Local Dinosaurs

Local Dinosaurs, a set on Flickr.

I can't be certain, but I think any velociraptor would be pleased that the red-tailed hawk is still bringin' it, dinosaur style.

If you're on Long Island, its worth spending a few hours one weekend checking out what the Audubon Society is doing out here. These are from the sanctuary in East Moriches, where they do a great job educating the public about these really awesome flying machines.

Toolkit
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Canon 600D (EOS Rebel T3i)
Stock 18-155mm EF-S kit lens
My old MacBook and iPhoto

A technie note: This is the first photo set I imported and edited with my iPhone library mounted on a network drive. Prepping for life with a MacBook Air. Performance was quite acceptable across the network, even using a 5400 RPM laptop drive, especially when hard wired to a 100 Mbps link. It works over WiFi, but things get pretty slow that way.

Middle School Locker - First Steps

School starts next week, which means my oldest daughter starts middle school. Today we went shopping as a family for "locker stuff", which included a shelf for books, a mirror, a small dry erase pad and some other assorted very girly looking magnets and doo-dads. Then it was off to the school so she could try her locker again and put everything in it the way she wanted. It was a short outing, but she was excited, and happy that she now has a locker that looks like Paris Hilton lives there. Mission accomplished.

Her locker measures only 14" x 14" x 36". It's barely 3 cubic feet of space, but for the next 10 months it's her little outpost away from home. Actually, it's her very first outpost away from home, and frankly, I'm not happy about it for good reason.

Middle school lockers turn into high school lockers - larger outposts away from home. Then comes a car, another volume of space not under my roof that she'll call her own. From there it's very short hop to dorm rooms - even larger outposts away from home. They keep getting bigger, and the time spent in them increases.

I figure you can see where this is headed by now.  Sad, yes, but also a reminder that there's lots of "daddy stuff" to take care of as the days pass.  There are so many lessons to be passed along, so many experiences to share, and so many memories to be made. This sort of thing reminds me that we're always painfully short on time, but motivates me to be the best parent I can be. If that means letting them roller skate in the dining room on the new hardwood floors, then so be it.  Sometimes it will mean making someone do homework that they just dont want to do. At some point it will mean getting involved in boyfriend issues, and likely and being the meanest dad in the word.  So be that too, I guess.  Regardless of what lies ahead, instead of being sad I'm going to be happy for what I've had up to this point and for all that lies ahead.

However, one day, the inevitable will happen, and "home" will no longer be where I live.  The swingset will have long been forgotten, the pool won't get used much any more, and we'll have to find a new use for all the suddenly "extra" space in the house.  Life will get quieter.

There will be no more outposts.

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Questions For Daddy

About 5 minutes ago, my 9 year old daughter walked in to see me.

"Daddy, is today the 11th?"

"Yes Pumpkin, today is the 11th."

There is a giant calendar hanging in our kitchen. Both of my girls have calendars hanging by their desks. Both also have several date books and planners obtained from various sources. Finally, they both have iPods that happily display the date and time. Nonetheless, the preferred source for vital information like today's date is Daddy.

As my daughter was walking away, I thought for a second about reminding her of how many tools she has at her fingertips to find today's date. After all, part of my job is to teach my little princesses to be self-sufficient and resourceful. I have to help them become capable adults. Surely I should teach her that she doesn't need me to tell her the date!

Then it dawned on me that one day she'll stop asking me questions like that. At some point she won't need Daddy to confirm the date, or spell a word, or help her change the battery in a toy. At some other point she'll understand that Daddy doesn't have every answer. She might even figure out that sometimes Daddy doesn't even understand the question.

I paused for a second, then held my tongue and let her walk away in silence.


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Life Lessons Behind Glass

You know when you're taking pictures and you accidentally learn important life stuff?  I hate when that happens.

1. It's all about being in the right place at the right time.

2. The odds of being at the right place at the right time increase if you keep your eyes, ears and mind open.

3. Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time, but you don't know it because you're looking the wrong way.

4. Often you find gold just by changing your point of view.

5. In many ways, the discarded and disregarded are the most interesting.

See how much you can learn with a camera in your hand?

Eastbound 12:01

Eastbound 12:01, a set on Flickr.

The arc of lights bending out of sight at the Port Jeff train station caught my eye while driving by a few weeks ago. I've been waiting for some mist/fog to go back and play with the camera, and we had some last night. Only problem was we also had rain, so I really wasn't able to walk around much without getting me and the camera soaked. I'm pretty sure the Canon warranty doesn't cover standing in a downpour. As for me, I'm well out of warranty.

There's a whole lot wrong with these photos from a technical standpoint, but I had fun taking them and I actually learned a few key things about night photography doing it, so I'm pretty happy with the result if only as a learning experience.

Toolkit
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Canon 600D (EOS Rebel T3i)
Stock 18-55mm EF-S kit lens
iPhoto on my Macbook

Bones

Bones, a set on Flickr.

The bones of a small boat on display in Harborfront Park in Port Jefferson. Neat, but much more visually interesting up close and personal like this.

Mainly a study in depth of field.

I went with black and white so the red building in the background wouldn't distract the eye. The wood is all a monochromatic gray from weathering anyway, so color would be almost pointless.

Toolkit:

Canon D600 (EOS Rebel T3i)
18-55 stock kit lens

Low Tide

Low Tide, a set on Flickr.

Another little photography project, this time at Port Jefferson Harborfront Park. These were taken under a section of the boardwalk that you can only reach at low tide. I thought the circular opening added visual interest.

Toolkit

Canon D600 (EOS Rebel T3i)
Stock 18-55 lens
iPhoto on my MacBook

I was shooting in color, but went to black and white in iPhoto and added some color boost to tweak things a bit.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out.

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How To Spend A Rainy Saturday

What do I do when presented with a few free hours alone on a rainy Saturday? As I get older I've gotten more critical about how I choose to spend my time, mainly because I've become keenly aware of the fact that we don't get an unlimited amount of it to spend. Reminders are all around me, so it would seem that the worst thing we can do is to waste our hours on things not really worth doing.

The picky eater can get too picky though -  inadvertently starving himself in the process. I've been so worried about not wasting my time, that I've actually been wasting my time. For a while I've been troubled because I can't seem to find anything to get excited about, but I think I've just been searching at the wrong scale.  I've been looking for excitement, enlightenment and fulfillment in massive doses, but often in life the most thrilling and fulfilling moments are the smallest and easiest to overlook.

When my youngest daughter and I rode bikes together "all the way" to her school this spring, she was completely thrilled.  We had to take pictures.  She ran into the school, interrupting a Girl Scouts meeting to tell my wife and her older sister that we were there. She sent a text message to my sister announcing the accomplishment.  Three quarters of a mile meant the world to her. How in the world could I have missed that lesson?

Yesterday when confronted with 3-4 hours alone on a rainy Saturday I went back to the basics.  Simple things.  I grabbed the new camera and took a drive to a nearby church because the building is interesting and I thought it would make for a good place to practice shooting.  Never mind that the rain was coming down in buckets and I couldn't even really get out of the car.  I took the ride anyway and listened to music along the way. I tried some shots with the car window rolled down, but that really didn't work out.  I stopped for coffee on the way back home.  When the rain let up, I went out in the front yard and aimed the camera at the Japanese maple outside our front window (the picture up top).  I played with the dog. When it got dark I went out for a while and took some night shots, doing the best I could in the light rain. I read more of a book that's been sitting in my Kindle half-read for a year now. Nothing worth making a movie about, but it was a good day and I'm happy with it.

As it turns out, a very large number of things are actually worth doing on a rainy Saturday. Lets see what we can find for a rainy Sunday.



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