The teachers at Jason's day care have been focusing on getting the kids to learn their full names lately. Jason is a pretty bright kid, but in this he's at a bit of a disadvantage. After all, a five-syllable name is too much for most adults to handle gracefully, and to be saddled with it at the age of two, well, it ain't a cake walk is all I'm saying.

Fortunately, though, Jason loves new words and loves to talk, so he seems to be having fun trying out his last name. Combined with his recent discovery of birthdays and the birthday song, it's made for some pretty cute scenes:

I noticed these little glass vases in our china cabinet the other day and thought they might work well with this series of glassware shots I seem to be doing. Juliette used to keep these on her windowsill when she was in college, but I haven't seen them in what seems like a long time.

In thinking about what I wanted to do with this shot, I knew I wanted to do something with reflections. A lot of the close-up stuff I've been liking on Flickr and from various stock agencies seems to be shot using a glass or plexi table surface, which makes for great reflections. I, unfortunately, don't have anything like that around the house, so I improvised a little by putting the candles and vases into a cookie sheet that was filled to about a quarter inch with water. In order not to have the pan show up too noticeably in the shot, I had to go with more low-key lighting, but I think it worked out pretty well.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/50 sec, ISO 200. Background is lit with a flashlight through an inverted pilsner glass and the bottom of a brandy snifter. Slight vibrancy tweak, sharpening, and vignetting added in Aperture 3.

Thoughts for improvement: I'm not really thrilled with how the background is lit. I think it would probably be better if I could either have more glow on the wall or just leave it completely dark. There are also a few streaks on the glass that I couldn't quite get rid of since we were out of Windex. Finally, since the cookie sheet I used is one that has been in and out of the oven a lot, the bottom has gotten a little warped from the heat. That's why the right-hand vase is a little tilted. Ideally, I'd like to use something to contain the water that was both completely flat and also much wider and longer so that it didn't appear in the frame at all.

This is one of my favorite recent photos, because there's a whole story encapsulated in it, one that I just happened to stumble across and be lucky enough to capture. I think that's the goal with most types of photography—telling a story—but especially with documentary and street photography. It's not the most technically perfect or artistically composed picture—though I think it does well enough in those regards—but even so, I think it's one of the most expressive, evocative images I've ever made. You know, as long as I'm tooting my own horn and all.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 1600. Slight curve applied in Aperture 3 to deepen the blacks, recover the highlights, and hold the midtones.

Thoughts for improvement: The main thing that detracts from this image, in my opinion, are the chairs and trash in the foreground. There wasn't time to pull them out of the shot—aside from which, the guys working there probably wouldn't have wanted me moving their furniture—but in a perfect world, they wouldn't be there.

It's been interesting to see how Jason's speech has been developing lately, especially the way he pronounces words. Over the past month or two, his pronunciation has become much easier to understand, and generally much closer to adult speech. "Elephant," for example, used to be "eppy-tee" and is now "effant." "Octopus" was "ah-pa-pa" and is now "ottopus." And "fork" is now "ferk," whereas it used to be something unprintable.

On the other hand, a couple of words have drifted away from a standard Western American pronunciation, including one of his favorites: "mine." "Mine" was a word that Jason picked up quite a while ago, and like most toddlers, he applies it to just about everything. In the past few weeks, though, it's morphed into "moine," making him sound like nothing so much as a petulant Irish boy.

The unfortunate thing is that it's so cute that it's hard to keep a straight face when he says it. The other night during his bath his refusal to give up the washcloth had me dropping into a full-on brogue (hearkening back to my role as an Irish detective in a college production of Guys and Dolls), which then devolved into the two of us collapsing in laughter. Fun, but not all that instructive.

I think "Greek Gyros" is kind of redundant but, hey, I didn't make the sign. And that doesn't really look like the kind of guy who I want to be correcting, either. It's cool.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 400. Applied curves to recover highlights and bring up the midtones, then dodged the shopkeeper a bit in Aperture 3.

Thoughts for improvement: There's not really a lot going on in the left or right windows, so possibly it would be better to crop them out. I kind of like the symmetry of having three windows, plus I think the neon looks cool, but it definitely does make for a more cluttered image. Though, I do think that in terms of storytelling, the extra scenery does provide more atmosphere. Other than that, the sign at the bottom is very dark; I probably should have brightened it up a bit.

I love how, in this picture, the kid is the one who noticed me, while the two adults had no idea I was there.

Technical information: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture-priority exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/30 sec, ISO 1600. B&W conversion, crop, curves, and some mild dodging applied in Aperture 3.

Thoughts for improvement: I wish I had been able to nail the exposure a little better to get the kid's face a little less shadowy. There's also a fair amount of detail lost in the shadows in the lower left corner, mainly from the curves adjustment I added—I made a trade-off between overall contrast and shadow detail, but I wish I didn't have to.

Jason's weekday mornings follow a fairly predictable routine. He wakes up, which wakes me up, and I go into his room and greet him. I change his diaper, then bring him to the living room, where he plays for a few minutes while I assemble his breakfast. He eats while I make my own breakfast, and then we sit and take our breakfast together. (I eat much more quickly than he does, so even though he gets a head start, I still usually finish first.) After that, I take him back to my and Juliette's bedroom and put him in our bed, where he sits and watches Sesame Street while I take a shower and get dressed. Once I'm done, I get him dressed, we let the dog out, and then it's off to day care. This is how it usually goes, though there's obviously some deviation from this routine, as Jason is often irritable and stubborn in the mornings. I have no idea where he gets that from.

So, earlier this week, I had just stepped out of the shower when I heard Jason calling me. I wrapped a towel around my waist to keep from dripping all over the floor, then stepped into the doorway. It turned out that he wanted to tell me about something that had just happened on the TV; I don't remember what, exactly. I acknowledged him, then proceeded to dry myself off more thoroughly.

"What that?" I heard him ask.

"What?"

"That Daddy penis."

"Oh, yeah. That's my penis."

Jason laughed uproariously in response, and then the two of us continued on with the business at hand: I with my grooming and he with his television.

Neither Juliette nor I are particularly shy about being in various states of undress around Jason. At first it was mainly because we knew he wasn't processing it at all, and it wasn't any different than being naked around the dog. Now, though, he's really starting to notice, and I'm finding myself wondering at what point I'm going to have to pay attention to my state of dress when he's around.

Obviously, neither Juliette nor I walk around in our underwear or in the nude when we have company, or when we're visiting other people's houses. That's just not how we grew up. My stepdad has always had a habit of roaming the house with no pants on, but that's always been something that we've just considered one of his eccentricities. And, anyway, even he doesn't do it except around my mom, my brother, and me.

In our own home, though, both Juliette and I feel pretty free to be undressed when it's just us, other than in areas where we might be seen out the front window. Not that we're nudists or anything, but we leave the doors open when we're showering, and if we happen to need something from another room before we're all the way dressed, we don't cover up before going to get it. That's how it's been since before Jason joined us, and it hasn't changed now that he has.

It's a tricky thing, though. I don't want Jason to grow up being ashamed of his body, or feeling weird about appropriate nudity (whatever that might be). But on the other hand, the idea of me being naked in front of him when he's a teenager seems a little uncomfortable. And on the flip side, I don't want to make him uncomfortable. Though, it may never be weird for him unless we make it that way.

For now I guess it's not really an issue. Jason is neither aware of any stigma attached to nudity nor inclined to take his clothes off in inappropriate situations, so there isn't a problem. Not yet, anyway. But it is something to think about for the future.

Another one from Saturday's group shoot. I passed by this little souvenir shop several times as I walked up and down the foot path next to the beach. I noticed a few tourists from time to time, looking at sunglasses and postcards, but for the most part it was empty. Finally, it was time to close up, and I grabbed this shot of the clerk taking down the signs for the night.

Technical information: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens in aperture-priority exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/40, ISO 1600. I added a slight curves adjustment in Aperture 3 to bring down the highlights and darken the shadows just a little bit. I also cropped out the top fifth or so of the frame.

Thoughts for improvement: The crop ratio here is a little weird, and I much prefer to use standard aspect ratios whenever possible for ease of printing. If I could do this over, I'd either frame the shot a little lower to avoid having to crop, or I'd try to adjust the exposure a little so that the cropped-out portion is dark enough not to be distracting.

For the first time this whole summer, the house was hot and stuffy when I came home, not surprising since it was in the high 80's in my neighborhood today. Normally, we'd have been getting weather like this since early July, but it's been a particularly cool summer in San Diego this year.

Anyway, despite the fact that I opened every window in the house as soon as I got home, after spending an hour rushing around a kitchen with a 350-degree oven and two stovetop burners running, I was pretty sweaty. I complained about the heat to Juliette while we ate, to which she asked, "Why don't you just take your shirt off?"

This, of course, hadn't occurred to me.

I was still shirtless when it came time to give Jason his bath, and I took advantage of the situation by dunking my head in the water to make him laugh. Afterwards, I brushed his teeth and put on his diaper and pajamas, just like every night. He poked me in the belly button and laughed raucously. Then I picked him up off the changing table and asked him for a hug while we waited for Juliette to come in and read him his story.

He came in for a hug quickly, but when his face touched my chest he recoiled, a confused look coming over his face. "It's hurting me," he said.

"My skin is hurting you?" I asked.

"Yeah."

Juliette came through the doorway just then. "What's he saying?" she asked.

"He doesn't like my skin."

"Yeah," agreed Jason. "Don't like it."

He did eventually give me a goodnight hug, albeit quite gingerly. I guess henceforth I need to remember to keep my shirt on until he goes to bed.

When Jason was a baby, I used to spend a lot of time singing to him. I sang to him when he was fussy, or when we were driving. When he woke up in the middle of the night, I would hold him and walk around in circles in the kitchen, singing "Three Little Birds" over and over again. I sang him songs by the Magnetic Fields on the way to day care. I sang him "You Are My Sunshine" as we fell asleep together in the rocking chair. Sometimes it was fun; often it was exhausting. But it was something I did during our time together, and it had a rightness to it, even when I was so tired that I felt like I was going to fall over.

This morning when we left the house, I put on Israeal Kamakawiwo'ole's album, Facing Future, which we listened to a lot when he was first starting out at day care. He'd just been screaming because I had told him that he had to stop standing in his chair and playing with the headrests in the back seat, and had made him sit while I buckled him into his car seat. He was upset, as usual, but also as usual he was quiet before we made it to the corner of our street.

The "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" medley came on, and I sang along. My mind filled with memories of him as a newborn, and me singing that song to him in his room, in the kitchen, in the car, all over the place. I smiled, feeling the pleasant glow that comes with that kind of remembering.

We got to day care right in the middle of the song, but I kept singing even after I turned the car off. By now I know the song by heart, and Jason's been having lots of fun with music and singing lately. I thought he might like it if I sang to him a bit more as we walked in.

"No Daddy," he said calmly. "No singing."

"Aw, come on, buddy," I said. "Can't I sing a little bit more?" I tried to pick up the song where I had left off.

"No," he interrupted me. "Stop singing."

So that was that. Actually, it was kind of funny, and the school director and I shared a little laugh when I told her about it. I figured I'd write up a little humor piece about it, especially since this is a pretty common occurance.

But then this evening Jason had a little trouble falling asleep. We put him to bed at his usual time—or maybe a few minutes early—and, like always, he rolled around a bit and played in his crib after we put him down. He usually goes to sleep on his own pretty easily, but tonight he was still awake twenty minutes later, and in a rare turn of events, he called out my name instead of his mom's.

I went in to check on him, and he blearily asked to get out of his crib.

"No," I said, "you can't get out right now. It's time for bed right now. But I'll sing you a song if you want."

He agreed, then lay back in his crib and asked me to cover him with his blanket. I did, and softly started singing "You Are My Sunshine." I rubbed his tummy and stroked his hair while I sang. After four verses and five choruses, his eyes were getting heavy.

"All done," I said. "Time for night night."

"More singing?" he asked.

"No sweetie, it's time for sleeping."

I patted him on the back a few more times and then stepped out of his room and closed the door. He stayed awake for a long while after that, playing with his stuffed animals and talking to them, but he was calm and content until he fell asleep. It's nice to feel like I can still do something for him.