Today my son played in his first football game. He's been watching kids practice in a local park since he was two, so this was a huge day for him. He played defensive tackle and did pretty well, particularly considering he was one of the youngest kids and often matched up against an offensive lineman about twice his size.
This photo popped out at me for the fierceness he showed, staring down the other kid. It's a side of him I hadn't really seen before.
I spotted this eye popping thistle in a big batch of dying brown ones. I like the contrast. Now off to bed. Too tired for smart talk.
And now I present the second day of the first day of school. That sentence is in fact correct. So now both my boys are in school. That's a bit of a change around here.
Interesting bit of information. The three boys in front of the bus are approximately the same height. And yet each one of them is in a different grade from the others.
Yes, the mandatory first day of school picture. He had better smiles in the other shots I took but this one makes me laugh because his expression says "Let's get this over with Dad."
Up next, first day of school, kindergarten edition. Yes, they are on different days. Isn't that convenient?
I hate to repeat myself. If possible I keep looking for different topics to post pictures of but sometimes... SQUIRREL!!!
My son Aiden needed a family portrait to decorate something for school. Perusing my photo archives I found precious few photos of all of us together. And the most recent was about three years ago. So it was time to take a new one. And I didn't have very much time to do this. So I cobbled together a quickie lighting set up, cleaned off the futon and set everyone down. Except me of course. I had to push the button and then run for it before the timer went off.
It's an okay shot. I certainly hope to do better in the future. But for a quick job, it's fine. And the best part is the personality in the picture. You can tell a lot about this family, most notably where most of the maturity is located, from this picture.
And before you ask, yes, we let the kids put their artwork on the walls in the living room. This particular wall is for Colin. The opposing wall is for Aiden.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled photo blog to talk about some actual writing.
No, really.
One year, six months and nine days after I started working on my original script Hive, I finished the first draft. That is a personal record for a sluggishness I believe. To be fair, I actually stopped working on it for about nine months to concentrate on polishing She Hates the Idea and Natural Tendencies. I had this crazy idea that since I'm trying to make a living at this, the smart thing would be to finish some projects before starting a new one. When those were done I went back to Hive.
This was a tough script. It featured a female main character who was not at all crazy. That is kind of the polar opposite of my previous scripts. And it had a non-linear story line, which I had never attempted before. And when you don't tend to outline, a non-linear storyline is a lot more headache inducing. This script forced me to try outlining for the first time, a process I don't much enjoy. But after months of getting nowhere, it became apparent that I needed to sort out the timeline of the story so that I knew exactly all the beats that should be included. With that solved I could start plugging things in.
One of the reasons that I don't like to outline is that system makes the writing feel stiff and too regimented, which my brain rebels against. But here it was essential. It freed me up from constantly trying to figure out where in the story I should be working. And when it came time to write out each beat I found that my original note on the subject wasn't good enough and wrote something different. Those new ideas would spawn other new ideas and the story went in a different direction than I was thinking but still ended up where it needed to be. So, strangely, structuring my writing gave me the freedom to ignore my plans and wing it.
Anyway, now I need to print off some copies and give them to (hopefully) willing alpha readers. Now I get to find out if the long wait was actually worth it.
It's fair time. It's the sort of thing you both love and hate. It can be a lot of fun but at the same time, it hasn't changed much since I was a kid, so it is pretty repetitious. The kids love going though, so watching them have fun is a pleasure. But the fair sort of takes over the area for a week, which is a pain in the ass. I love the endless choices of things deep fried on a stick. But it's too expensive. You get the idea.
But a county fair is a rich photographic environment, so that should really stop my from griping so much. It won't, but it should. I'm an awful grouch some days.
Today my main goal was putting motion blur to good use. The basic idea is give the camera a fairly slow shutter speed, then physically track your target with the camera while shooting. Done properly, the target is sharp and the background is a blurred streak, giving an impression of motion and speed.
I came up with a few good photos but I need a lot more work on this technique. And that's the fun part.
One member of our household has been repeatedly ignored and passed over for inclusion in this 365 day photo project. We can now consider that gross injustice corrected. Meet Drago, my sons' goldfish. As you can see, Drago's hobbies include eating, swimming and eating.
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