Fun with two lights

I broke out the light gear this afternoon to experiment with lighting up the back wall with colors. There were, of course, mixed results with this technique on the first pass in Washington last week. For this try, I was really just hoping to avoid the B movie look. I think things are better this time around, but there are some areas for marked improvement. One thing I noticed in particular is that the girls were sitting too close to the background. Because of this, I wasn't able to effectively throw the it out of focus while shooting at the aperture I had to for the desired light. Next time I'll take over the whole family room.

Washington times...

We spent last weekend in Washington at the Peck estate. Amanda had flown in for the weekend and while I was preparing this post, I realized that I will be including no pictures of her. For some reason, I failed to get any shots of her for most of weekend. I did get a few pictures near the end of our stay, but they look suspiciously like an effort that was past its time. I know that the Pecks will be posting their shots that include the activities prior to our arrival and Amanda.

The opening picture of Claire was taken at Port Gamble. Like they say, "You never know when a it will be handy to whip a 5-in-1 Westcott reflector out of your backpack." Or something like that.


















The funky pictures of Brett and Carol were taken with a red gelled second flash shot on to the wall behind them. I grabbed a red gel at random and shot that flash through a thick glass blender container. I was hoping for more light variation on the wall, but it ended up being a flat red that lent the pictures a slightly seedy quality of a B movie poster. Although this has its place, I will have to make some refinements before using this technique to get kid pictures suitable for framing. In the mean time, I will be satisfied with trying to come up with a name for the movie that features Brett looking vaguely creepy and Carol moderately alarmed. I was thinking along the lines of, "Intrigue Amore! A cautionary tale of what the parrot saw." This adequately sums up the scene for me, but is probably a bit much for the marquee.








This picture could use a bit of explantation, but...

Sweet shades!

A few days ago, April was trying to save on our air conditioning bill by walking around the house with these impossibly cool glasses. She was chowing on some chocolate cow shaped cookies that we picked up at the Tillamook Cheese Factory earlier in the week and her offer for me to have one had to be refused for fear of frost bite-- that, and the fact that I had woofed down a double scoop Tillamook ice cream cone the day before. I would love to include that fun pictures of our outing to the cheese factory, but the camera was really hard to use while it was in Albany. I guess this mean we'll have to go again, for the pictures if nothing else. OK, for the fresh cheese curds and ice cream too...

Grammy stopped by

Grammy stopped by and stayed the night at our house this week. The girls had fun playing with her and I was even able to convince each one to sit down with her for a picture.

Waverly picnic and paddle boats

The Pecks came to Oregon for the weekend. This called for a Glenn, Peck, Simpson trip to Waverly park to enjoy a picnic lunch and ply the lake with the paddle boats.

Good times were had by all. We also fed the ducks and walked the path around the lake. The fact that you can do all of this and be within 5 minutes walking distance of Costco is just one of the miracles of modern prosperity.

Mr. or Mrs. Mantis

It's interesting how you stumble upon a Praying Mantis from time to time in the middle of the summer. It's always a chance encounter. Although they must be relatively plentiful, I doubt that anyone ever set out to find one and was successful in any reasonable amount of time. Looking so much like your surroundings tends to buy that sort of privacy.

The individual pictured here must have figured that he/she was sufficiently similar in appearance to a Britax car seat to go unnoticed as I strapped it into the car. I figure it was a "use what you have available" last-ditch effort. It didn't work. The consequence for not blending well on a blue and white background was to spend 15 minutes helping me work on my macro photography.

Thank you for your time, my little green friend. I hope you have better luck blending into the leaves on the maple tree in the back yard.