Falling Water
It was pretty stormy in the state last weekend, so Abby, Gina and I took a trip on Sunday to check out Falling Water Falls in the Ozark National Forest between Ben Hur and Witts Springs. We also stopped by Six Finger Falls a few miles downstream. I wasn’t feeling very photographically inspired so I don’t have much to show. We had a good time, though. Abby caught a huge terrapin turtle and we saw a little snake, so she got her Bindi the Jungle Girl on a little bit.
Living On Branson Time
We stormed Branson a couple of weekends ago to spend time with Mimi and Pawpaw. Mimi got us another sweet suite at the resort where she works.
It Snowed!
Little Rock’s first snow of any significance in 7 years (according to the news) happened this week. Abby was so excited she got dressed in record time, and all by herself to boot. She never does that on a school day.
Her first snowman.
“The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year”
After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas game plan) in anticipation of capturing the surprise and wonder on Abby’s face when she saw Santa’s bounty laid before her. But instead of letting her awaken to her own circadian rhythm, we woke her up, which resulted in her being groggy, confused and in a kinda cranky mood. She did show a little classic Christmas emotion when her jaw dropped upon seeing the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glass left from Santa’s late-night snack.
Dailey Family Christmas Card
Time for the annual family Christmas portrait. Merry Christmas to you and yourn.
Strobist info: Last year I used a single reflective umbrella and another flash for a hair light and I had weird shadow issues. This year I used the reflective umbrella on camera right with an SB-600 at 1/4 power and my ghetto foam-core softbox on camera left with an SB-26 also at 1/4. I wanted to keep the light ratio very close. Even though both flashes were on 1/4 power, the different modifiers put out different light levels. The softbox was a little brighter than the umbrella.
Christmas Trees And Pigs And Goats, Oh My!
What’s the one thing you don’t want to do when acquiring a Christmas tree? Drink the goat water. We figured we couldn’t put off getting a tree any longer, so we went to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Pig Racing Stadium on Sunday. Motley’s is chock full of holiday fun. There’s the petting zoo, the racing pigs, the shop full of Christmas-themed junk, the hayride and, of course, a field full of Christmas trees.
Face-To-Fish
I didn’t have classes on Thursday, so Abby stayed home from school, too. We went out exploring just like in the old days when I was a full-on stay-at-home dad or STAHD. We headed down to the river market to see how the fish were getting along at the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center.
Pickin’ Punkins
Abby decided she wanted a Halloween pumpkin, so rather than just picking one up at Kroger, we decided to go in for pumpkin getting experience. We headed out to Garner Homestead Family Farm in deepest Garland County. The Web site promised a petting zoo, a corn maze, hayrides and a pumpkin field. This place has pretty good PR, but the actual experience is a bit of a letdown.
T-Town
We took a day trip to Texarkana on Sunday to visit my Grandmother and see her new digs at Cornerstone, an assisted living community. She actually has a very nice two-bedroom house in what looks like a regular suburban neighborhood. Apparently the assisted-living part of the deal is that she gets a certain number of meals at the main building and housekeeping services. Abby and Mur-Mur, which is her cutsey-itsy name for great-grandchildren, had a great time playing with Pickles the Plastic Dog.
I told them to look at the camera for this one. Abby evidently didn’t know where I was and Grandmother evidently didn’t know I was going to take her picture.
Happy Fathers Day
Abby and Gina fixed me breakfast in bed for Fathers Day. I’ve never had BIB before. It was nice. (Photo by Gina.)
Another Trip Around The Sun
We gathered at Funland in Burns Park to celebrate Abby’s 3rd birthday on Saturday. No drama like last year. Abby announced that there would be no traditional singing of Happy Birthday. I didn’t get very many decent pictures. I was too busy jacking around with the video camera and other tasks.
Happy Mother’s Day … And 10,000!
Abby and I whomped up some breakfast for Gina for Mother’s Day and served it to her in bed.
This is kind of an out take from the breakfast-in-bed photo shoot, but I had to use it because it was the 10,000th shot on my D90. The counter rolled over to 0001.
Nothing Much To Do
Weird. It’s been weird this week. It feels like a pocket of calm before everything changes – again. Gina’s been out of town this week leaving Abby and me to forge ahead as a duo. Tuesday was extra dull and I asked Abby what she wanted to do and added that watching Calliou was not an option. She said, “Go to the Big Dam Bridge.” So that’s what we did.
I took my 70-300mm telephoto lens with us because I thought maybe there’d be some gulls flying around, but there weren’t. We walked up the bridge and watched a storm over Pinnacle Mountain. Then we walked down the bridge and out on an unpaved trail that branches off the North Little Rock River Trail. Abby was looking for fire ants. She’s taken a liking to stirring up their mounds and watching the ants go nuts and then running away shrieking. We got our shoes muddy and Abby saw some bugs, but no fire ants.
Where Have All The Jonquils Gone?
It turns out late March is a horrible time to hold a jonquil festival in Arkansas.
We went down to the Historic Washington State Park Jonquil fest with our friends Jim and Brayden. It’s your average Arkansas town festival complete with corn dogs, kid activities and vendors selling useless tackiness at barely justified prices. The little town of Washington is covered up in daffodils of all kinds, but they were all but finished blooming. It put a pall over their namesake festival. I guess the organizers were trying to avoid competing with at least three other such celebrations that I know of across the state in March.
Happy Birthday To Mom
Gina’s birthday was on Saturday. (She’s doing pretty well for only being 25.) Because we went out of town for the weekend, we didn’t get to do the cake thing. And Abby loves the cake thing. On Monday, Abby and I went out and got one of those half-size birthday cakes and a bunch of candles. Abby helped Gina blow them out.
After the candles were out, Abby went to town on the cake. Well, she went to town on the icing. A little while later she said her tummy hurt and she didn’t want anymore cake.
A Warm Day
Hallelujah, we got a warm day. Abby and I headed to Pinnacle Mountain to fly a kite. Unfortunately, the wind wasn’t blowing much at all. Note the kite laying on the ground. So we spent three hours on the playground see-sawing, sliding and swinging. I was playing around with balancing flash and ambient light. Abby was between the camera and the sun. I exposed for the sky and then fired the flash off camera at Abby’s shadow side.
Abby Picasso
Bitter-cold days are the bane of the stay-at-home-dad. It didn’t get above freezing today. It was one of those days where you don’t even want to get into a car to go somewhere else even if your destination is in a warm building. You have to get all those extra clothes on and there’s the hunching of the shoulders against the cold wind. Then the car is cold until you’re almost to where you’re going. And you’ll have a cold walk from the parking lot. And then on the way home the car will be cold again. All of that is at least doubled with a 2-year-old. Especially if she insists on sitting in the driver’s seat and jacking with the steering wheel and pushing the radio buttons for five minutes while you stand in cold.
The best bet is to stay inside. It turns out that little kids don’t really care about the cold, but they care about being bored. Even if they don’t understand that boredom is what they are feeling. Not even Abby can watch Dora the Explorer all day without getting tired of it. So I busted out the finger paints in the hopes that I could keep her entertained for about 15 minutes or so. I also thought I could get some good pictures of her covered in paint.
It’s Abby Wednesday
It’s Week 4 of the Stay-At-Home Dad Experiment. Yesterday we hit a library in West Little Rock. Today, with the sun out and temperatures much more reasonable, we made it to a couple of parks.
I was experimenting with the 70-300mm lens that I got a bargain on in Circuit City’s liquidation sale in Little Rock. It seems to work decently for portraits and I got a few bird shots a the parks. I think I’ll post a few of those over on Flickr.
This Is A Big Dam Bridge
Day 5 of the Atay-At-Home-Dad Experiment dawned bright and warm. Hallelujah! After another round with the cable company, Abby and I set out to see the other end of the Little Rock River Trail. The pedestrian bridge over the Murray Lock and Dam is the centerpiece of this part of the trail.
We got to the top in time to watch a barge lock through to the upstream side of the dam. Abby nearly had a tiny heart attack when the big horn blew to signal the opening of the lock, but later when we had made it back to the truck she said, “I was brave when the boat made that loud noise.”
Turkey Day
We hosted a Thanksgiving feast for Gina’s parents, my Dad and my Grandma, the star of an earlier post. I used a brining recipe from Alton Brown of Good Eats fame and it turned out marvelous. It was the third or fourth time I’ve brined a turkey and it’s the only way to go. In my experience, roasted turkey is generally dry and unappealing. With the brining method the juices flow out of the bird like the Nile River when you hit it with the electric knife.
Confetti
I got a package in the mail that had a huge wad of shredded newspaper inside as packing material and when Abby found it she went nutsy fagan.
I shot these with my 50mm f/1.8 prime at f/4.5 and 1/30. I left the auto ISO on and it jumped around quite a bit. These two shots were at 2200 and 1600 ISO, respectively. We were in the kitchen under the funky flourescent lights, which made the white balance weird in the top photo because the light behind Abby is a different temperature than the light shining on her face. I had to play around with it in Photoshop quite a bit to get it close. I ended up just concentrating on getting her face right and just letting the rest go. That’s why her hair and counter top at the top left are kinda blue-purple.
All Hallows Eve
What with it being Halloween and all, we embarked on some punkin’ carvin’. Abby helped scoop out the innards.
Zootastic
To round out our family weekend in Little Rock, we went to the zoo on Sunday. I’m not a big fan of zoos. I’m not generally a big believer in animal rights or that animals should be treated the same as people. Zoos just seem to be against the natural order of things. Take this chimp for instance. He’s got about a half acre of brambles and general Arkansas underbrush in which to roam and that telephone-pole jungle gym apparatus to swing on. Zoo workers throw a bunch of bananas out for him to eat each day on a concrete slab. Pretty boring compared to a real jungle. He probably sits up there every day staring over the fence wondering what the jungle south of I-630 is like. I’d rather watch a TV show about chimps filmed in the Congo than watch this poor guy sitting atop a recycled power pole.
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