Happy Halloween everyone! Today we bunkered down in the house and only let ourselves leave for a tiny bit this afternoon to get some onesies for Olivia. See, we were “treated” this morning by Olivia. I walked into the room. She held her bug up and said “BU—– GUH”. I noted that she smelled horribly, then I looked down. The child had ripped her diaper off and wet herself and the crib very badly. Needless to say, I woke Maurice up so he could do the laundry while I gave her a good scrubbing in the bathtub. She thought the entire ordeal was hilarious of course. We’ve since purchased onesies with buttons so she can’t rip her diaper off. Hopefully that does the trick

I’ve spent the past few weeks frustrated with my photography. I was getting extremely soft images and thought it was my fault trying to learn a new camera. Not so. It took a few stationary tests today to realize that the damn thing is front-focusing. This means that even though the auto focus point is right over the eye and locked onto the eye, it chose instead to focus on the plane where the tip of her nose and hair are. I web sharpened the above image, so you can’t see it really unless you see the “straight out of camera” image. Sadly, this means that the new camera had to go back to Canon for calibration and repairs. Hopefully, I will see it again sometime in the next 1-2 weeks. In the meantime, I still have my old camera, which I’ve held onto with a death grip just in case something like this happened.

It sucks being an early adopter of new technology, because inevitably a small percentage of individuals get smacked in the face by innovation… and innovation didn’t even leave me its phone number before leaving the house after a hot date

In the next couple of weeks at least we’ll know that pictures I take of Liv are focused correctly. Thankfully, any client shoots I have had were taken with precautions and I used settings that would ensure focus was maintained. It’s only when I’m with family when I experiment with wide open settings such as the ones used for the image above.

She does have pretty eyes though. We’re still not sure what the final color will be or who the eyes take after the most. I think she looks just like Maurice when she’s tired. She looks like me when she’s hyper. God help us.

I finally made it through the rest of the pictures from Grandma Evy’s visit! Our second day was awesome. We did nothing but relax at the house, well, all except for that little trip to Target where Olivia flipped out over an Elmo doll. Yes. Elmo. She loves it. I think Grandma Evy was sold on it when Elmo told Olivia he loved her, blew her a kiss, and then she blew him a kiss back. Yep, that’s my kid; already hitting on cybernetic creatures. Thatta girl!

We swiftly made our way back to the casa to let Olivia eat a little lunch and get her Elmo on. It was funny watching her dance and laugh at him. Everytime he sang, she’d dance. Whenever he blew kisses, she’d blow kisses back. It is her new “thing” so to speak outside of the walking and learning new words. “Tree” is still prominent, but now we have more “Banana”, “Book”, “Cat”, “Light”, “Sky”, etc. It’s weird, but I think we understand her when she “speaks” to us. Sadly tonight was a work night and Maurice could not make it home in time to put her to bed, so instead he called after I told him that she was crawling around looking for him shouting “Dada” up the stairs and behind the couch (because Dada likes to hide on the couch). Poor girl actually looked out the window at one point hoping he’d drive up. He called while she was eating, so I put him on speaker phone. She laughed and smiled at the sound of his voice, then proceeded to blow kisses at the phone. Very cute!

If you made it this far — enjoy the pictures! Here are some of the highlights, but the rest from the entire visit may be found in my Flickr set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgianelson/sets/72157622652753188/

Now for some photography voodoo — the depth of field (DOF) on this camera is wonky. I’m trying to get used to it, so clearly there’s going to be some focus issues from that. For now, playing it safe and using clamped apertures is the way to go. It’s finding the time to practice with it that drives me bonkers.

I’m still processing a lot of these images (mostly because I’m being a dolt and a perfectionist over their skin coloring… overcast skies how I hate thee! let me count the ways!). Thankfully I remembered that back in the film days ™, we would put warming yellow filters over our lenses to boost the warmth of the scene in overcast weather.

Anyhoo! Yesterday we went to the La Grange winery to taste wine, take pictures, and enjoy ourselves. We didn’t end up getting shots outdoors until way later in the day since it decided to rain just as we drove up. We ended up going to the park to get these shots and I love them dearly (even if I still think their skin color is off). Olivia is saying “tree” a lot more and Grandma Evy got her saying “ball” and hopefully “elmo” before she leaves. Ah yes, she bought her the newest Elmo doll that sings, dances, and tells jokes. Olivia loves it. We’ll have a video of that later.

Tonight the plan is to make homemade spaghetti! Mmmm…

There are more on Flickr and will be more as the weekend progresses — also, still hate overcast skies. Damnit. If this had been a client shoot, I would have rescheduled!!!

Today it got up to 70 degrees, so I decided to head home right away instead of hitting up the grocery store and take her to the park. She enjoyed playing with the leaves as I tested out the camera. I’ve noticed some focus issues with it, but I’m not sure if it’s me, the camera, or the lens. Sometimes it’s sharp. Othertimes it’s really soft on the eyes.

Olivia started saying “tree.” She points up at them and says “TEE! TEE! TEE!” then looks at me for acknowledgement. Yes Olivia, that’s a tree. She’s curious about every little thing around her now. She’ll point at it and say “Dis?” to which I reply with the appropriate word. I’m wondering if she’s actually trying to say “this.” We’ll figure it out eventually. I think she speaks her own language… like pig latin, only cooler.

And looky looky — pictures! We’re waiting for Grandma Evy to pay us a visit this week. God willing, this house will be clean.