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Tag Soup

It's almost time!

37 weeks as of Sunday, and she's already 6 lb, 10 oz...

When someone impugns the integrity of your mother, you don’t say “Hey! My mother does not swim out after troop ships!” No, you impugn the integrity of their sister.

The Macalope

Photographer's Math

Meghan and John's engagement pictures

I shot some engagement pictures for friends at work recently. I've done engagement pictures before, but I've been getting into off-camera flash, and this was my first real attempt at mixed lighting. I have to say I'm pretty happy with the results.

After one of Katie's and my last Barnes and Noble dates, I ended up with a copy of Advanced Digital Black & White Photography, and I played with some more, well, advanced digital black and white photography.

And whenever I do shoots like this, I always end up with a picture that I didn't even notice when I shot it but it turns out to be one of my favorites. Here's that one:

And now, the part where I opine about photography: Maybe it's just me, but I find 'posing' any more than a few generic suggestions and asking for 'big smiles' just doesn't do it for me. The fun of engagement pictures (and really, wedding pictures too) is in the actual real happiness of two people, not the coordinating-but-not-matching outfits and the pretty locations and the 17 compositional rules you're supposed to follow or not follow or creatively break. That's why I love bringing Katie along when I do these sorts of things. She's so in tune with people that she's able to foster those real connections that make the pictures much more interesting. (Plus, she holds my diffuser for me!)

I got plenty of well-composed, accurately-exposed pictures of Meghan and John smiling at the camera like everyone assumes they're supposed to. But the pictures I always gravitate to—the ones that make me stop and smile as I speed past them in Aperture—are the ones I take right after the couple thinks they're done with a particular 'pose' and they let their 'I'm being photographed' guard down.

Yard Day 4: The End of The Beginning

The future of my lawn. Ain't it pretty?

We were too exhausted to plant the seed on Friday, so we put it off until Saturday morning. That pretty much left us with spreading the seed (and fertilizer),

raking one last time to get a bit of soil on the seeds, rolling the entire thing with a crazy water tank roller thing (pictured here),

watering the entire thing by hand,

and cleaning up the sidewalk and driveway.

Next up: Watering the whole thing, by hand, twice a day for at least the next two weeks. It's important to keep the seed bed moist, but not soaked, and evenly irrigated across the entire surface. That means hand watering and it means a lot of it.

Yard Day 3: Backbreaking Labor

Day 3 was dominated by raking, raking, raking. We bagged up about 20 lawn bags full of dirt and dead grass, and it hurt a lot.

Just so the day wasn't totally lame, we did go ahead and line the flowerbed border with bricks and drop in some new mulch. It at least gave us something to look at and be proud of. Here's pre-mulch:

And post-mulch:

Tomorrow: The thrilling not-really-conclusion.

Yard Day 2: Leave No Stone Unturned

We didn't.

Man, did we tear up some stuff. Click through to see the sordid details.

Yard Day 1: Not much to see yet.

I began the much-anticipated yard renovation in earnest today, although the work had really started two weeks ago. Beginning the day before Earth Day, I applied a total of about two and a half coats of Roundup to the yard. Roundup is a glyphosate herbicide, which is 'non-selective'—meaning it's napalm for plants. Here's what my yard looked like after the damage was done:

More after the jump.

The times, they are a-changin'

Soon, this will be an all-too-common sight.

We're in the process of getting the nursery ready, and part of that involves washing EVERYTHING. Katie's kicking butt at laundry so far!