Just as a quick aside, I really need to figure out how to reduce the dust that gets onto my negatives. It’s really bad. I’d be willing to bet it’s a combination of dust on the negatives and dust on (in?) the scanner. Aargh.

This is Lucy, sitting next to the rain barrel. I’d guess that she was just looking for a little quiet time, which is a bit out of character for her, but who can say for sure.

Every once in a while we get the music playing and just kinda let ‘er rip, as much as 4 girls 7 years old and under and “let ‘er rip.” We call it the “Jungels Dance Party.” My girls are still young enough not to be embarrassed by my lack of dancing skills, but time’s ticking on that clock. So, I need to enjoy it while I can.

Just some pictures of the girls at the park. The picture of Norah, below, makes her look a little cross-eyed (or boss-eyed from “The IT Crowd”).

It has occurred to me that Lucy seems to be missing from in front of my lens lately. I’ll have to try and grab a few more pictures of her.

A couple more pictures of Lily and Stella at the Urbana arboretum. We had gone there to try and get some (a bit belated) birthday photos. It was really hot and humid and the girls were being hostile subjects. They just weren’t into it. And to be honest, I wasn’t exactly feeling the mojo either. So I broke out the film cameras and just starting shooting for fun.

This was taken inside the shade of a gazebo. It’s probably my favorite of Stella that day, but that darned sign on the left! A lack of viewfinder awareness on my part. I should have changed corners.

Lily ask to take some pictures so I let her use my DSLR while I shot with the Mamiya TLR.  

Here’s the corresponding picture of me.

Stella looking odd

Okay, I’ll grant you that she is looking a bit odd in this picture. And I’ll even grant you that given the black of her eyes you could even say she looks down right freaky. But I still like this picture. To me it’s got this sort of Victorian quality that I really can’t justify or describe. It’s just what I see I suppose. I’m definitely going to mark this one for printing. 

Shot on TMAX 400, 35mm.

I’ve been thinking about some Yousuf Karsh pictures lately. He has amazing portraits done with hard light. I know that we’re “supposed” to use soft light, but I think that some hard light portraits might be a nice change.

In order to kind of dip my feet in the hard light water, we quickly got some pictures of Norah. This was taken outside on a partly cloudy day. The sun was moving in and out of the clouds, and judging by the shadows in the picture, it was probably overcast when the picture was taken. I used a small speed light on a light stand, camera right, as my main light. If I remember correctly it was set for 1/4 power. I shot at f/5.6 @ 1/100 sec.

Aesthetically, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. You can see the hard line of the shadows under Norah’s arms and on her legs. I’d say the she could be sharper, but she was very antsy, so I was lucky to get what I got.

Turning around, we decided to put Norah on our wooden bench. The light is now camera left, and behind Norah. You can just see a bit of rim light on her right side. It’s a bit of a deviation from what I had originally set out to do, but not too bad. I wish that I had thought to bring another light with me in order to get a catch light.

Overall not too bad. I’ll have to try some more standard portrait work with the hard lights and see what I can do with that.

She’s definitely a climber. Norah likes to climb everything she can. I grabbed this picture of her on her 1 year birthday as she was climbing onto her sister’s table.

She’s also got that “I’m being naughty, why don’t you try and stop me” grin. She’ll walk into the street and look at you with that grin, waiting for you to run after her.

Arrgh.

Technorati Tags: photography, Norah, birthday, climbing, smiling, children

Things have started to settle down a bit with my new job, and I really feel like I need to start being more active with my photography. I’ve been on a bit of a break for several months now.

Last weekend a family that we met in Arizona stopped by on a cross country trip from Oregon to Maine. They brought their dog, Victoria, and our kids absolutely loved her. Except Stella. But that’s another story entirely. Victoria was a fantastic dog. Very well behaved, quiet, and good with the kids. They were sad to see her go.

Technorati Tags: photography, dog, bull, mastiff, lucy, victoria, child, kid, black, white