day 91 - your mission, should you choose to accept it

Earth Hour 2012.

Five little kids braved the darkness and explored the darkest depths of the great outdoors.

Their mission, should they choose to accept it: find the glow in the dark Easter eggs and bring them back to the house.












The glow in the dark Easter eggs were made by putting small glow sticks inside plastic Easter eggs. The glow in the dark sidewalk chalk is from a kit by Crayola. It takes longer than the package says for it to harden, so to speed it up (and make it far more vibrant) I baked it in the oven at 400 F for ten minutes and then threw it in the fridge for a few minutes. It worked like a charm.

What did you do for Earth Hour?

day 320 - so they all rolled over and one fell out $

It's that time again - midnight shift. I started the night with Ava in bed along with her bed hogging companion, Mr. Bear. By 2 am Owen had climbed in with us and by 4:30 he was sleeping horizontally across the bed and his legs were somehow tucked under my neck.



A few weeks ago, a very nice blog reader asked me how I take my pictures in low light. Here is what works for me and I hope you find it useful:

You don't need a fancy tripod. I lost my tripod mount months ago. I have no idea where it is and I don't need it to take pictures in low light. All you need is something sturdy to balance your camera on. I took the above picture with my camera sitting on a spindle of DVDs on my night table. The picture I took last night? I propped my camera on the bed rail of Owen's bed. These shots? Taken with the camera on the foot board of my bed.

Shoot wide open. Let as much light in as possible. I have two lenses that are perfect for low light. The primary lens I shoot with is a Sigma 17-70 mm that opens up to f2.8. The other lens I use is a Canon 50 mm fixed lens that opens up to f1.8. Both lenses are perfect for low light and great if you want to avoid using your flash at all costs like I do.

Don't crank your iso too high. Go with a lower iso and a longer shutter speed. You'll end up with more light and less noise. I shot the picture above at 400 iso and a 5 second shutter speed. I could have shot it at 1600 iso and a shorter shutter speed, but the picture would have been grainy and if I had to lighten it at all, the noise would have become more pronounced. My subject is lying still and I'm not hand holding the shot so I can afford to leave the shutter open longer.

Tell your subject to sit still. Ava is usually cooperative so I often ask her to sit as still as possible while I take the picture. Other times I just wait until she is totally immersed in whatever she is doing before I take my shots.

Take a pile of pictures. I wasn't too worried about this morning's picture as Owen was lying completely still, but taking a picture of a person who is awake is a different story. You'll want to take lots of pictures just in case. You'll have some terrible ones right off the bat. And others will look good on your camera screen and then not as sharp as you'd like when you open them on the computer. Increase your chances of capturing a great shot by simply having more to choose from.

Hope this helps!



Here's my other picture from today - my sons helping me get ready for work this morning.

day 208 - reading with ava $

On Sunday, we went to Chapters after the movie and my mom bought Ava a copy of Beezus & Ramona. It's not a novelization of the movie, but the original book by Beverly Cleary. Tonight Ava and I read chapter three and we decided to read under the duvet with a flashlight.



It was unbelievably hot under the duvet cover, but it was fun.



I didn't know if a chapter book with very few pictures would hold Ava's attention, but it's going very well and she is following along without problems. We're halfway through and should be done by the end of the week.