January 30 - Friday night at the bar...

Went out to dinner last night and had to wait for a bit for our table. No better place to wait than at the bar, right?

It's fun to play with depth of field as a part of how you frame your shot. That's one arena where fast primes really shine. This one's wide open, f/1.8.

(click photo to view larger)

EXIF: Canon 5D Mark II, EF 28mm/1.8, f/1.8, ISO 640, 1/25
Exposure Date: January 30, 2008

January 29 - My girls

I get in trouble, so to speak, especially with my kids grandmothers, because I don't give them prints of my girls all that often. I know, seems ironic since I do so much photography, but it just doesn't happen that often. Last night was an exception. The girls were restless, so I pulled out the lights, pinned up a backdrop and spent about 15 minutes making a few photos (seems that's all the longer I can hold their attention right now).

Here are my girls, C and A:

(click photos to view larger)

EXIF for Shot 1: Canon 5D Mark II, TS-E 90mm / 2.8, f/2.8, 1/200, ISO 100, 2 monolights w/ umbrellas
EXIF for Shot 2: Canon 5D Mark II, EF 70-200mm 2.8 L IS @ 200mm, f/2.8, 1/200, ISO 100, 2 monolights w/ umbrellas
Exposure date: January 29, 2009

January 26 - Small Group

I am a part of a small group of friends that gets together on Tuesday nights to share a meal and share our lives. We didn't all start out as friends, now, but I think it is fair to say we are all friends now.

We are not a particularly diverse group in terms of demographic but we do seem to have a fairly diverse range of backgrounds, interests and goals. We've been doing this long enough now that we've seen some members come and go (some thankfully, some we miss) but our "core" seems to have strengthened significantly as we try to live life together.

I am fortunate in that they have all come to tolerate me making photos in the middle of discussions. This is a photo I made of my friend Dan last night as he read to us:

(click photo to view larger)

I would highly recommend the small group experience to everyone. The important thing (to me) about a good small group is to somehow create an atmosphere where everyone is free to bring their thoughts, fears, opinions and beliefs to the group and express them without worrying about how the group will respond. Not necessarily that the group as a whole will agree, but understanding and acceptance of differences are huge.

We're not there yet, but we're a lot closer to it than we were when we started the experiment.

As an aside, I continue to be amazed at the quality of the high ISO files out of the new camera. This is ISO 6400, under a mix of tungsten and fluorescent lighting.

EXIF: Canon 5D Mark II, TS-E 90mm / 2.8, f/2.8, ISO 6400, 1/40
Exposure Date: January 26, 2008