Next to the center where Juliette's sister-in-law, Colleen, works is a small farm, and she included that in our tour. Jason was very interested in the goats and sheep, and at one point as we were walking past a little pond he announced that he saw a duck. (I didn't see one, but his eyes are sharper than mine.) On our way back out, we walked by this old tractor garage and the red gas pump next to it caught my eye. As I lifted the camera to my eye, Colleen mentioned that her daughter had taken the exact same shot for a photography class project. I guess that means I'm not terribly original, but I'm OK with that.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/250 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped and straightened; curve for contrast; burned over the roof in the background.

Thoughts for improvement: As with yesterday, I'm pretty happy with this one. I like the contrast of the red gas pump with the wood of the garage. I like the way the square window works in the composition. I like the textures in the wood panels, the red paint, and the grass. I think I like pretty much everything about this picture.

"The Popculturist Hears WTF":

There’s something about funny people that has always been fascinating to me. A truly funny person has that combination of intelligence, insight, and charisma that is immediately recognizable and impossible to ignore. I think, too, part of the allure is the recognition of a skill or talent that I don’t have, myself, but that I respect and admire in others.

The day after Thanksgiving, Juliette's sister-in-law, Colleen, took a bunch of us on a tour of the place where she works. She's a science educator, and she works at this neat center where kids can learn about different aspects of the natural world. Needless to say, Jason had a blast.

The first thing we did was take a walk along a path around the property, where Colleen showed us (mostly Jason) different plants and animal signs. The pond in the photo above apparently has frogs in it in the spring and summer. When we visited it was the end of November, though, and very cold, and there were no frogs to be found. Jason didn't mind. Actually, neither did I.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/160 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: crop to 4x5; curve for exposure and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out. I like the ripples in the water from where the previous night's rain was dripping off the trees. I like the reflection, and the color of the needles in the water. The only thing might be to exclude more from the photo, maybe by cropping even tighter around the area where the ripples are.

This Thanksgiving, it seemed like every time I turned around, I saw Jason putting on the clown nose his aunt gave him. He just loved it. If I make my guess, he's going to flip out at the chance to play a red-nosed reindeer in the family performance of "The Night Before Christmas."

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/60 sec, ISO 1600. Post-processing in Aperture 3: white balance correction; curve to increase exposure; slightly desaturated yellows and greens.

Thoughts for improvement: This is obviously a grab shot and I put little to no thought into the composition. So from a purely visually aesthetic perspective, it's not a great image. As a capture of a moment, though, I love it. I love the excitement and furtiveness about his body language, and the way he's kind of tucked in between the shoes and handbags. About the only thing I wish I'd done differently is that I wish I'd thought to put the flash on my camera, as that would have let me shoot at a lower ISO, producing less "grain."

This year we had Thanksgiving at Juliette's brother's house in Massachusetts, and among the many things that delighted Jason during his week-long trip to the East Coast were his aunt and uncle's napkin rings. There was a pig, a giraffe, a lioness, several kinds of insect, and—as you can see—a zebra. Juliette asked me if I staged this shot, but as far as I remember this is how I found it.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/60 sec, ISO 800. Post-processing in Aperture 3: white balance temperature 2500K, tint -3; curve for highlight recovery and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: It was a little difficult to balance the light color properly—aside from the candlelight, there was also an incandescent overhead light and a compact flourescent floor lamp in the room. In a more controlled environment I'd have made sure that all the lighting had the same color. I like the candles and highlights in the bokeh, but the background does feel a little cluttered—possibly it might have been better to move the rear plate out of the shot and put some more candles in its place. It also might have been good to stop down a bit in order to get some of the salad on the foreground plate more in focus, but given how poorly the D40 does at ISO 1600, I was a bit constrained in terms of exposure.

If you're anything like me, you have at least a few books lying around the house that you bought a long time ago but never got around to actually reading. For me, up until last month, that book was Robin Hobb's Ship of Magic.

I picked it up when it first came out in paperback on the strength of Hobb's earlier series, The Farseer Trilogy, which I had liked quite a bit even though the ending had left me a bit cold. Nevertheless, my aversion to starting an unfinished series was strong enough that I ended up sticking Ship of Magic on the shelf and ignoring it for almost eleven years. Last month, I finally got to the point where I'd read every piece of fiction left in the house, and decided to finally give it a go.

Before I did that, though, I went back and re-read The Farseer Trilogy, figuring that since this new series was a follow-on set in the same world, I should re-familiarize myself with the background. In some ways, that turned out to be a help, because I would otherwise have missed a number of references in the new series to events in the old one, references that weren't exactly necessary to understand the new series, but which added significant depth to the world and some of the characters.

On the other hand, plowing through all six books in rapid succession, it was impossible not to compare the two series, and I found The Liveship Traders somewhat lacking in comparison to its predecessor.

As I mentioned, The Liveship Traders is set in the same world as The Farseer Trilogy, starting ten years or so after the events of the first series. Rather than continuing the story of the original characters, though, the new series moves to a different part of the world and tells a story that is only tangentially related to the first.

As the series opens, we are introduced to the Vestrits, a trading family from the port city of Bingtown. The Vestrits are the owners of a liveship—a ship carved from magic wood that imbues the vessel with a life of its own, most noticeable in the ship's animate figurehead. The protagonist, Althea Vestrit, returns home from a voyage on her family ship, only to have her father die and her inheritance—ownership and captaincy of the ship—taken from her. Althea leaves, determined to regain her ship and make a name for herself. From there, we're brought along on a tale of full of nautical adventure, pirate battles, and even war, beneath the surface of which lurk secrets from ages past.

Now, you'd think this sort of thing would be right up my alley, and in a lot of ways you'd be right. I'm a huge sucker for Age of Sail maritime adventures, as evidenced by my love of C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian. Combine that with the fantastic setting, epic plot, and excellent action scenes, and it should be perfect for me.

The problem was that too much of the characterization felt forced or flat to me. Part of that came from the more distributed focus—unlike The Farseer Trilogy, which featured only one point-of-view character—The Liveship Traders bounces back and forth between half a dozen or more perspectives, including all of the main antagonists. There's a lot of potential with a structure like that because it gives us a chance to sympathize or at least understand everyone, even the "bad guys." Unfortunately, nearly all of the antagonists seemed almost cartoonishly unreasonable, making it next to impossible for me to connect with them.

Things did eventually turn around with most of the important characters, but it took so long for that to happen—well into the second book—that I would never have gotten to it if not for my inability to walk away from a story I haven't finished.

Still, I don't want to sound too down on the series, because as difficult as I found the first volume, so much is paid off—both plot-wise and character-wise—by the end, that it was ultimately a very satisfying experience. It's of particular note how skillfully Hobb works the plot, starting with a relatively small-scale story of family drama and nautical adventure and building it into an epic, world-changing saga. As long as you're the kind of person who can commit to a series for the long haul, who doesn't need resolutions early and often, I'd say this one is definitely worth your time.

Ship of Magic

Started: 10/6/2010 | Finished: 10/13/2010

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Mad Ship

Started: 10/19/2010 | Finished: 10/26/2010

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Ship of Destiny

Started: 10/27/2010 | Finished: 11/1/2010

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On Saturday I went on my first real portrait shoot. Some friends agreed to help me practice my technique by letting me do some family portraits of them. Juliette and Jason came along as well, since we figured we could get in our Christmas card shots in at the same time.

Leading up to the shoot I was a nervous wreck, even though I was working with friends in a very low-pressure situation. Once we actually got there, though, and started shooting, it was actually kind of fun. I think I learned a lot, too. For example, the next time I do a beach shoot, I'll either do it in the morning or bring a fill light. I also won't try to cram in two shoots into the same session.

Anyway, the kids had fun, as you can see. And hopefully my friends will find a few keepers out of the set.

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, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: yellow filter BW preset; curve for contrast; burned the highlights in both kids' faces; added edge sharpening.

Thoughts for improvement: A fill light on the left would have been a good idea, although the shadows in the current version do look kind of dramatic. I also wish I had framed the shot just a little bit lower, to add a sliver more space below Jason's foot.

One of the things I'm enjoying most about photography is how easy it's become for me to find beauty in the ordinary. Just walking down the street, seeing the sunlight, plants, even the sound of traffic, it makes me happy to be alive and able to experience it. You wouldn't think that the bathroom of an AM/PM would be a very apt place to be looking for beauty. Maybe it's not; maybe I'm just strange. This photo makes me happy, though.

Technical info: Shot with an iPhone 3G. Post-processing in Photoshop CS5: automatic lens correction; curve for tone and contrast; burned over the highlight on the top right of the dispenser; increased red and yellow saturation.

Thoughts for improvement: The lines on the wall aren't very straight, which is partially due to them actually not being straight and partially due to the fact that I was holding the camera slightly askew from the plane of the wall. It's very difficult to gauge that when you're hand-holding the camera, though, especially with one as flat as an iPhone.

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent some time this weekend working on an idea for a dpchallenge.com contest. Afterwards, having cleaned up my lighting setup and put the dining table back in order, I decided to play around a bit with the cranes I had made. This is one of the results.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/30 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: tungsten WB preset; curve for contrast and tone; decreased overall color saturation.

Thoughts for improvement: This was a pretty off-the-cuff shot, so clearly it's not perfect. The main thing is that there is too much in the frame. The table surface is kind of pleasant, but it doesn't really add to the shot, and the runner on the table and the wall you can see in the background also detract. I'd like to see what it would look like if I took the persimmons and cranes and put them against a flat white background.

I did this one for the "Complementary Colors V" contest at dpchallenge.com—as you might imagine, the theme for that contest was to use two complementary colors. Unfortunately, I missed the submission deadline by about fifteen minutes.

I feel like every time I set out to make a pre-planned, studio-type shot, I end up frustrated. I'm used to heading out the door with a location and a vague concept, and just seeing what I can find. I like opening myself up to possibilities and seeing what I can find. But when I start with a clear vision for an image and actually move the furniture in my kitchen around to make some studio space, things just never work out the way I planned. Moreover, I'm just never all that happy with the end result. This shot isn't bad, I don't think, but there's something about the textures and the lighting that just feel amateurish to me.

Still, I guess the only way to improve is to keep at it.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, and Nikon SB-400 flash. Manual exposure mode and manual flash mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/500 sec, ISO 400. Flash is set to (I think) 1/64 power, and positioned at camera left, just below the level of the table. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Hold Highlights preset; curve to increase contrast; added edge sharpening.

Thoughts for improvement: I don't really know what this shot needs. Something different with the lighting, but I don't know what. Maybe multiple lights, with a hard key and some diffuse fill, maybe a snooted light to make a really hard shadow. Anyone with suggestions, I'd love to hear them.