Over the last month or so Josie’s personality has changed a little to include the idea of fear. She has gotten slightly more cautious physically, although she’s still throwing herself all over the playgrounds. But emotionally she has shown real signs of fear, such as at the guy dressed up as a pink monkey at the park trying to sell himself as birthday entertainment. She was a little uncertain around some animals at the zoo (although the flamingo’s were a huge hit this last time). Tonight was the biggest showing, she had asked to read “The Cat In The Hat” as she’s heard it a number of times now. But halfway through, when Thing 1 and Thing 2 appear, she broke down into tears and told us “I don’t like that”. We put the book away and picked out another familiar favorite to end the night, but even as she went to bed, she told me ‘I’m scared’ for the first time I’ve ever hear her admit/verbalize it. She was heartily reassured that everyone is here for her and will keep her safe, including buddy Zach, she verified, and she has now fallen asleep.

Josie: “Come over here pasta. I’m gonna eat you!”

The last class we were all looking for more compositional elements rather than just proper light metering in different situations. We were aiming for the following:

• framing – use natural effects in the picture to frame your subject (bars, fence, trees…)
• shadows – taking a picture of an object and its shadow (try to keep yourself out of it)
• reflection – find a reflection in a mirror or water
• perspective – take it from an interesting angle – above or below
• pattern – find something repetitive and hopefully interesting

For these things I mostly hit the playground and the children’s museum and got lucky enough that we had sunny days again. Somehow not a single picture of Josie.

Overall the class taught me how to take manual pictures and now I feel much more confident with the camera and it makes having an SLR much more worth while compared to a point and shoot since I actually change the controls. I think I’ll get some much more successful photos in some tough spots that I could never have taken before and hopefully have a better eye for more interesting photos.

In class 4 we moved on to a more challenging lighting situation, bright light. We were to get the light right for hopefully the dark and light sides of the picture. We also tried to get a ‘hair-light’ photo where someones hair was all lit up like an angel (back-lit). Plus a silhouette (back-lit while in relatively dark area). Even though we had several weeks for this assignment, mother nature was decidedly uncooperative and refused to give us much sun. It wasn’t a terribly successful time for me in terms of photography but I got a few.

I want to buy another camera bag. The one we have now fits everything from soup to nuts and is great when you want to carry everything. But it looks, well, like a camera bag and it’s very loose and swings about when I have to bend over repeatedly to pick up Josie and such, banging Josie or the camera on something. I’m pretty clutsy. Who made the decision to trust me with such important things? anyway. I’d like a bag that is tight to my body and easy to move out of the way though for when I need to pick up Josie (i.e. move the camera to my back). I don’t need it to hold much in my general outings as I’d use the big bag for when I really need to haul everything. This is for more casual use to grab and go to the park for some fun photos. Any recommendations? Thanks!

In this class we went all manual, adjusting our ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Wow its challenging to take photos of small children and trying to make that all work. Our constraints for the week were to take photos in window light and shade lighting (meaning both the camera and subject are in the shade or on a cloudy day). It’s supposed to be very forgiving light and I must say that it is easier. What’s easy to take a picture of in window light? a sleeping cat. We have lots of those.

In my second photography class we learned how to adjust the depth of field, ISO, and shutter speed and took pictures using the semi-automatic settings on the camera. Our job was to purposefully get pictures of something frozen (that should obviously be moving) and to take a picture of that same thing blurred in motion, showing our control. We also were to take pictures of objects in a row and make them all in focus and some of them out of focus. I didn’t do so well on those shots, mostly because Josie didn’t like me lining up her toys, she kept moving them and I didn’t get close enough to really get the desired effect.

Objects frozen in motion:

This one I used the ‘take a bunch of pictures in a row’ setting on the camera to get a frozen one and her mid-air.

Non-frozen motion photos:

And my failed depth of field adjustment photos:

From the science museum, obviously!

A couple of weekends ago we just needed to get out of the house and so we went to explore a nearby park called Habitat in Belmont. It was still cold with a little snow on the ground. Josie was decidedly upset with our using the word ‘park’ to describe the place as there was no playground equipment anywhere. We had to drag her around and carry her to go anywhere until we got near the lake where of course she loved to run back and forth on the boardwalk next to the water, nearly falling in. She also liked to stand on and jump off rocks. All the way to the end she continued to ask where the park was.

One of my latest photography class assignments was to take photos from different perspectives to get more interesting photos. I should really share the other photos I took, we’ll get there one day! This is again at the Children’s museum in Boston, one showing most everyone under the exhibit and then one shot from underneath. These were the first things we looked at in the museum and were a big hit.