I love watching Jason watch things. This is him at Shamu's Christmas show last Saturday. He didn't take his eyes off the pool the entire time.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode (matrix metering). Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/40 (-1 EV), ISO 1600. Post-processing in Aperture 3: curves adjustment to increase contrast and bring up the exposure a bit.

Thoughts for improvement: I missed the focus a bit, resulting in the bridge of his nose being sharp and his eye being a little soft. My camera's AF system doesn't always do so well at night, especially since I have the AF-assist light turned off, so this is just something I have to deal with sometimes in order to catch the moments. Compositionally, though, I'm pretty happy, though perhaps it might have been good to include more of his left hand.

One thing about photography: it's turning me into a hypocrite.

I should explain that. See, I'm always chiding Juliette for being nosy. If we go to a restaurant, she looks around at people at other tables. If we go for a walk, she looks to see what she can see through people's windows. "Nosy Noserson," I'll say.

But, of course, if there's anything nosier than a street photographer, I don't know what it is. I'm constantly looking at other people these days, trying to see if they'll show me something I can photograph. That's got to be worse than just sneaking a peak through someone's open front door from the sidewalk.

These two kids were sitting behind us at Shamu's Christmas show when we were at SeaWorld on Saturday. (I didn't actually watch much of the show; first I was watching the crowd, then I was watching Jason.) I glanced back at them several times before the show started, and it reminded me so much of being that age and in love. They kept giggling and looking at each other, taking pictures of themselves together with his cameraphone. (OK, I guess we didn't have that last one when I was a teen.) And all I could think was "How nice."

There's a lot of doom and gloom out there these days. Terrorism, war, people losing their jobs, their homes. But, you know, there's a lot of tenderness, hope, joy, and love out there, too. I think it's worth taking the time to see it. I know it makes my life better.

***

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode (matrix metering). Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/60 sec (-1 EV), ISO 1600. Post-processing in Aperture 3: maximum recovery adjustment; curves to bring up exposure a bit; cropped to 5x7 and to remove some extra space at the top and a distracting foreground element; light dodging over the couple's faces; burned over the background and the guy on the right.

Thoughts for improvement: The lights in the background are quite bright and are a little distracting. I cropped out most of the man in the right foreground, but if I could have excluded him as I was shooting that would have been better. I also wish I could have gotten a slightly more intimate moment—I like the way she's smiling at him, but he looks a little distracted, which wasn't really representative of how they were acting at the time.

"The Popculturist's Top Ten Christmas Tunes":

The beginning of the Christmas season is an eventful time in the Popculturist household. We decorate our Christmas tree. I drag the ladder out from the garage to hang the lights up on the eaves. And, of course, the radio dial moves over to the local soft rock station for the 24-hour holiday music. Whereupon I start grumbling and Mrs. Popculturist starts commenting on my Grinchiness.

There's no big story to this one. I just happened to look up as we were walking from one part of SeaWorld to another, and liked the look of the audience's silhouettes up in the bleachers above us.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200 mm VR DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode (matrix metering). Focal length 200 mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/125 sec (+0 EV), ISO 360. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped to 5x7; red-filter BW preset; curve for contrast, black point, and white point.

Thoughts for improvement: The main thing I could do without here is the mass of palm fronds right in the middle. It might also be nice if I could have missed the head down near the bottom of the frame.

Juliette got Jason a new set of Christmas pajamas that came with a little striped stocking cap. He, of course, loved it. It was beyond cute to watch him running all over the toddler's play area at SeaWorld with that hat on, the tassel bouncing all over as he jumped.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode (matrix metering). Focal length 200 mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/160 (+0EV), ISO 800. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped to 5x7; curves to increase exposure and add contrast; retouched a spot on his face.

Thoughts for improvement: The other kids in the background are a little distracting, but otherwise I like it.

We went to SeaWorld this weekend to see their Christmas stuff. Mainly this consisted of a big tree just inside the park, an ice skating rink, a lot of signs, and some holiday-themed animal shows. Jason particularly loved Shamu's Christmas show. Though, he also loved running back and forth on the (not very) bouncy mat in the toddler's play area, which is right next to the carnival games area, where I grabbed this shot.

I've now been to SeaWorld twice this year, and Juliette has been there three times, so our passes have more than paid for themselves. Which is especially nice because they don't expire until July of 2012.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/4000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: maximum recovery adjustment; curves for further highlight recovery.

Thoughts for improvement: A different angle would probably help. If I moved to the right a bit more, I might have been able to get the penguins in a better-spaced line, plus I might have avoided having the distracting background stuff right behind the main penguin.

Here's another out-take from our Christmas card shoot. I like to do these up-over-the-head shots with families (which is to say, I've done it on both of the family shoots I've done). It may be kind of a cliche angle—I don't really know—but it's fun, and most of the kids I know like to be played with this way, so it makes for easy smiles.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/400 (+2 EV, center-weighted average metering), ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: crop to 4x5; pushed recovery; curves for black point and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: The major thing that could be improved here is the focus. I was shooting fast and didn't move the focus point to the upper part of the frame, so Jason's face ended up a little soft. That can be OK sometimes, but I tend to prefer sharp pictures, especially for this style and angle.

"The Popculturist Looks Back at Jackson Browne's The Pretender":

When I was a young child, my mom had to work several jobs in order to make ends meet, and what with affordable childcare being hard to find, a lot of my memories from that time are of the back seat of her car as she drove from one workplace to the next. What I especially remember is the music. My mom always had a kind of weirdly eclectic taste in music — riding around with her back then you be just as likely to hear Ángel Parra as Lionel Richie. But one staple album that she listened to over and over, and which I’ve repeatedly returned to as I’ve grown older, is Jackson Browne’s The Pretender.

This year, we decided to skip the studio session for our annual family portraits—which is to say, our annual Jason portraits—and instead opted to have me take the pictures. This was a bit of a money-saver, of course, but it also gave me another opportunity to practice my technique and how to run a shoot. Plus, this way we could get the more natural style that you get from a location shoot. It turned out to be fun, and a good exercise for me as a photographer. I still have a ways to go, but I'm getting there.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture-priority exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/1250 (+1EV, matrix metering), ISO 400. No post-processing.

Thoughts for improvement: For being straight out of the camera, I'm pretty happy with how the lighting and color came out. Compositionally, I'd get rid of the people in the background and position Juliette and Jason so they weren't lined up one behind the other.

I've been a bit ambivalent about Disney movies for a while now, and particularly with Disney princess movies. Like everyone, I grew up with the Disney classics—Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi, as well as the newer ones, at least from The Little Mermaid through The Lion King. I loved those movies as a child, and like most bits of entertainment from my past, they'll always have a special place in my heart.

As I've grown up and revisited some of the movies with adult eyes, I've noticed things about the stories and characters that don't sit well with me. I've talked about my issues with Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid before. It all boils down to Disney's general tendency toward facile storytelling, which has become ever more obvious since the arrival of Pixar in the mid-nineties, who continue to show how much depth you can achieve with "children's" movies.

So, going into this movie—Disney's new take on the Rapnuzel story—I didn't have very high expectations. But since I only went as an experiment in family movie-watching, I didn't really care much about what I was seeing. Surprisingly—and I have to wonder if it's precisely because of the comparison with Pixar—but Tangled turned out to be both very entertaining and rather nuanced.

Structurally, Tangled has a lot in common with most other Disney princess movies. You have the wistful girl singing about what she wants, the dashing, handsome male lead who leads her on a transformative journey, and so on. And, like the other modern Disney animated movies, you have the wisecracks.

Where it's different is in the characterizations. Here, instead of being a damsel in distress or a rebellious teenager, Rapunzel finds herself in her predicament mainly out of a sense of duty. And rather than a cartoonishly villainous antagonist, the "evil stepmother" here turns out to be merely selfish. This sets up a dynamic between the two that is both more plausible and considerably more interesting.

Of course, no story, however well written, can work as a film without good acting, and here Tangled does very well. The movie is essentially carried on the shoulders of the three leads: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, and Donna Murphy, and each of them executes perfectly. The humor never feels forced or desperate, nor do the emotions ever feel dishonest. What's more, the animation is simply brilliant, with so many details of the facial expressions and body language being just spot on.

My only difficulty came with Levi's performance, but not through any fault of his. No, he did a wonderful job here, but after watching him in Chuck for two seasons, it was just too difficult for me to separate his voice from his character in that show, which in many ways is the polar opposite of his Flynn Rider in this movie.

Of course, it's possible that my opinion of Tangled is colored by the fact that it was the first movie outing I took with my son. On the other hand, the fact that it kept him entertained for an hour and a half does speak to its quality. I'd say that whether you have kids or you just enjoy solid animated entertainment, this one is well worth your time.

Viewed: 2010-12-04 | Released: 2010-11-24 | Score: A-

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