Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Little cutie

I took some cute photos of Mitchy today as we were playing around the house. Here they are:

Playing with his animals

Looking into the shoot through umbrella

Mitchy's animal friends


In other news, Mitchy loves singing and dancing at the moment. We sing this song about seeing animals at a farm and he is always asking for "Cow! Farm!' or "Donkey! Farm!". Sometimes he gets confused as says, "Train! Farm!".

My work situation is no closer to being resolved. It just drags on.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Visitor from another world

This afternoon while Mitchy and I were playing on the deck we found a Praying Mantis. It was Mitch's first experience with one. He couldn't say, "Praying Mantis" so he just called it "creature". He'd get very close to it and then it would run and he would jump back and then get close to it again.
Mitchy checks out the "creature"

Standing Guard

Peeking over the railing



I couldn't quite get the focus I wanted unfortunately, but these shots are the best I could get. Mitchy was fascinated for about 20 minutes and then he started to get a bit too friendly (which with little boys means the creature normally ends up getting squashed) so we said "Goodbye" and left the little guy alone.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

In the park again

It's been a while since I posted some pictures of Mitchy, so this afternoon while we were playing in the park I took a few photos. First Mitch coming down the slide ...

And then he went back up again ... and down and up and down and up ...

It was quite overcast and it was getting a bit dark when we moved on to the swings so the flash came out.

Then it was playing amongst the trees ...

Then just as we were about to leave, Mitch found a little ladybug.



I should say that when you take a photo with the flash it is meant to just fill in the light, not make it look like we were taking photos at night! I'm still learning :)

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Playing with light

I was at home today so while Mitch was sleeping I decided to play with the camera and some flashes I bought on eBay. Having no "model" to practice on I decided to enlist the help of Mitch's Horsey Bob. Firstly here is Horsey Bob lit with the on camera flash. The harsh shadow behind Horsey Bob's head is ugly and the light is very flat. It makes the face look one dimensional.

Then lit with the two flashes and a white refelctor - not perfect, but much better I think! There is some interest, there is light and shadow, Horsey's head is separated from the background


After that I decided to move on to something a bit different. We have a vase with some electric Christmas lights in it. With the on camera flash it is just ugly and you can't see the lights - note also the harsh shadow behind which make it hard to see what's going on.

But with a bit of creative lighting it looks much better, as least I think so anyway. The only thing I don't like is the reflection in the right hand side frame. Oh well, I'll know for next time.


So about $100 worth of equipment bought from eBay and lots of help from The Strobist and I'm getting better at taking photos. Yay!

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

To the Park

Mitch and I went to the park this morning and had a long play. The weather has been so horrible lately we could not waste the sunshine. This is the same park from this post and this one. It's amazing to see how much Mitch has grown and how much more he can do on the play equipment.




After lots of playing and "Runny, runny" it was time to go home for lunch and a sleep, possibly for both of us!

Monday, February 04, 2008

Runny Runny

I have been a bit slack on the posting of late. My apologies!

Mitch is just growing up so fast at the moment. His vocabulary has exploded. He now pretty much repeats everything you say ... well he tries to repeat it. It's very cute. The number of times he says something and Meeks and I look at each other and say, "Did you teach him that?" is amazing - I should just refine that comment to say that he is not saying bad things and we are accusing each other!

His favourite game is "Runny Runny" which is basically chasings around the table on the back deck. He will quite happily run around the table 50 times, every once in a while slowing down and stopping if he thinks we have gone too long without catching him. He runs quite quickly now, certainly faster than a comfortable walking pace, so you are getting some exercise too. In fact he likes playing "Runny, Runny" pretty much anywhere. Give him a open section of a shopping centre and he's off. Nana had to chase him across the outdoor courtyard at Hornsby shops the other day. Quite amusing!

In other news, Meeks and I are going to be running a Marriage Enrichment Course at church over the next 7 weeks. We did the course a few years ago and found it really helpful so we thought we'd try and run it at TCBC. Neil agreed and after quite a while of getting things together, we're starting this week. We have 7 couples attending this first session. Meeks has been amazing with the organisation and preparation. Definitely her gift!

iStockPhoto continues to go well. I've now sold 22 photos and learnt heaps along the way. I took some photos of the Smart children the other night and they came out quite well. I still have a lot to learn!

Not much has changed on the work front, I had a meeting with someone lasst week in which we basically established I was interested in listening to an offer, but that is about all at this stage.