field

Dang. In class our teacher had this really cool presentation, which he hadn't planned on using for our class but put up on the wall anyway once the discussion about depth of field sprang up. He placed three toy/figurines on a dining room table about a foot apart, and then had the camera sitting about a foot and a half away from the first item. He focused in on the first item (closest to the camera) and used the aperture setting to take the item from a very large aperture (think f/1.8) where only the first toy/figurine was in focus and the rest was blurry to a very small aperture (think f/16) to where everything was in focus. I tried to recreate this by using a couple of small trinkets we've received during our travels over the years (i.e., one miniature Eiffel Tower, one teeny lead painted member of the Queen's guard, and a hallowed out perfume doll that holds a small vial of rose water from Bulgaria). Unfortunately, this attempt did not yield the type of results I had hoped for. (See following photos for evidence of my disastrous attempt.)

Shutter 1/125 Aperture f/2.0 ISO 800

Shutter 1/125 Aperture f/13.0 ISO 800*

Shutter 1/3 Aperture f/13.0 ISO 800

Attempt number cinq is around the corner and will include these changes - larger smallish figurines. It was too hard to focus on the Eiffel Tower and the little guard, both of which took turns as the lead before I tanked the attempt altogether. And I'll move the experiment to the dining room table, the coffee table clearly didn't have enough space. That being said, you can still see the difference and with the corresponding description understand what I was trying to do, can't you? (For those with keen eyes, you'll notice I was focusing in on the second item in the row.)

On the upside, I did get a few shots of Henry I really liked. Apparently wearing dinosaur pajamas while sporting a fever of 101.2 makes him more camera-friendly, as in he doesn't move nearly as fast as he usually does.

Shutter 1/80 Aperture f/5.6 ISO 800

Shutter 1/80 Aperture f/5.6 ISO 800

*Wait. Um, where did all the light go? ... <insert pause while brain processes information> ... And here, gentle readers, is where I learn that if you remove the source of light streaming through the rather gargantuan opening that is f/2.0 by changing the settings to what can only be described as a pinhole of light from the stop that is f/13.0, your picture will be DARK. Let's hope this sticks with me as this mistake, while somewhat humorous, is also a bit embarrassing.

Tonight's Election Results

Orin Kerr over at The Volokh Conspiracy draws conclusions about tonight's elections, the one that caught my eye:

"For Liberal Democrats: NY-23 was the race to watch this year, given that right-wing extremists like Palin and Beck threw all their support behind Hoffman. But the district voters rejected the right-wing candidate, sending a Democrat to Congress for the first time in one hundred years*. Obviously this shows that the American people reject right-wing extremism."

*Emphasis added by moi.