Yeah, I know the headshots are getting old. I don’t know why, but for some reason the thought of using the 18-55 hadn’t occurred to me, so the 50mm in my shooting room pretty much guarantees nothing more than headshots. I may try the kit lens, since I’ve been up around f8.0.

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog lately. Things seem to have gotten a lot more busy over the past weeks. I haven’t been taking a lot of pictures, either. Here are some recent ones to tide things over:

This second one shows the fun that the other three have at JD’s expense: they love sticking rice crispies to his head. And he loves trying to find them and eat them.

This past Saturday we headed into the Columbia River Gorge to Hood River, where we drove a bit of the Hood River Fruit Loop. The weather was beautiful, especially for this time of year. We stopped at Rasmussen Farms to get some pumpkins and apple cider, and then to Draper Girls Country Farm to pick some apples.

I have to praise the Draper Girls for their wonderful staff. When we arrived they had just closed the apple picking for the day, since it was about 5:30 in the evening. I mentioned that wasn’t a big deal, since we would likely be out in the area again in a few weeks, to which the lady answered that there probably wouldn’t be any more apples by then. She then let us go out and pick some apples even though they had closed up for the day! The kids were so excited, and we ended up with about 25 pounds of fresh apples, with a side of muddy shoes and sticky smiles.

I have no idea what they were thinking, but today after the kids ran up to the mailbox to get the mail, they decided to enjoy the rain.

Yesterday I started listening to the first Holy Responsibility of Christian Fathers message in Art Azurdia’s The Holy Responsibility Of The Christian Family series. My time was limited, and I only got about 20 minutes into the message, but that 20 minutes affected me more than imaginable. His text for all six messages in this part of the “Family” series is Ephesians 6:4. The two introductory questions with which he begins this specific subtopic for fathers are:

1. Do you realize that in fathering a son or daughter, that God in his mysterious providence has given to you the ability to bring into existence a rational soul that will exist in all of eternity in Heaven or Hell? …Though sun, moon, and stars one day cease to shine, when we gaze upon that baby we are looking into the eyes of an everlasting spark that will never be put out. There is no power under God’s throne that could ever cause that soul to cease to exist.
2. Do you realize that not only were you just the human source of the eternal soul of your child, but that even more serious, that because of you, that soul is stained by original sin and thus guilty before God?

He continues:

Here is the point. You as a father are directly responsible for the procreation of your children. Children who possess a soul that will endure for all eternity in Heaven or Hell. And secondly, you are the one directly responsible for setting its disposition in rebellion against God, rendering it guilty before God, you have passed your sin on to them, a sinful condition that will damn them to Hell apart from the intervening grace of God.

… You see, becoming a father is easy. It happens in a moment of passion. Being a father is something altogether different. It is nothing less than a taking up of a cross in a life of self-denial.

This promises to be a challenging and humbling series.

Just before Jeremiah headed to bed, I snapped another host of pictures. These are two of the best from that set:

I let myself get pretty behind on some image editing. So tonight I took some time to work through my “imported” folder and moved images to my “keep” folder. I must have deleted over 300 pictures that were completely unusable (half-open eyes, 3+ stops off exposure, and out of focus). Here are a few random ones from as far back as a month ago.

Tami and I finally decided to let Lindsey get her ears pierced. It was a surprise for her, and although she was quite nervous once she got into the chair, she was more than happy after the initial shock of the two earrings going in at the same time.

Of course, I brought the camera. And I clicked like a mad fool. And I’m glad Lindsey isn’t old enough to be embarrassed by her dad yet. I won’t reveal how many pictures I took, but I will say it was more than are posted here. For a few more, you can visit Flickr.

I finally got the AlienBee out tonight after being inspired from a few videos and sites I saw today. I discovered that my PC sync cord was bad, and lost many shots when the strobe wouldn’t fire, but did manage to get a few that I liked. I now have another sync cord on order from FlashZebra, and expect it to come in the next few days (< $15!).

I learned a LOT in just the 10 minutes the kids gave me before bed. It’s a lot more fun giving the kids general directions as opposed to “stand here, tilt your head, look that way.” And with the Bee on AC and at about 1/8 power, recycle times were faster than I could focus and recompose, so it was *snap* *snap* *snap*! The more I shoot, the more I am reminded that reading is a great source of learning, but doing is critical. These are just manual shooting with a single strobe above camera right. No Photoshop on these, but there is a bit of Adobe Camera Raw correction on white balance, saturation, contrast, and exposure.

I underexposed many of the shots by at least a stop, and my skills at adjusting this and white balance are lacking. Next time I will be sure to keep things a bit more hot.