One of our main reasons for the trip home this past weekend was because some of Juliette's Canadian cousins were coming to visit her parents in Big Sur. Since they were in town, we decided to take the opportunity to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has the distinction of not only being my personal favorite aquarium but also the best place I ever worked.

This photo was taken next to the tide pool exhibit, over which a big artificial wave crashes every couple of minutes. I was lucky enough to have the camera up to my eye just as one hit, and caught not only Jason's reaction to the wave, but also everyone else's reaction to him. Moments like this are just wonderful for me, both as a photographer and as a parent.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 18-55mm DX lens, in aperture priority mode. Focal length 18mm, aperture f/3.5, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 1400. Post-processing in Aperture 3 was fairly simple for this one: I applied the Daylight WB preset, then used a curve to recover the highlights and give a slight bump to midtones and increase contrast. Then I applied a medium-high burn (0.6) to everything but Jason's face.

Thoughts for improvement: There are a lot of technical things wrong with this image. Juliette's mom's face poking in on the left and her cousin's face cut off on the right are both awkward, compositionally, as is the fact that her other cousin's face is blocked by her mom's face. This image also really stretched the limits of my camera, as the relatively high ISO setting (a result of my auto ISO configuration) left a lot of digital noise throughout. And then there's a difference in both lighting and sharpness between Jason's face and Juliette's mom's, which is kind of jarring to look at. So, technically, this is a very imperfect image. In terms of storytelling and capture, though, I think it's right on the money. Sometimes what's important about a picture isn't the technique or even the artistic elements, but rather what story it's telling. I'm sure this would be a better picture if I'd nailed the technique and composition in addition to the storytelling side, but as it is, I'm still pretty happy with it.

We traveled home to visit family this weekend, and on Saturday we had a little get-together at my aunt's house. Jason was delighted to find that several people had brought belated birthday gifts for him, among them a "Superhero Starter Kit" that included a bright red cape. We couldn't get him to take it off for the whole rest of the afternoon.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/2.8, shutter 1/1600, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: first, I applied the Daylight white balance preset. The shot was taken in the middle of a very bright day, though in the shade. I was trying to get the exposure right for his face, but I missed a bit, so he was a little dark, while the highlights were very bright. So I bumped exposure (+1) and recovery (+1.5), then used a curve to further recover the highlights and boost the midtones. I did a strong burn (0.6) around the outside, then a lighter burn (0.2) to just the shadows over his face and chest. Then I applied a very light dodge (0.05) to his eyes. Finally, I desaturated the reds (-15.0) and brushed that in just over the cape.

Thoughts for improvement: The main thing is to get the exposure right the first time. The focus is a little soft throughout, so I probably should have stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6, which would have been no problem since I had a very fast shutter. I should also have remembered to re-set the ISO back to 200 after I came outside, instead of leaving it at 400 from when I was indoors. Despite the fact that all that stuff meant I had to do a lot more work in post, though, I still think this may be one of the best portraits I've taken of him, at least in terms of matching the styles of the portrait & lifestyle pros that I've been studying.

"See that woman over there?"

"Yeah."

"The book she's reading—I've read it. And it was really good."

"Oh."

"Do you ever... No, you probably don't."

"What don't I ever?"

"Um, do you ever see someone reading a book that you really loved and get a little jealous of them that they're getting to read it for the first time and you never will again?"

"No."

"Yeah, see, that's what I thought."

* * *

"Daddy, I missed you!"

"You did? Wow, what a nice thing to say to me, Jason. Thank you."

"I have a poop!"

"Oh. OK, well that's nice, too."

This year, for the first time ever, we're planning to have Christmas in our own house. It's been a whole thing, involving lots of discussing and hemming and hawing (mostly by me), planning and forecasting, and taking stock of what he have and what we need. It turned out that one thing we needed was a new dining table, since our old one really only sat four people comfortably. We took a quick jaunt to the furniture store on Saturday morning, and by the time Jason woke up from his nap Sunday afternoon, it was delivered and in place.

Jason is a little unpredictable when it comes to sudden changes, so I wasn't sure whether he'd be excited, indifferent, or enraged about the new table. Fortunately, it seems to have gone over pretty well. In fact, he seems quite taken with it.

Sunday evening when we sat down to dinner, I said to Jason, "Can you say thank you to Mommy for making dinner?"

"Thank you, Mommy, make dinner," he said. Then, totally unprompted, he turned to me and said, "Thank you, Daddy, my table."

"Um, you're welcome," I replied. "Do you like the new table?"

"Yeah."

In fact, he likes it so much that every meal thereafter he has thanked one or both of us for the new table. I tell you what, I could get used to this.

You know what might be a fun idea? Just for tonight, I'm going to try writing this post as if I were Heather Armstrong. I figure, she must know what she's doing, what with her sponsorships and millions of pageviews and no day job, so what the heck? Let's give it a shot.

---

Weekends in the Sakasegawa household are a constant game of "Stay Ahead of the Tantrum." If you don't have kids, you've probably never played this game, which is a shame because it's only the BEST. GAME. EVER. The rules are simple: you and your spouse are given an unspecified amount of time to try to come up with some way of keeping your toddler occupied and amused. If you succeed, you get to start over again. If you fail, you get to enjoy the company of your toddler, except that your toddler has been replaced with a coked-up half-Tasmanian Devil, half-banshee that only knows how to scream I WANT MILK and throw things.

So this weekend we decided to go to Balboa Park on Sunday afternoon because there was a dance festival happening and we thought Jason might like to see it. The way we figured it, he'd either like it or he'd be a good example to all the teenagers of what can happen if you don't wear a condom. Besides, we needed to get him out of the house, if only to give the dog a break from having all of his tail hair pulled out.

I mean, really, if anybody deserves to have a quiet afternoon of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives reruns and licking his empty nutsack, it's Cooper. Dude puts up with enough.

Right. So we got there just in time to see a bunch of really nice-looking kids from one of the local dance schools start their show, during which Juliette and I whispered to each other about how probably none of them were going to be making it to the finals of So You Think You Can Dance any time soon. (KIDDING.) When the first dance was over, I turned my head just in time to see Jason starting to shift around in his stroller, and I'm thinking OH MY GOD, HERE IT COMES and just waiting for his head to start spinning around.

Except, what he actually did was clap and say "Yay!" And kept sitting there. And sitting there. For an hour. Just watching and clapping. Mind you, this is the kid who can't make it through a whole episode of Sesame Street before he starts yelling DON'T LIKE ABBY FAIRY SCHOOL.

I said to Juliette that we needed to follow these dancers back to their school and take up residence in their studio and she was like, dude, you know dance studios don't usually have WiFi, right? And I was all, dude, WHATEVER TOTALLY WORTH IT.

I mean, really, you have to have your priorities straight in this life. Right? Right?

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.

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.

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.