Juliette, Jason and I spent the entire day at the beach with friends yesterday for the 4th. As we were leaving, the sun had just gotten low enough to light up the sky along the horizon. I didn't actually mean to get the surfer in this shot, but I think he adds a bit of drama.

I think the two sentences I've said the most in the past six months have been "Don't drink it" and "It's not a hat." I don't know why Jason wants everything to be a hat, but he really, really does. Cups, baskets, boxes, blankets, my hands, clothes, shoes, bowls, plates (with or without food on them), toys—he ends up putting them all on his head, proudly declaring "Hat! Hat!"

He does like real hats, too. Though, getting him to wear just one at a time is sometimes tricky.

I got this snap the other night when we were babysitting our friends' daughter. What you can't tell from the picture is that the reason he's "sharing" this ball is because he's trying to distract her from the other ball that you can't see, which both of them wanted at the same time. Still, it's been neat to watch them develop from only a dim awareness of each others' existence to actually playing together.

The other day when I was in the back yard I noticed that this lily had finally opened, and that it had caught some water from the sprinklers. Oddly, when I came back the next day it had closed up again.

As you may have noticed, I've created a new "Daily Photo" section. Rather than dumping the whole week's photos on Monday morning, I'm going to just do one a day. This ought to force me to pick out the good ones, plus it may require me to shoot more often, which is always good. My plan is to post one photo per day, Monday through Friday. We'll see how long I can keep that up.

Jason really made out like a bandit on my birthday/Father's Day weekend.

He got a new tee ball set from our friends, Emily and Ari, which he loved.

He got to meet some new people.

He got his first baseball-park hot dog.

He even got his first baseball glove.

About the only thing he didn't get was a piece of my birthday cake, which, thankfully, we served after he went to bed.

The rest of this week's set:

This weekend turned out to be a lot of fun. Saturday morning I went out on my first group shoot with the San Diego DSLR Photography Group. SDDSLR is, as they put it, "an informal camera club of digital photographers." I first heard about them through a coworker, whose husband is our office's IT consultant, as well as the photographer for all of our company events. I happened to be poking around his photo site and noticed some galleries from previous shoots with the group. I asked him about it, and he invited me along.

I was a little nervous at first, since I am still quite an amateur and my gear is pretty limited. But the group was, as advertised, very welcoming and helpful, and I had a great time walking around Encinitas with a bunch of people doing what we love to do. Sure, I did have a little lens envy from time to time, but all in all it was a lot of fun.

Here are my favorites:

Texture and Color

End of Spring

Sunday morning after some nice Skype calls with family, Juliette, Jason, and I headed out to Santee Lakes to check out the splash park that Juliette had heard about. We had a nice picnic lunch by the lake, and then headed into the "sprayground."

Unlike the last time we visited a splash park, Jason was pretty timid about approaching the jets. I hadn't initially planned on getting all the way in, but I found that just hanging around the edge taking pictures wasn't going to cut it, so I handed the camera to Juliette and waded in.

He never quite got comfortable enough to completely jump in, even after other kids showed up and started playing. But, as you can see, he did eventually come in and have a good time:

The rest of this week's set:

Last week, Juliette's brother came and visited us.

We had a good time going out to lunch on Friday at my favorite Mexican restaurant.

He's a good looking boy, don't you think?

As you can see, it runs in the family.

As you may have noticed, photography has become my latest obsession. I've been doing a ton of reading on photographic technique and composition, submitting photos to online communities for critique and publication (so far, none have been up to snuff), and taking a ton of pictures. The question that's come to my mind a lot, though, has been "How long will this last?"

I tend to be very single-minded in terms of what I'm passionate about. A year or two ago, all I wanted to do was play poker, and while I still enjoy it, both my interest and my skill have waned considerably since Jason was born. Before that, it was web design. Before that, movies. All of these things still have a place in my heart, but in terms of active pursuits, I've moved on.

Will I stick with photography? It's hard to say. Based on my track record with hobbies, it looks like I'll probably cool again some time in the next four or five years. On the other hand, although I've only recently taken it up again, I've had an interest in photography since I started high school, which is coming up on 17 years ago now. Too, as long as I have kids in the house, I'll probably have at least a little motivation to document their time with me.

The fact that my skill seems to be growing pretty rapidly (in my somewhat self-congratulatory opinion) helps, too. It's gratifying to be able to see the progress in my work over a very short time. On the other hand, it's also been frustrating since I can see how much more I have to learn. Some of the critiques I've gotten have been difficult to take, even though they were both spot-on and quite civilly delivered. I know: this is how you grow, you have to start somewhere, etc. And I do enjoy the process. But sometimes the gap between where I am and where I want to be seems insurmountable.

Usually around that point I have to remind myself to stop being so melodramatic and self-absorbed.

I think I had a point somewhere in there that I was swirling toward, but I seem to have lost the track. Anyway, here are my favorites from the trip home this past weekend:

Treacherous Footing

Overlooked

Garden Walk

Persistence

Contrast

And the rest of the set:

I didn't get much chance to take pictures this week, so the set is pretty small:

Using a table for things like sitting and eating is boring.

Visiting the park with some friends.

Taking a moment to contemplate the glory of the park.

It's become a bit of a joke to Juliette how oblivious I can be to my surroundings, but since I started taking pictures seriously again, I've been noticing a lot more of the world around me. Last week I was driving home from work when a flash of color caught my eye. I looked over and saw this:

Someone had a sense of humor, it seemed. I came back the next evening to take that picture, and along the way I noticed several more electrical boxes that had been painted. Figuring that there had to be a story there, I did a little digging. It turns out that a group of high school students has been taking part in a neighborhood beautification project, and electrical boxes all over Mira Mesa have been getting spruced up. Saturday morning I grabbed my camera, put Cooper on his leash, and set out to perform a little photographic study.  Here are some highlights:

Oddly, the best picture I got all day wasn't of the boxes at all, but of a crosswalk:

It's funny how much your perspective of a place changes when you're on foot instead of whizzing by in a car. I must have driven by the Mira Mesa Community Park, for example, hundreds of times, but until this weekend I'd never actually walked through it. I'd never noticed the senior center or really looked at the baseball fields or grassy areas before. Makes me wonder what else I've been missing.