Goal!

Goal!

At school Lily has a folder that will hold all of her writing. She has to decorate the folder with pictures of her choice. Yesterday she specifically asked me to get a picture of her scoring a goal so that she could put it on her folder. Perhaps she’s just a bit too comfortable with a camera always pointed at her. Bad parent, bad!

And my alternate “Goal” shot:

Technorati Tags: photography, soccer, lily, champaign, il, illinois

Double Rainbows

Double Rainbows

Odd weather here in Champaign lately. This past weekend we saw a double rainbow looking out our backyard. The bottom rainbow was as complete as I’ve ever seen one. I used the widest lens I’ve got (17mm) and still couldn’t get it all in frame.

This, naturally, led to a series of rainbow pictures….

Northern End

Single Rainbow

Cloud and a bit of Rainbow

Technorati Tags: photography, rainbow, weather, champaign, il, illinois

Summer Weather

House and clouds near sunset

Another kooky one. We’ve been getting storms lately, and with the storms come lots of cloud cover. They’ve been really impressive lately. Dark gray bottoms with golden sides as the twilight hits them. I always want to take pictures, but it’s always a fool’s folly; they all just look like boring old clouds after I’ve taken ‘em. I’m sure that a better photographer than I can manage to capture the grandeur, but I can’t seem to.

But still, you have to try, right?

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, il, illinois, house, cloud, sunset

Sleepwear Winner

Sleepwear Winner

From the Champaign County fair.

I have to admit that my initial reaction to this was very snooty. “Sleepwear winner? Ha!” But this image has dogged me a bit. After all, I don’t have the skills to make any clothes. And aren’t I proud of my photographic creations? Why shouldn’t someone be proud of their needlework?

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, IL, illinois, county, fair, winner

Pink Seamless Test

From Pink seamless test shots

Lucy, the soon to be birthday girl.

Saturday is Lucy’s birthday party. This is going to be a very “girl” focused party. Tea, finger sandwiches, princesses, crafts, pink everywhere, etc. One of the crafts is decorating a picture frame. My wife (bless her heart) thought it would be nice to get pictures of each of the girls and print them for their picture frame. Additionally, we’ll be having a princess stop by and want to get pictures of each girl with the princess.

From Pink seamless test shots

Stella wanted to show me her “mad” face.

In preparation of all this, I ordered a pink (actually “Carnation”) roll of seamless paper from Calumet. Last night the girls were kind enough to help me out as models. I got to try a few different lighting styles, they got to change costumes several times, and at the end they got a huge piece of paper to color on once I cut off the used piece of background paper.

From Pink seamless test shots

In my defense, Lily picked her own wardrobe.

This was my first time using a paper seamless background. I got the 53″ wide background as opposed to the 107″ roll. While it’s not a huge issue, I think I’d choose the 107″ roll next time. It’s a bit more freedom and I would then be able to get a group shot as well. The 53″ is fine for a single person and a shot of the princess and 1 child. But more than that and I’m pushing it.

Now we just have to work out the logistics of when to take the pictures. I need a decent amount of space. So does the craft table. So, there will have to be some shuffling.

All in all, I’m quite looking forward to this Saturday. It’ll be a fun challenge to shot a bunch of other people’s kids, process the pictures and print for the frames.

A few more selects….

From Pink seamless test shots

Technorati Tags: photography, lights, seamless, pink, kids, party, birthday, champaign, illinois, IL

Garden!

Bell Pepper Plant

And so the garden posts begin!

Now, I know that for most people they just plant either their seeds or plants and watch them grow and it’s not big deal. But I have to admit that I get a little giddy when my seeds actually grow. The mere fact that it work always sort of astounds me.

Lettuce Row

That being said, at work whenever we get back a part from manufacturing and it works, I’m giddy too. I guess it’s just the thrill of seeing something I’ve made (or planted in this case) actually doing what it’s supposed to do. Let’s not delve too deeply into the psychology there, okay?

Stowaway Pumpkin Plant

Lucy, my second daughter (the one mad in the pool in the previous post), managed to sneak a pumpkin seed into our raised bed. Low and behold, it’s growing like gangbusters. So, it looks like we may have our own pumpkin this year.

Technorati Tags: photograhy, garden, vegetables, champaign, IL

5×5xMonday

In recent discussions with a friend, we challenged each other. I had to take at least 5 pictures every day by Monday and self-edit down to my choice of the best 5. Hence 5 by 5 by Monday or 5×5xMonday. His challenge was to draw 5 sketches per day and cull to the 5 best for Monday. There was also a loose theme of fun (maybe it was funny; I don’t remember though).

Here are my 5. They’re all centered around kids, as that’s a major part of my life right now. Plus, who best do define “fun?”

Here I come!

Not Happy!

Spinning

Fighting Gravity

Spinning with Ceila

Technorati Tags: photography, kids, children, fun, challenge, digital, canon, 40D, champaign, il

Tulips

Finally, our tulips are starting to bloom. It seems every house I see has tulips standing beautiful and fully open. Ours, not so much. I’m not bitter, really….

The weather has finally warmed up to the point that we all made it to the park last night. The kids had a great time.

Lucy spinning

I’m never really sure why spinning around as fast as you can is fun, but the kids love it.

..And Stella spinning; slower and with singing.

Stella had fun playing with the bubbles too. It was really windy though, so she wasn’t so much blowing bubbles as simply letting them go.

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, il, park, tulip

Do Not Sit

Do Not Sit

These chairs are in front of the Champaign library. They have been verboten for several weeks. What gives?

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More Champaign at Night

Merry Ann’s Diner

I had a chance to grab some pictures in the snow the other night in downtown Champaign, IL. These are scans of the prints that I made with the new (to me) enlarger. I am particularly happy that they turned out okay. I was shooting Tri-X 400 at EI3200. I wasn’t sure how long to develop, but based on my EI1600 development trials I shot for 1.5 hours with 5 min agitation intervals. Let me tell you, that was a long time. The highlights got blown out, density wise, and I should revisit that.

Here’s a picture with the blown highlights.

Orpheum

On my test exposures, that I developed at the same time, the highlight density was 1.36 for zone 8. I think that if I can that back to 1.2 or so, I’ll have my time for EI3200.

I could try to burn in the lights to the right, but I kind of promised myself I’d avoid dodging and burning so that I wouldn’t spend a tremendous amount of time making prints. I guess rules are made to be broken….

Technorati Tags: champaign, il, b&w, black, and, white, trix, tx, 400, rodinal, photography