A Mother's Day Gift

This is a shoot with Holly's Aunt's second cousin. She wanted pictures of Jayden to give as a gift to his mommy on Mother's Day. Overall they turned out really well and everyone is happy with them. The first shot is actually one of the last shots taken, and Jayden threatened Luke with an "I'm gonna kick your butt!" (Hence the attitude on his face) It is by far our favourite shot of the day. We had lots of people around to keep him entertained, so he wasn't even close to being a struggle like Lillian is!

Some Recent Nature Shots

I haven't done much lately on the order of studio stuff, but I have been out a lot taking some nature pictures and working with my new lenses. I am sure you haven't been following the little "Our Gear" box to the right here, but if you have, you'll notice it's been getting smaller and smaller. I have been in the mode of selling off some of my mediocre gear to fund a smaller number of much better lenses. I am down to 2 lenses in my primary kit, the Carl Zeiss 16-80 and the Sony 70-300 G. Both are amazing lenses, and I have been nothing but happy with them.

Below are some nature shots I have taken recently. The first 2 were taken in my back yard with my 16-80. The duck shots were taken at a fishing pond just down the road using the 70-300. Ring-Billed Gull was taken at a marina in Cleveland on the trip home from buying the 70-300. The turtle is a Midland Painted Turtle living in the Killbuck marsh. It had a few friends hanging around, but this one was the only one brave enough to let me get somewhat close to it. It was also taken with the 70-300. The Canada Goose was taken at The Wilderness Center in Wilmot Ohio. I was amazed at how close he let me get to him. The geese there aren't typically outgoing, and this one was certainly on guard, but he let me get 20 feet away from him before I felt I was pushing it. That picture was also taken with the 70-300. The last 2 were taken in West Virginia, using one of the lenses I am going to be selling. The flower in the next-to-last shot is only about 3/4" across. I had to get as close as I could focus to make that shot work.

The Impossible Child

Here are a couple shots of my daughter Lilly for her 2nd birthday invitations. Now Lilly, for anyone who does not know, is a tomboy running at 120% full throttle all day long. She absolutely cannot be bothered by trivial things such as getting dressed or brushing her hair, much less a photo shoot. She is easily the 2nd most difficult subject I have tried to shoot, right behind a bumble bee in flight on a cloudy day. The first shot here is the only one I got of her with her hat and dress on, and I got it before I was finished positioning the flash heads. The second shot I ended up having to slouch down in a bag chair and let her come to me. I let her stand on my feet and I'd bounce her up and down some, then snap a shot, bounce and snap, repeat... For how difficult she can be, I thought they turned out fairly well.

Izzie and Zach

A good friend came over with his kids a few weeks ago for some updated shots to put on the walls. It was nice to work with some kids old enough to listen, unlike ours! They were a lot of fun, and constantly laughed and giggled. Overall, we think they turned out very well.

Yeah, it's the moon again... But Better!

The weather finally broke last night long enough for me to get a good shot of the moon using my new 1.4x teleconverter and my 500mm Reflex. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised! Teleconverters usually fog detail just a little, but in this case, I got a lot more detail out of the surface of the moon. You can see an incredible number of craters, and they are pretty well defined! I tried my new Minolta 100-400 APO out also, but it didn't compare to the 500 reflex for this kind of work. Hopefully, I'll be able to get up to my parent's house sometime soon to use the T-Mount adapter my father bought me for his Meade 10" telescope. Remember, you can always click on the pictures to see a larger version!

Kendra's Piggytails

Kendra's mommy tried a new hairstyle on her today, and absolutely loved the piggytails. Kendra wouldn't cooperate to get pictures this morning before coming to our house, so we took some pictures for her mommy to have. The only thing we had that would get her to smile was our cat. Of course, the cat was scared to death of Kendra. I'm sure we would have had better luck with her mom here. I guess we need to invest in some squeaky toys. Nevertheless, we liked the way these turned out.

Alexis and Her Big "A"

We had one more photo shoot in mind to try out on Lexi for her birthday shoots. We found these large 24" letters at Pat Catan's, and bought her an "A" to pose with. She always refers to the letter "A" as "That's my A!", so she was really excited to play with it. She is so easy to take pictures of, and smiles all of the time. We are not looking forward to Lillian's photo shoots coming up for her birthday in May. We cannot get her to stay in one place for any amount of time. Those should be interesting. For now, enjoy yet another session of Lexi!