Photography

(kit lens 18-55mm) 55mm 1/60sec, f/5.6, iso 800

(kit lens) 29mm, 1/30 sec., f/4.5, iso 200
Here are some of my favorite pictures.

My method: I had Jackson looking out the window in his bedroom, the room was fairly dark, and the only light hitting him was the natural light coming from the window. Normally you would want a 45 degree angle for the lighting, but when you have a busy kid, and no lighting equipment you just need to be happy with what you get. The great thing that made this picture possible was that Jackson woke up in a very somber and quiet mood. Usually he is so excited, he is jumping up and running around in his crib that it's impossible to get a good shot. I put him next to our brown sofa in his room and told him to look outside. He sat there and looked outside for quite a while. This made it possible for the inexperienced photographer -yes, that's me- to adjust all my settings and try taking a picture. These were the best two. Because he was sitting in front of a brown sofa in a dark room, the whole back ground turned black. I then used my 30 day trial version of light room to apply the sepia/ black and white like style to the photos: I believe the preset was called "antique". I've learned since taking this photo that you should try not to take off the chin -which is what I did on the first photo. I should have either stepped back a little, or taken more off his forehead and none off his chin.

My last suprise to me was that I was using a fairly high ISO setting on both pictures. I was told that anything above 200 iso makes most pictures look like crap. However, my first picture was set to iso 800, and it still turned out pretty good.

Motorcycle Boy

Jackson has his arms in the motorcycle position saying vroom vroom.

Jackson now loves to wear his helmet, because it means motorcycle time.

Whenever I tell Jackson that I'm going to work, he says: "Vroom, Vroom."

Then he goes outside with mommy and watches me drive off.

However, today was Jackson's lucky day.

Jackson went on a ride up and down the drive way with Dad.

He was so excited. On the Bike he kept shouting Vroom Vroom.

Here is a video of Jackson talking about his experience on the motorcycle.

Fun in the Sun Part 2: Larrabee

Walking down the trail together.

Jackson clinging onto Mama's hair.

Jackson trying to hit the camera; apparently even kids don't like the paparazi.

Picking up rocks together

Jackson sometimes will grab my nose, or cover my eyes when getting a ride. He is so cute and funny.

Shanna took this picture when I wasn't paying attention, but I really like it for some reason. I'm not sure what I was doing, maybe skipping a rock.

Fun in the Sun Part One

Caution: Jonathan Post

These are some pics of us at Silver Lake.

Okay, here's my review of Silver Lake. If you don't want to read a possibly boring review just read the last sentence in this blog. This place is a visually stunning location, but then again so is nearly every place here in the northwest. So its a nice woodsy, green location. A cool part of this park is that you can rent canoes, rowboats, and paddle boats. We rented a paddle boat, since it looked to be the funnest, however it was a lot of work. Maybe we are just really out of shape, but by the time we got to the middle of the lake we were both tired and ready to come back. After a while we realized that it doesn't matter how fast you kick your legs on those silly little paddle boats, you will always go about the same speed - which is about 0.5 mile an hour. So, if you get the paddle boat, its best just to relax and go slow, and not wear yourself out.

Also, there were a ton of geese at this lake. This equates to tons and tons of goose poop. There are some sections of the park where you can't walk anywhere because of the carpet coverings of goose poop littered all over the grass - and into the lake. This tottally grossed me out, and almost ruined the experience for me. The water at the lake is very warm here, propably about a 100 times warmer than lake Whatcom. It would have felt nice, if it wasn't for the huge amounts of goose poop surrounding the lake. I give this park a 5 out of 10, cool location, but also very gross. Take away the poop, and it would easily be a 9 out of 10. Someone needs to hire a bunch of rednecks with shotguns to clean up the place and get rid of the geese, and it would be an amazing park. We spent an afternoon at Silver Lake.