A Moment of Silence.

One of the coolest things that a camera can do is lie about the instant it captures.
Take this image, for example. They look like they’re calm and like they’ve been sitting there for a long time, contemplating whatever it is that lives in that tank (it’s a family of river otters, but that’s beside the point).
Only some of that’s true. Right after this, they were clambering to get down. Just before this, they were hooting and laughing at the antics of the otters.
This moment of silence was precious more than a millisecond.
And that’s why it’s beautiful.

Summertime.

We decided to open the pool.

The Nest Egg.

My wife bought this years before we had children and put it in different places around the house. I was flipping through flickr and saw something similar (I think the little girl was holding just eggs) and figured I’d make my daughter an accomplice again.

Once More, With Feeling.

Another of my faves from that shoot with Hannah.

Gold Guns Girls.

In my continuing quest to get the perfect space-girl shot, I give you this:

And thank Metric for the post title.

Special thanks go to Hannah the model, Nia the stylist, and Jennifer the makeup artist. You ladies are incredible!

Straight Outta the Camera.

I think that most people just dump the pictures in their point-and-shoot digital cameras onto the web or at the photo lab so that they see everything that they’ve shot. There’s no filter. There’s no worry that, “Maybe these aren’t my best work…” or, “I should really crop this thing out…” or, “This would look so much better as a square…”

Well, here’s one of mine. This was at my son’s impromptu birthday party because the snow made it so no relatives could visit.

Right after I shot it I thought, this is gonna be hilarious. Then I showed it to her parents. They laughed too. It’s the kind of picture they can trot out when her friends come over when she’s 16. It’s perfect slide show fodder for the rehearsal dinner at her wedding.

I didn’t do anything to it despite thinking there must be something it needs. I think that starkness makes it work.

What to Do…

When my daughter was born my wife told me that failing all else, I’d always have a willing model.
I took that to heart over the weekend and during a walk that culminated in hang time for us at the playground, I snapped a few of my daughter. She loves to have her picture taken, always saying after the shutter-click, “I wanna see!”

I was playing around with some post processing ’cause I came across this blog the other day. I like the overall tone of some of his recent stuff and think I might wanna try later.

Made for Walkin’ (in the rain).

My daughter talked about these for days after my wife brought them home from a colleague whose daughter had outgrown them.

Despite the chaos that last week’s torrential rain caused, there was one really happy little girl at my house ’cause she got to wear these. While, I’m glad she got to wear them, I hope it doesn’t rain again any time soon.

A Reunion, of Sorts.

When I left Pentax to come to Canon’s range of DSLRs, I was actually coming back. The first autofocus camera I’d bought years ago was a refurbished Canon Rebel X from eBay.

After having shot a Minolta SR-T 201 beforehand, it was a revolutionary step. It was like trading in an old Volkswagen Beetle with holes in the floorboards and getting a Lotus Turbo Esprit . I loved it.

I think I still have that body somewhere, but I managed to dig up an old Elan II body that I’d used and threw some of the new lenses I have on it during a recent trip to the playground.

I was goofing off, as photographs of my daughter often tend to be, but due to the lateness of the day, I managed a couple of interesting images.

I didn’t bother to clean the dust out of this ’cause I think it lends it a little more honesty. I’d forgotten how easy it was to love 35mm film. I think I’ll be taking the film camera out more often.

An Experiment.

A long time ago, a stock photographer put to me and a friend a hypothetical question: “How would you make a picture that sold washing machines but wasn’t the standard image?” Immediately, I thought about using a machine out in a field and just standing people on it.

Fast forward a few years (and a couple of children for me) and I find that one of my neighbors is actually throwing away an old washer. Now at this point, I don’t have time to borrow a truck and schlep the thing out to a field. Moreover, I don’t have any models immediately available.

But I do have my daughter. And the house next door to ours is vacant.

This was one of a couple dozen I shot very quickly, without extra light, reflected or otherwise, but it reminds me of how I want to frame this as a serious shot later. Who knows? Maybe the little girl here will even be in the final shot.