Just trying out a few enhancements. Let me know if anything sticks out to you as unnatural.
It’s happened way too fast. It seems like I was just dropping him off for kindergarten, watching him get out of the pickup, race up to the school door, and get through it before it has a chance to hit him in the backside. I did my best to make it last. You know, coached him in a few different sports, stayed up late talking with him, even though I knew it was way past his bedtime, and taking time to marvel at each passing stage of childhood. The braces came and went. The paper route was dutifully tended to each day. The spelling lists turned into research papers. And now, I find myself at the beginning of his senior year, his last one in the public k-12 education system, on the cusp of becoming a young adult. Another stage, maybe, but one with such far-reaching implications.
I’m amazed that we’re at this point; it’s such an exciting time. I’ve gotten front row seats to watching a boy become a young man, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
I finally got around to taking a few shots with my new 50mm 1.4 today. My new middle school gig has had me really busy for the last month, so my opportunities have been somewhat limited.
The school I’m at is a pre-WWII building, and it’s slated to be demolished in two years when our new school is built. I’d like to get some shots of it’s cool architecture, both inside and out, before that happens. I was in my office doing some work today, and decided to take a break and get a few shots of the hallways before kids come back next week. I probably got a little more DOF than is artistically necessary here, but I just wanted to show what this new lens is capable of. I’ll be using it in a week or so for Zack’s portraits, and I at least need to learn my way around this thing.
Zack is a great student and is intent on Oregon State University in Corvallis a year from now. What’s cool is that he’s already amassed several college credits in high school that will directly transfer to any public university in Oregon. He’s a hard worker and held down a couple of different jobs this summer, including a stint working with kids at the Parks and Rec program. I’m not sure if that helped or hindered his decision to go into education as a profession.
Another flawed shot, but I liked his expression in this one.
It’s hard to believe my oldest son is 17 and will be graduating this year. He was able to spend the end of the summer with me this year, so we headed out to Hat Rock to take a few test shots in preparation for his senior portraits a few weeks from now. We had a great time, and a few of these pictures will be keepers. This won’t be one of them, which is unfortunate because it was one of my favorite poses from the bunch. It just happened that I also goofed on this particular shot and didn’t get him all the way in focus. It’s REALLY apparent when you see a larger version of it. On the other hand, the sunlight in the background was purely experimental and turned out reasonably well I thought.
Even with this shot’s shortcomings, I thought it would be an appropriate one to start out with. I’ll have some additional shots from this location posted in the next couple of weeks, then I’ll have his real senior portraits to show you after that.
I’ve been looking through some older shots this week. It’s been a while since I posted any HDR images, so I thought I would show this now. I took this shot last April, on one of my trips to Central Oregon. You’re looking at Smith Rock, just north of Redmond.
Here’s the larger size on Flickr, which shows more detail.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
From the earlier Eastern Washington trip. This Aermotor windmill was on the ground, the apparent victim of some past wind storm.
