Abby’s school celebrated the first 100 days of school with a party. Each student had to get a shirt and glue 100 items to it and wear it to school. It was a perfect opportunity to fire up the ghetto studio and get a few pics of Abby wearing her creation.

Abby had her first spelling test and, as you can see, she aced it. We hope this is a good omen.

Due to some technical camera issues, my photos of the various family Christmas events didn’t turn out very well. (I think my all-around lens has some focus issues.) However, when we went to my parents’ place in Kansas, I was able to get out on Christmas Night and shoot this star trails photo. The elder Daileys live out in the country well away from any serious city lights so the nights are quite dark. This barn sits less than a half-mile from my parents’ house. I tried this shot unsuccessfully once before. This time the idea was to take about 20 consecutive exposures of 4 minutes and combine them all in Photoshop. During the first exposure I used my little SB600 flash to pop some light on the barn. I set the pop at half-power, which turned out to be way too weak. I should’ve popped at full power two times, at least. And I should’ve popped on the little shed and tree directly in front of the camera. I had to bring the exposure on the barn way up in Photoshop to get it to show at all. I guess I’ll be going back to this spot with a more elaborate plan.

So it’s the Christmas season and we made our annual trek to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Seasonal Extravaganza. Abby always wants to ride the cow train until she actually gets seated in one of the cows.

Selecting and cutting down your own tree is a lot of fun. The kind of fun I’ll never experience again unless we move to the Pacific Northwest. Gina has dropped the whole notion of actually choosing a locally grown Christmas tree and looks exclusively for those perfect trees that must be shipped in from farther north. Luckily for Motley’s they have an excellent selection of freshly hauled-in foreign trees.

The petting zoo is always fun. Gina loved the little pig wearing a sweater. Abby wouldn’t go near it. I failed utterly in my attempt to get an interesting photo of pig races. (I know, how is that different from the other photos on here? Very funny.)

Then it was home to put up and decorate the tree. Bad picture of me, but good picture of Abby.

These guys guard the living room from their sentry post on the mantle.

Abby’s offensive line.

Wine and hot dogs. We like to mix things up during the holidays.

Playing with whatever that red stuff is has been Abby’s favorite part of Christmas tree day for the last three years.

Abby stalking the wily tree lion to capture his elusive image.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. This one was pretty much like the last several. We cooked the turkey per Alton Brown’s instructions and it turned out great again. I didn’t produce much in the way of great photos. The actual meal was a little fragmented because we didn’t get the food on the table until just before the Hogs started playing. We served buffet style and so didn’t load down the table with bowls and serving dishes filled with feastables, which would have made the pictures better.

I lit the table this year with a big studio strobe in each corner. My camera thanked me for not having to deal with those little Nikon SB600s this time.

While watching Alton Brown’s new Thanksgiving episode of “Good Eats” I was struck with the notion to prepare the pecan pie featured in the episode. I had to visit several stores to find the right tart pan, the right kind of syrup and the right kind of specially prepared pecans. (The recipe calls for spicy pecans but I used honey pecans.) By the way, I’d never made a pie before in my life. It was quite a hit amongst the pecan aficionados in the family.

Katie and Amy brought this game back with them from Phoenix that involves two raised boards with holes in them and tossing bags filled with corn. (Being a couple of wits, they call the game Cornhole. An inspired choice in my opinion.) I’d never heard of it but in an inspired bit of naming it’s called Cornhole and there’s an American Cornhole Association that governs the rules of play. The object is nearly identical to horseshoes in that you throw the bags and score points based on how close to the hole the bag lands. I don’t know how they got Razorback-themed boards.

The fall foliage in Arkansas was spectacular this year. My efforts to get a great fall shot were marked by ineptitude. This was the best I came up with. This is the canyon through which Cedar Creek flows on Petit Jean Mountain.

Gramps had a big time with his Frankenstein mask.

Abby making her jack-o-lantern face.

I headed up to the Buffalo National River on Sunday to shoot some fall foliage. Gina elected to stay home and I couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to spend the day doing outdoorsy stuff with me. So I took off alone. The weather forecast earlier in the week called for cloudy with some rain maybe, which would be perfect for viewing and shooting the colorful leaves. It rained Saturday night and was still raining in Little Rock when I left the house at 6 a.m. but by the time I got to Conway the sky was clearing. When I hit Russellville the sky was clear and I knew that I was going to miss all the good light. By the time I got to the Buffalo, the sun was high and harsh. I had originally planned to do the Hawksbill Crag hike, but I bailed on that and decided to just climb to the top of Roark Bluff across from the Steele Creek campground. My photo suffers from the harsh light. You really need a cloudy day after a rain to really get the great colors that nature has painted across the bluff. This was the first time I’d hiked Roark Bluff. It’s dangerous up there. The photo-taking spot is on a little spit of rock that juts out from the main bluffline. It’s a sheer drop on either side. If you fall, you’re going to die.

With the bald skies I knew that if I wanted to get any photos I was going to have to do something different, like go somewhere where the sun wasn’t a factor. I headed over to the Villines farmstead just across the low-water bridge at Ponca to check out the old buildings. The farmstead dates to the 1850s and consists of a cabin and outbuildings that are being restored by the National Park Service. The neat thing is that you can go inside the buildings. Something about this doorknob caught my eye, but I didn’t realize what it was until I got home and looked at the photo. The faceplate is mounted upside down. Normally, the keyhole is below the doorknob. The cabin was built in two parts by two different settlers at two different times and the whole thing looked to be poorly constructed. The doorways and windows are crooked and the floor slopes oddly. I know age accounts for some of that, but age can’t explain doorknobs mounted upside down.

Playing around with some HDR on these interior shots.

The barn at the Villines farmstead. I found it interesting that a big power line now runs through the middle of the Villines property. There’s no way all the folks who lived there over the years, scrabbling a living and struggling with cutting and laying by wood to cook with and heat the place and and boil water to wash their clothes, could’ve imagined that life-saving electricity would one day be mere yards from their back door.

Then I slowly made my way over to Jasper, where I ate lunch with this pirate at the bar of the Ozark Cafe on the town square.

I spent the rest of the afternoon meandering around to the east and south and eventually went through Lurton in southeast Newton County where I came upon the Lurton Community Church. I didn’t get any decent fall foliage pics, but it seemed the leaf color hasn’t actually peaked, so I’ve still got a chance for this year.

On Saturday we caught part of the classic William Shatner movie “Kingdom Of The Spiders,” which features a horde of tarantulas devouring a town. On Sunday we went on a ramble and found a large tarantula sneaking across a parking lot just off of Arkansas 7 north of Hot Springs.

Luckily I had brought my bug-shootin’ lens with me. Abby poked the spider with a stick and it reared up in the scary position and stayed that way for about 10 minutes while I shot a bunch photos. So nice of it to pose for me.