January 28

Nothing exciting to rave or rant about today. Just a typical day. We did have some friends come by after school, which was fun and pain for Zach. He was an only child for so long, and most of his outings are with Grammy and Grandaddy, so besides school he hasn't had a lot of interacting with other kids. Take away that school built structure and OMG! He has to figure out how to interact with more freedom and it's harder than it looks. His friends want to play outside but HE wants to watch cartoons, or something. How to handle that? Whine, of course. *sigh* We need more playdates, but I don't know how to fit them in with karate 3x/week, daddy off every other weekend needing boy time and the grandparents always needing boy time. *big sigh* I'm just feeling extra tired tonight.

I did get both boys outside later in the day, while the sun was setting and making photos tricky, of course. Thank the gods for Photoshop! Yeehaw. I don't know if shooting in RAW is helping me b/c I can only view the images in the Canon software, then convert them to a TIFF format for photoshop. And THEN I can't 'fade' any effects that I apply and I have leaned on that fade option like a crackwhore leans on her pipe. So I convert the images to 8bit color (no clue what that even means, but I bet it's half as good as the original 16bit color) and make my adjustments, fade to where I REALLY want it, then save. You know, the 'fade' must have been put there for us females. We say 'CHANGE!' and when you change we say "ooohhh...not THAT much!" so with the photoshop 'fade' we can pull it back a bit. No matter how subtle the initial change may have been. I always fade. Damn that fade. But my old photoshop doesn't support my RAW files, CRW files, and if there's a fix, I didn't find it.

ANWWAY, as I was saying, I got a few pics this afternoon, so here they are. Here is Owen, going down the slide backwards. He climbed up the ladder so fast that I barely had time to focus the camera before he went down.


Owen again...this one I am posting b/c it's the first time I actually moved the camera trying match the speed of the object. Or intentionally moved the camera, period. I read about it in a book, but this was my first attempt. Not bad, for a split second decision. He was coming at me but close enough to be a sideways run that I was able to move along rather than dodge LOL.









And of course, not to be the least, Zach tried a few poses today. This one isn't great b/c I don't know how to compose this shot, set the camera, whatever. But he climbed way up this tree and waited patiently for me to take his picture.


I haven't forgotten Ozzy, I'm just wiped out by the time I'm ready to photograph the day's memory(s) and he needs more light and people than I can provide at day's end. I AM getting a new lens tomorrow, per my tracking efforts, so perhaps that will light a fire under my ass and I'll get his fuzzy little butt on here.