LO: Baby Mini Book

LO: Baby Mini Book

Image by brungrrl
I made this mini album to take to a friend at the hospital the day their baby was born. Ideally, she can use it for photos of the little one and family taken the day he was born.

The book is made from cd envelopes. The idea is from Craft TV Weekly. I love these mini books - they are so practical and quick to make!

IMG_3658

Image by Neeta Lind
I made Nick a hot dog for lunch with something he's never had before; relish. He likes pickles so I thought he would like relish. 2 hrs. later he asked me to make him a hot dog bun with ketchup, mustard and relish but NO hot dog. He loved it.

Photo featured here at ABC Action news in Florida:
www.abcactionnews.com/news/state/story/Thieves-use-relish...

Another baby lizard pic ^_^

Image by Debs (ò‿ó)♪
He's observing you.

Unfortunately, the focus is on Elizabeth's thumb, so he's tiny is a bit out of focus. :(

This makes an interesting comparison between the Nikon D70 & the Sony DSC-T70 (this shot is w/the Nikon and the previous shot is w/the Sony). Because with the Sony you can tap the screen where you want it to focus, and it has a very lovely macro mode. The D70 lens we had was an all purpose lens, therefore had a pretty bad macro. (u｡u)
On another note, I believe this photo was taken at the max zoom, but if take a photo at max zoom on a non-SLR your photo is likely to be fairly blurry and all around nasty.

{cropped it a bit. It desperately needs to be opt'd too, but oh well}

The stamped baby

Image by Laurie Pink
I'm always wary of taking photos of children too obviously, because in this day & age it makes you look like a kiddy fiddler. Even more so, if you are wearing 8-bits moustache at the time.
If this baby were turning to look at me when I got the surreptitious shot, you would have seen that it had a eurocultured entry stamp... on its forehead.

It didn't look at all pleased about it, I can tell you.

Still, I am quietly impressed by the mother with no qualms about stamping her baby on the forehead. I can imagine the scene now.
"Where do you want your stamp?"
"Oh, put it on the baby. I'll be carrying it around with me all day anyway."
"On...the baby? Like, on its hand?"
"Nono, it's forehead will do. It'll only rub off on its hand."
"On its forehead?"
'Yes."
"You're okay with that"
"Oh, yes. It'll be nice and visible"
"Um... can you put the stamp on for me? I don't want to get in trouble for...you know... stamping your baby on the forehead"

Keeping the baby warm and dry

Image by Ed Yourdon
This couple was walking up the west side of Broadway, between 91st and 92nd Street...

Note: this photo was published in an Oct 28, 2011 Photo4baby blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in an Oct 30, 2011 blog titled "Futuro Wrist Support, Cushioning Beads, Adjust To Fit, 1 Wrist Brace ."

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Months from now, if people stumble onto this set of Flickr photos, they won't know or care when the photos were actually taken. After all, rain is a fairly universal phenomenon, and it can happen in any of the four seasons of the year.

Still, it's an odd experience to be writing these notes a week after the photographs were taken -- at an altitude of 35,000 feet, on a flight to Miami that lifted off from JFK airport just as the first snow flurries hit the runway at the beginning of what promises to be the first major snowfall of the 2009 season. Twelve inches of snow are expected by the time the storm stops, which makes this collection of water-soaked individuals seem like they got stuck in the wrong place and the wrong time.

But a week ago, the temperature was about ten degrees warmer -- and what could easily have been a foot or two of snow was instead just a couple of inches of cold rain. Rain, of course, brings out the umbrellas; and on a couple of earlier occasions this year (which you can see here and here on Flickr), I began to see that -- notwithstanding the typical stories about New York fashions -- people were not restricting themselves to black raincoats and black umbrellas. My winter coat (courtesy of North Face) is black, and just about every umbrella I've ever owned has been black; my suitcases are black, my backpacks and briefcases have always been black, and even my camera bag is black. Since it's promising to be a cold winter, I just bought a new pair of gloves and a new woolen cap ... in black.

But that's apparently not true for many other New Yorkers. While you'll see a few black outfits in the photos collected here, the range of vivid colors continues to surprise me. Somehow, it's something you would expect to see at the beginning of the spring season -- signifying the rejection of the dark gloom of clouds and rain, and celebrating the imminent arrival of flowers and blossoms, of emerald-colored trees and thick green grass and the chirping of birds. But this collection of photos was taken in mid-December, only a week before the official beginning of winter. You'd think that people would be carrying black umbrellas and somber raincoats that marked the season of death and darkness, but I guess that's just not the way things are here in New York City.

On the previous occasions when I've photographed umbrellas in the rain, I've deliberately used a "pocket camera," albeit a fairly sophisticated one such as the Canon G-10. I wanted something that would be compact enough that I could stick into my jacket pocket if the rain got heavy, and I didn't want to risk damaging the electronic components a really expensive, sophisticated camera by getting it wet. The results were usually fairly good, but I always wondered if I could do a better job with one of my high-end DSLR cameras...

... so that's what I used for this collection of photos: my Nikon D700 camera, with a big, heavy 70-300mm zoom lens. I attached a lens hood to the lens, to minimize the chances of raindrops falling directly onto the lens itself; and I stood beneath the awning and overhang of various storefronts and buildings along Broadway as the rain poured down steadily all around me. Next time, I might be even more adventurous, since I've got a professional waterproof bag-thingy that should keep the camera dry even if I'm standing out in the middle of a torrential downpour. But for now, this was a good start.

Because of the rain, most of the people I photographed paid no attention to me at all; they were too busy concentrating on where they were walking, where the puddles were deepest, and whose umbrellas were about to poke them in the face. On the rare occasions when they did see a crazy guy standing under an awning, pointing a camera in their general direction, they frowned or gave me a quizzical look, and just kept going...

So that's the way it was, on this rainy Sunday afternoon. At this point, I'm going to assume that winter has officially arrived, and that the precipitation during the next few months will take the form of snow, not rain. I don't know how well it will turn out, but one of my future projects will be a series of photos during a blizzard. Stay tuned ... and in the meantime, stay dry.