Rock Band

My brother brought this over to my parents’ house, and pretty much everyone gave it a try. Surprisingly, even my mom played the drums!

Being the dutiful children that we are, we documented this event by taking pictures and also video(note video camera in the background).

Joshua played the guitar.

And my sister did too, even with her pregnant belly in the way.

Zoe thought she might try her hand at singing.

“Will she be wearing them to bed?”

That’s what my father-in-law was wondering, after Zoe opened the fish boots from him and my mother-in-law.

She put them on right over her footed pjs.

Notice that in addition to the boots, she has a hat and a jacket on. Zoe is all about accessories.

You should click on this one to see it larger, and so that you can appreciate the effects of my new lens…see how just a tiny bit of the picture is in focus? My old lens would have had trouble doing that, because it didn’t have such wide aperture settings.

I took these pictures in not-so-good light, so the color was very off on them. This was the day before I learned to shoot in RAW format, and if I’d taken these in RAW, I could have fixed them up much more nicely. So, maybe one day in the future there will be new, improved fish-boots-in-bed pictures.

My Christmas present.

A little while back, I learned that my kit lens was really not the greatest thing ever(I think the word someone used was “useless”, actually!). I’m happy to report that I am now the proud owner of something other than a kit lens…I got a nifty 50 mm, f/1.4 lens, and so far I just love it! It’s perfect for shooting portraits(which is pretty much all I do), and it’s great in less-than-ideal light. My old lens could take very nice pictures in proper light, but it really wasn’t good for times like, oh, Christmas morning.

Just to give you an idea of how much better the new one is in low light, here’s a picture taken on Christmas morning with my old lens. It’s dark, and not at all focused.

Here’s a picture taken just a bit later with my new lens(and yeah, I know I cropped a bit of her head off. oops. But just look at how much nicer the picture is, ok?).

Here’s another one in nearly that same spot in the room.

Much better, ey?

Another really fabulous thing about this lens is that it gives me wonderful blurred backgrounds. See?

This is especially fun if there is a Christmas tree in the background…I love it!

I’m still getting used to the lens, so I think the pictures that I take with it will get better over time, but even in my somewhat clueless state, my pictures are still way better than they were with my other lens. So, a big thanks to my husband, my in-laws, my parents, my sister-in-law, and my own sister…I love my lens!

Sonia and the dentist

Sonia LOVES medical appointments….doctor checkups, dental checkups, it doesn’t matter. She loves them all. I think she probably enjoys being the center of attention for a short while.

Someone is very excited.

She cracks me up in the dental chair because she’s so small.

She’s patiently waiting.

I don’t know why she looks so worried here.

I thought her shoes looked cute, sticking up from the chair.

Oh look! It’s some clean teeth!

Miss Difficult-To-Photograph

These are all of my niece, Julia. She’s two, and while two year olds are generally difficult to photograph, this two year old is especially tricky because she is always going, going, going(this especially makes things difficult for me, because I’m almost always shooting without a flash!). I chased her around some on Thanksgiving Day, though, and I got a few pictures that I really like.

Her hair looks neat on this one if you click on it.

This one is my favorite…I really like the fence in it.

The white lumps are the ears of a bunny, which she was showing to me.

I did leave two in color.

And this is typical Julia:

I think this is a record…

I’ve done two non-people posts in a row! By the way, these are looking particularly un-sharp in this post, and I don’t know why. They look much better if you click on them to enlarge them, though.

I think trees look kind of neat when they’re leafless.