8 posts tagged “photography”

E woke up on his 7th birthday in front of the kelp forest at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was a Boy Scout overnight - a big adventure for a kid who doesn't yet do sleep-overs. Lights-out time was an impressively late 11 p.m. S and I stayed at a nearby hotel and met up the next morning to walk through aquarium.

The jellyfish exhibit is a perennial family fave. Reminds me of scuba diving in Jellyfish Lake, Palau. E also got to see the big, new, 9-foot, 7-gill shark, but it was hiding when I got there.

Show us a photo that makes something ordinary look extraordinary.

Tree Stump

Wow! I'm incredibly impressed with Apple's Aperture photo management software. (Thanks, Hana!) I've *not* been a fan of iPhoto (though the new 2008 version might be better) - but somehow I end up using it to create odd stuff, like E's kindergarten class memory book last spring. But for photo management, it's downright annoying.

I haven't been able to post very many summer photos for a litany of computeresque reasons too boring to mention even here. But I loaded Aperture on my PowerBook around 12 hours ago, and I already love it. It even talks to my iPhone.

It has a fabulous interface for managing photos along with some great photo manipulation tools that probably take care of the main features I use in Photoshop (e.g., exposure, adjusting tones). Not that I'm quite ready to say goodbye to Photoshop... I love Aperture's nondestructive model for image editing - so much more efficient. And there's even a plug-in for uploading to Phanfare; I haven't tried it yet, but, again, it looks awfully promising.

So once I solve the other techno-problems - which include adding a terabyte server on our WDS network (wish me luck!) - a few summer photos will be on the way, I hope...

1. What kind of camera do you have?
A Nikon D70 and a Casio Exilim point-and-shoot.

2. How often do you take pictures?
Not as often as I'd like. I take a few ad hoc pictures each week. For E's school, I try to take pics on special days but have to arrange for a sitter for S. It's hard to take pictures when she's around - unless they're of her.

3.What's the last picture you took?
E and R (a.k.a. idogcow) at the Stanford Clark Center's family science day.

4. What is the first camera you ever had?
My dad gave me a completely manual Minolta SLR back when I was in college.

5. Show us your best shot.
I've been feeling nostalgic about my kids' growing up so quickly, so this one from 2005 is a fave right now:

Juicy baby