Gina went out of town earlier this week for a four-day business trip. Right after she left Abby had one of her great ideas: “Let’s make gingerbread men as a surprise for Mom when she comes home.” I have no idea where she came up with this. We’ve never made gingerbread men at our house and we’ve never bought any that I can remember. But because I’m a great dad I told her it was a great idea. She said, “OK let’s go.” I told her we’d better wait until the day before Mom came home so the cookies would be fresh. Everyday thereafter when I’d pick her up from school she’d ask if we were going to make gingerbread men. She’d then sulk for an hour or so when I said “three more days, two more days,” etc. I found a recipe on the Internets and went and bought all the ingredients and when the day came Abby and I went to a local kitchen store and bought big, medium and small gingerbread man cookie cutters.

I hauled out my trusty twin SB-600s and two shoot-through umbrellas to capture what promised to be a magical father-daughter evening. Also I figured the gingerbread men would make good subjects to shoot with the beater macro lens I recently bought on eBay.