Happy Swingin' Baby

Happy (belated) New Year to everyone! Here's a picture I took with a Yashica Mat 124 medium format twin-lens reflex camera (aka, an oldie but a goodie). This is from the first roll I tried in the cam, which turned out to be very contrasty. There are more from this set on my flickr page (link to the right).

Quick pic

A shot of Zach in his crib donning two fingers in the mouth. He does this, we've learned over time, to indicate when he's tired. He usually falls asleep real fast when he does this, as opposed to the bouncing around and banging the walls that occurs when he's not exhausted, but still ready for bed time.

Trip

We (wifey and I - grandparents had Zach for the weekend!) just got back from our mini-vacation trip to the Twin Cities and Fargo. I uploaded some photos I took at the Fargo theater as well as a few from around town to my Flickr page (link to the right). I think I've finally decided to use Flickr for my day to day photo sharing, with the hope that one day I'll have the time and dedication to build a personal site to showcase my more professional work. One of my goals for Flickr is to dig through my archive and post select pictures from the past that I'm sure friends of mine never knew existed (or forgot about!) So stay tuned - the fun is just beginning!

One from a portrait session

This picture is all about having fun while trying to get that perfect portrait shot, which, btw, just didn't happen. I set up the lights and camera on the timer, and took a series of pictures, but none really came out like I'd hoped. This picture is probably the best of the bunch tho, and shows how much fun Zach is these days... he loves to play, explore, and seems to be learning something new every day, but the one thing he does not like to do is sit still in either of our laps. So we try to distract him with a book, toy, etc, and I believe someone is behind the camera here keeping Zach's attention focused too.

...The one where he puts the balls in the can

Zach has learned a new game courtesy of mommy... putting tennis balls back into the tennis ball can. It's amazing what a child will do when it is presented as a fun game, and fortunately our lil' Z is all about having the fun!

p.s... I decided to give Vimeo a try. They're an alternative to YouTube for hosting videos, and so far I'm impressed. They offer the full original file of any movie available on their site for download if you sign up for a free account. The quality is much much better than YouTube, which is the big factor driving me to look for something better... all those videos I've posted to YT look a lot better straight out of the camera (a lowly Canon A620, but it shoots very good 640x480 footage).


Zach putting tennis balls in can. from zee zeebee on Vimeo.

Lighting Experiment #2

Here's another pic taken with the top down light. I played around with the dodge / burn tools in Photoshop on this one to try and get rid of some of the distractions around the edge, and focus attention on just Zach looking up at the light.

Lighting Experiment

Here's a quick shot I took of Zach a couple of weeks ago using one AlienBee 800 light and a 20 degree honeycomb grid to focus the light. The results of the shoot were fairly inconsistent, but it was a good learning exercise. Since I'm constrained by space, I have to keep the lights turned way down to avoid blowing out the highlights, which results in the room being very dark. That makes it hard to focus, so this was pretty much the best shot of the set. I'm not sold on just one light doing a top down angle, at least not at the angle I had it at, so I'll be trying this again with some variations soon.

Happy First Birthday Zach!!!

Congratulations little buddy on your first birthday! You've weathered the storm of infancy, doctor and hospital visits, and of course, completely newbie parents with style! We've all learned a tremendous amount along the way, and it is safe to say that the journey so far has been the most rewarding one could ever take. Mommy & I are eagerly looking forward to celebrating many more milestones with you lil' Z, and want you to know that we love you very very much. Happy birthday Zach!

T - Minus One Day...

The last in a series of six pictures, looking back at Zach's first year on earth. At eleven months old, Zach is walking, talking ("da da da" is his favorite phrase right now), and very, very interested in a certain collection of mine. We've managed to avoid any catastrophes so far, and with any luck, the CDs will survive long enough for Zach to inherit them one day. Of course, if you think about it, every single CD currently in my collection will be considered an "oldie" to lil' Z, and will no doubt become obsolete by the time they get passed down to the younger generation.

T - Minus Two Days...

The fifth in a series of six pictures, looking back at Zach's first year on earth. Here we find two nutty parents having some fun with their good natured boy.