Jason has had a near life-long obsession with hats, which has dovetailed nicely with his newfound interest in birthdays.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 320. Bumped vibrancy, added sharpening, and applied curves to set white point, boost midtones, and increase contrast. (All post-processing done in Aperture 3.)

Thoughts for improvement: I like the exposure and tones in this shot a lot, but the framing could use some work. If I had just leaned back a bit, the edges of the frame wouldn't be cutting off his elbows and the tip of his hat.

"The Most Photographed Child In The World":

If you are, like me, the parent of a young child and given to being a little shutter-happy with your camera, it’s quite possible that someone has referred to your son or daughter as “the most photographed child in the world.” I most often get it from my parents or in-laws, usually just after I’ve lifted the camera up to my eye. I was reflecting the other day on that phrase and it struck me that it’s kind of lost its meaning in the age of the digital camera.

I'm just going to go ahead and come clean about this: I can be a horrible know-it-all. My head is stuffed with all manner of useless trivia, from ancient history to different standards of timekeeping. That guy at the party who's obnoxiously rambling on and on about some sliver of esoterica that nobody else in the room cares about? Yeah, that's me.

It's kind of ironic, then, that the most common answer I have to give to Jason's questions is "I don't know." Mind you, he's not asking me particularly profound or arcane questions. No, the most common thing he asks me these days is some variation on "Who's that?"

Everywhere we go, Jason wants to know who everybody is. At the mall, say, he'll point to some random stranger and ask who it is. Then when I tell him I don't know, he'll just move on to the next person and ask again.

"I don't know who everybody is, pal," I'll say to him. He'll cock his head and squint at me as he tries to process this revelation. I can see the little wheels turning in his head as he mulls over the idea that I don't have all the answers. Eventually he'll say "Oh, OK," then turn right around and ask who someone else is.

The funny thing is, he even asks about people when he already knows the answer. This evening when I picked him up from day care, for example, he pointed to a woman who had exited the building ahead of us, carrying her daughter to her car.

"Who mommy that?" he asked.

"I don't know whose mommy that is, buddy," I responded, recognizing neither the woman nor the girl in her arms.

"That Eva mommy!" he shouted.

"Oh really? That's Eva's mommy?"

"Yeah!"

I'm starting to wonder if he's testing me or something. Maybe his inner know-it-all is manifesting early.

Since committing to a regular update schedule of normal blog posts and photos, my reviews seem to have fallen by the wayside. I've actually managed to read seven books in the two months since my last review, but somehow I just haven't had the time or motivation to write about any of them. To those three or four of you who enjoy reading these reviews: I apologize.

In the interests of speeding things along, rather than reviewing each of the six remaining Vorkosigan novels and omnibuses separately, I'm going to do all of them at once in a single giant-sized, no-holds-barred mega-review. Except, you know, it won't actually be any longer than a normal review and there will be no wrestling or any other form of physical combat involved.

One of the great strengths of this series, I think, is in how each new episode both maintains and extends the overall world and narrative while still remaining relatively self-contained. For people who like to take breaks in between books, this means that you have convenient stopping points along the way. If, on the other hand, you prefer to charge straight through (as I did), you have the effect of a very long story that rewards you with extremely satisfying milestones along the way.

Of course, there's a danger with open-ended, episodic series in that they can get either repetitive or suffer from a sort of "Superman syndrome," wherein the writers have to go to increasingly absurd lengths to continue to challenge the central characters. In this respect, writing open-ended series well can be more challenging than single novels or closed series. I'm happy to report, though, that Bujold has enough skill and imagination to keep her Vorkosigan novels fresh all the way through.

Part of this lies in the way that science fiction lends itself so well to new ideas. So, for example, in Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos, Bujold can give us a look at new civilizations and cultures, and explore the differences from and similarities to what we're used to, while in Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance, she can tackle topics like identity and brotherhood. As it progresses, the series twists and turns through different concepts and angles, all the while maintaining the same central "feel." It takes a pretty skilled writer to accomplish something like that, I think.

If I had to pick a favorite episode it would probably be either Cetaganda or "The Mountains of Mourning"—the former for the fascinating construction of a civilization both utterly alien and distinctly human, and the latter for the strong characterization and emotional content. My least favorite is probably A Civil Campaign. Really, though, even at its worst, this series is still at the very least a lot of fun to read, and at its best it's grown to be among my favorite works of "light" science fiction.

Miles, Mystery & Mayhem:

Started: 6/21/2010 | Finished: 6/25/2010

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Miles Errant:

Started: 6/26/2010 | Finished: 6/30/2010

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Memory:

Started: 7/1/2010 | Finished: 7/4/2010

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Miles in Love:

Started: 7/5/2010 | Finished: 7/14/2010

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Diplomatic Immunity:

Started: 7/15/2010 | Finished: 7/20/2010

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Falling Free:

Started: 7/21/2010 | Finished: 7/24/2010

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It feels a little silly to write a review for a movie that opened almost six weeks ago, especially since I already wrote up a piece about my interpretation of the movie, but, you know, that's where I am these days.

What can I tell you that you don't already know about Inception? Probably not a whole lot, if you're even remotely interested in movies. It is, like many Christopher Nolan films, complex and layered, and rewards looking closely and (I would think) watching it more than once. On one level, it's basically a heist film and even if you view it as just that and nothing more, it's a very good movie. But, as I pointed out in my previous piece, there may be a lot more going on than initially meets the eye.

As far as the performances go, my appreciation of Leonardo DiCaprio continues to increase—a trend that kind of started with Catch Me If You Can but didn't really kick in until The Departed. I do still find his performances a little on the heavy side—he's clearly a guy who takes himself and his profession very seriously—but given the sort of films he does, that's probably appropriate. It was also very nice to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who I quite liked in (500) Days of Summer) take on a more adult role, one which he handled expertly. The one who stole the show for me, though, was Tom Hardy in the role of the "forger," Eames. I've only ever seen him before in Star Trek: Nemesis—which was a pretty forgettable movie overall—but here his combination of charm, dry wit, and occasional seriousness came off just perfectly for me.

There's a lot more to talk about with a film like this, of course, but at this point it's kind of yesterday's news. Besides, the best part about a movie like this is the face-to-face discussions with your friends that you have as you're walking out of the theater, so if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, grab a couple of friends and get to it.

Viewed: 2010-07-25 | Released: 2010-07-16 | Score: A

IMDb Page

For whatever reason, Juliette and I decided not to bring Jason's bathing suit and towel with us when we went to his friend's birthday party the weekend before last. We knew the party was going to be held in a pool area, but we figured we'd just keep him out of it, since neither of us wanted to get in. Of course, we didn't factor in the inflatable kiddie pool or the water table, so he got soaked and then needed to borrow a towel.

Now, Jason has hooded towels, but his hooded towels are worn more like capes. This towel was more like a hooded poncho. I thought it made him look kind of like a monk, or maybe a Jedi. That is, if Jedi wore hoods with bunny ears on them.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/125, ISO 360. (I've been finding that it's best, when shooting kids, to set my auto ISO to a minimum shutter of 1/125 and max ISO of 1600 if I'm going to use any of the automatic exposure modes. That way I can be sure to freeze motion without too much blur, but still not underexpose the image too much. I'm trying to learn to shoot manually, but it's hard to keep up in manual mode when kids are running in and out of buildings and shade in bright, early afternoon sun.) Here again, I spot metered on his face, since I didn't care if I blew out the background. I further upped the exposure in post, as well as upping the vibrancy a touch, adding some sharpening, and using curves to recover highlights, set the black point, and add some contrast. (All post-processing in Aperture 3.)

Thoughts for improvement: I'm pretty happy with the color and lighting in this image, but the composition could be better. In particular, there's a door frame that's right behind his head that I would prefer weren't there.

Jason: I have a owie.

Me: I know, but it's almost all better.

Jason: Bite it.

Me: What?

Jason: I bite the owie.

Me: Don't bite it. You're going to hurt yourself.

Jason: Lick it?

Me: Uh, OK, I guess you can lick it if you want.

Jason: [licks the scab on his knee]

Jason: I licked it!

Me: That was an extremely weird thing to do, Jason.

I'm working on developing my technique in family and lifestyle photography, and this is an example of one type of lighting that can work well. When I took this shot, I was facing directly into the sun. Normally, shooting into the sun produces a bright background and dark subject, but here the sun was relatively high in the sky, and the grill in the background was both relatively close (to block out the bright sky) but also slightly shadowed. I set the camera to spot meter and set the exposure for his face, which, with the strong backlighting, created the nice halo effect in his hair while maintaining the tones in his face and chest.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 VR DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Focal length 150 mm, aperture f/5.3, shutter 1/200 sec, ISO 200. Exposure adjustment and recovery, vibrancy, sharpening, and curves applied in Aperture 3.

Thoughts for improvement: There's a little bit of lens flare that you can see in his chest and arm, which resulted from shooting directly into the sun. I could probably have avoided that by either removing the UV filter or using a lens hood. The hair lighting is also a bit hotter than I would ideally like, but I think it still looks pretty good nonetheless.

Are you a work toothbrusher? OK, so that's not a particularly elegant turn of phrase, but you know what I mean. Are you one of those people who make sure to get in a good brushing after lunch every day, even at the office?

Well, I'm not. I happen to be blessed with particularly strong tooth enamel, such that even though I only brush once a day (in the mornings), I'm still always lauded by my dentist for my good oral hygiene at my semi-annual checkups. So, I don't have a lot of motivation to brush more often.

I'll tell you what, though: I do kind of admire those mid-day toothbrushers. It seems like it must take a fair amount of dedication not to just remember to brush so often, but to be willing to put up with bad office toothbrushing conditions in order to do so.

I mean, at your typical office you've got one of two choices: the kitchen/break room or the public bathroom. The kitchen offers no privacy at all, since office kitchens tend to receive some of the heaviest traffic of the entire company. I don't know about you, but I prefer to be alone while I'm fighting plaque. It's bad enough that my son always seems to want to strike up a conversation in the middle of my morning routine. Having a grown up start talking to me when I've got a mouthful of toothpaste seems more awkward than I'm willing to deal with.

On the other hand, unless you happen to be blessed with a workplace with single-occupant restrooms, if you opt to brush your teeth in the office bathroom, you run a serious risk of having someone come in and start pooping while you're brushing. The idea of having to deal with someone else's bathroom stink while trying to clean my mouth just completely grosses me out.

I just don't have the fortitude of stomach or strength of self-confidence to cope with work toothbrushing, but I know a lot of others do. So here's to you, work toothbrushers of the world. You are better folk than I.

It's funny how serendipitous photography can be. You expect that when you're out on the streets shooting buildings or weather or candids of strangers, but it happens in the studio, too. This was just a test shot I took to try to get the exposure and framing right for the picture I posted yesterday, but I think it may actually have turned out even better than the shot I planned for. The dark background, negative space, and warm lighting combined with the curves of the glass make for a romantic feeling, I think.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 200. In Aperture 3, I pushed exposure recovery to the max to tone down the candle light, bumped vibrancy a touch, added a little bit of sharpening, and used a lot of vignetting to get the background completely dark.

Thoughts for improvement: I'm actually pretty happy with this one. I suppose some of the candles could be placed a little bit more purposefully, but other than that, the only thing I'd wish for this image is for it to have been taken with a higher resolution camera.