day seventy eight and seventy nine

250 pictures to sort through, after a day of frantic cake decorating, cooking, entertaining, and trying to be everywhere at once.  So, so very grateful for an awesome husband and friends who came through for me.

Happy birthday, honey.

day seventy three, seventy four, seventy five, seventy six, and seventy seven

Before there is an outcry about the lack of posts - this has been an incredibly busy week.  First birthday party tomorrow, Liam decided it is wonderful to wake up three times a night, my family is visiting, and cooking, baking, etc...  I'm beat.  I should be sleeping right now, except I think I have insomnia at this point.

Anyway, I did take pictures.  I didn't take them off my camera till just now, and I will just post my favorites from this week.  Tomorrow I hope to present you with some lovely birthday shots, and resume life as normal.

You might notice my blossoming cherry tree.  I hope to take pictures of Liam next to this tree every year around his birthday.

He's still asleep, I might relax till he's up :)

day seventy two

And for today's post - another two-fer, since 1) I was so slack yesterday, and 2) now you will see some of why:

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/800 sec, ISO 100

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/50 sec, ISO 100

The first of of our acorn doorknocker, and the second is of some of our house numbers.  Prior to this weekend, they were a dull, deep brown.  Since my wonderful husband has painted, himself, the entire exterior of the house (love the shade of white I chose?  I do!), I decided to attack these pieces with some lemon juice, salt, a toothbrush and good old fashioned elbow grease.  They are MUCH improved.

day seventy one

Another late day :(  I'm sorry, but we've been very busy preparing the house for Liam's party.  I'll show you some of what we've done in Sunday's pictures.

Liam has been very busy eating dirt.  He also accompanied me on a 5K walk/run this morning with friends for both of us... but yeah, dirt, since I forgot to ask if I could post the other pictures (and need to give them to my friend anyway, I really am slacking).

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/1250 sec, ISO 100

I also had the singular pleasure of pulling dirt out of his mouth.  Just ugh, lol.

day seventy

Must go to sleep, must be awake early to walk a 5k... Here's a closeup of my pretty Yoshino Cherry with uncreative settings!

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/500 sec, ISO 100

I'll bring my camera to the festivities tomorrow, provided I am not walking out the door as a zombie.

day sixty nine

Very busy day, Bill is still at work, so here's a picture of the snapdragons I planted in the front yard a few days ago.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/120 sec, ISO 100

Note to self - taking pictures when you have a perfectly awake and spirited child, with no additional help, is a bit of an exercise in futility.  I'm glad I managed to get this one at all!

day sixty eight

Before everyone thinks, "Wow, Liam is a lucky boy, having playdates with all these adorable little girls!" I finally caught a picture of one of the other (equally adorable) little boys!  Here's Brayden!

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/320 sec, ISO 400

It was so funny - there was great lighting in the room, and the kids were playing nicely, so I took out my camera and laid out in front of Brayden.  His mom, Jessica, camped out next to me, and wow... this kid loves him mom.  I was too busy looking through the camera and snapping pictures to see what she was doing to make him so happy, but it worked!  And I TOTALLY love the outfit he was sporting today - I want it for Liam for Easter!  My baby is too little for sweater vests and ties, damnit!

day sixty seven

I had planted a few snapdragons in the front garden today, hoping that the sunlight there would qualify as "full sun" (I might be optimistic more than realistic, here), and took a few pictures, remembering to try out new apertures.

Then I came inside, and my husband informed me that the Yoshino Cherry Blossom tree we planted in the backyard to commemorate Liam's birth started to bloom.  Back outside!

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/2.8, shutter speed 1/200 sec, ISO 100

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of this tree.  For starters, for someone who is five foot tall wearing sneakers, I was finally of a decent height to get different angles of the branches, though as it turned out, shooting with the sky as a backdrop turned out to be a great choice.  Second, I did take this exact shot with different apertures, and ended up liking the f/2.8 the best for this particular photo.  It captured more of the branch and buds (f/1.4 pretty much only focused in on the main blossoms) while still decently blurring out the background.  I'll have to keep this up!

day sixty six

Let it not be said that a year went by without snapping a single picture of Liam's favorite toy... the lid.  This translucent blue lid is off of his Evenflo In The Garden Exersaucer - it was ripped off moments after Liam was placed in it for the first time, and has never looked back.  These days, Bill and I have been offering Liam choices, such as "Frog rattle, or book?"  Book will win.  "Pork chop, or french fry?"  Our son is a carnivore, so that's easy.  "Mommy's old $500 Palm Pre, or The Lid?"  He would prefer both, but if it came down to it... he would want the lid.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.8, shutter speed 1/400 sec, ISO 800

And here he is, happily showing it off to his father.  He loved to look at people, light, anything through this lid.  Some people will save their child's favorite teddy bear... ours has no interest whatsoever in such things, but man I better not lose this lid.

Also from a picture standpoint, I should have lowered my ISO.. I had just been taking pictures upstairs, and forgot to jchange it from 800, whoops.

day sixty five

I really like this picture of Liam.  First you have the ever-present drool represented.  Then you have my son's fascination with touching things using his middle finger.  I also love the look of concentration on his face as he figures out how to use his ride-on toy's horn.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.8, shutter speed 1/320 sec, ISO 100

I tried using f/1.8 today, though I personally didn't see a huge difference in focus.  This is probably because the lighting in my formal living room kept shifting due to cloud cover, and I was really kept busy adjusting shutter speed.  Tomorrow I will try to take the same shot using 1.4 and 1.8 and seeing the difference.

day sixty four

Another busy day (house painting since the weather was just overcast, sigh!) and I had to get a picture of this flowering bush before all of the blossoms fell off.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/2000 sec, ISO 200

Looking at this, I'm thinking I need to fall a little out of love with f/1.4.  I'd like the whole flower to be in focus, so I'll try 1.8 tomorrow and see how it goes.

As for yesterday's mystery, I might have figured out how to prevent it, but not the reason why it happened.  I had really bumped up the Clarity slider in RAW on this picture as well, and the same thing happened when I opened it in PS.  Does PS not like that sort of extreme boost?

day sixty three

So, here are one of the last few blooms on my other mature front yard tree.  It bloomed when I was in NY (sigh) and I had other flowers to capture this week so this is pretty sad.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/1250 sec, ISO 100

Now, needless to say I am pretty miffed.  If I open this file in RAW, it is perfect, no grain.  I then open it in PS (just to put the watermark on) and it becomes distorted.  This has never happened to me before, and I have no idea why it is being temperamental - not sure how many PS users read this, but if anyone has a clue I'd love to know!

day sixty two

More company over tonight, so we'll interrupt our regularly scheduled garden feature to showcase Liam in tonight's bathtime routine:

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/120 sec, ISO 400

Not bad considering I forgot to up my ISO to 800.

day sixty one

And the trip through my "spring" garden continues with an afternoon photo of a blossom from my Bradford Pear.

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/4000 sec, ISO 100

day sixty

We have company over tonight, so there's not much of a blog post.  Here's some of the flowers that grow next to our garage:

Using Nikon 50mm f1.4G, manual mode, f/1.4, shutter speed 1/320 sec, ISO 100