The Looking Bowl

34/365
9:39am

Jack and I always bake in the afternoons while Charlie naps. When we decided to spend the morning making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, Charlie found the operating mixer to be as intriguing and entertaining as a new toy. While Jack is very serious about the process (and calling himself "an expert"), he backed off his Proper Procedure to be amused by the fun house mirrors effect. Who doesn't love science?

I focused on both boys in the reflection, not on real-life Charlie. In fact, I was able to draw more light for the shot from the backdoor and the dining room windows because of the reflection. How handy.

Slurp, Gulp, Mmmm......

33/365
12:59pm

I made a hearty, good old-fashioned chicken noodle soup not long ago, and defrosted the leftovers for lunch. This is dear Charlie's Noodle Vacuum Face, complete with a carrot freckle. Most of his meals have a 90 second duration, at which point he theatrically pushes away from the table and emphatically declares himself, "DONE!" He'll stick around for soup, savoring each noodle and swigging the broth until he's satiated, roly-poly and sloshy.

Grow

32/365
9:22am
To know her is to know this is a miracle.

I took, ahem, close to two hundred (that's right, 200) frames this morning. I immediately edited 150 at first glance due to focus, light, expression, composition, etc... Left with about fifty, I chose this one because it expresses what mothers feel when they're expecting: light, glowy, tender, serene, protective. (Ah, not including the raging hormones days. Ok, fine, it's what women want to feel.) I added a film grain effect in post-production.

Truly, it was an honor to have had the opportunity to preserve just a fleeting moment of her beautiful twenty-seventh week.

Sew What?

31/365
6:39pm

Yeah, I got nothing on this! I went down to Brandy's house this weekend, and narrowly missed my first Day Without A Photo by talking too damn much to take a picture. I found this old Singer hanging out in one of her guest rooms; it was part of Keith's parents' bedroom collection that was handed down to them.

There was very low lighting in the room, and I had to use a super cool wooden jewelry box as a "boxpod" to stabilize the camera. I left the shutter open for a long 30 seconds so it could pull all the available light from the room. Conveniently, doing it this way also allowed us to continue our very important blather with barely a blip.

Big

30/365
4:36pm

Charlie likes what eats to be Big, which means whole. There have been many-o-tears over quartering his grapes, chopping his broccoli, dicing his chicken. Big is a problem because if I cut anything, I can't jigsaw it back together without getting busted. But the bigger Big issue is that if I serve something in its entirety and my dear son takes a bite (gasp!), to his dismay it's no longer Big. The horror, the outrage, the injustice!

Even warm chocolate chip cookies aren't precluded from Big expectations.

Stalagmite

29/365
3:53pm

The condensation from the furnace exhaust created this unusual little ice formation on the side of our house. Hey, it's a slow day around here!

Could just be me, but with the light appearing as if it's glowing from within, I think it's a worthy component of the crystalline architecture in Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Who didn't want to pull out of one those memory crystals?

Shot this at 1/125, f/22, ISO 400. I'd probably bring that down if I could do it over. Click on this picture to enlarge it; the sparkle on top looks like I used a star filter.

Consolation Prize

28/365
9:04am

Not all winter days are melancholy.

Last night's light snow and this morning's sub-zero temps left the UW Arboretum beautifully rimed. We may not have tropical breezes and an ocean view, but a morning like this makes it worth coming in second/last.