Hehe, this photo makes me chuckle. Ah the things photographer parents will do while their children sleep, right Chaybert? ;-)

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago while Owen was fast asleep, it seems to be the only time he stays still long enough. I employed two handy devices to make this happen. The first is my Bogen tripod, which has a center column that can be removed and reinserted horizontally into a bracket atop the legs, allowing me to shoot straight down. Not a feature I use very often, but when I do need it, I am always thankful to have it. The second device was my cell phone (I finally found a good use for these things) which I used to paint in some blurry light around O's head. Then I guessed at a 60 second exposure, which I was not totally sure would work as I was shooting Fuji Velvia 50 slide film.

Ah fun times. Actually, this is one of my favorite parts of the day, coming up to check on the sleeping boy, tucking the blankets around him, putting his bear down next to him and watching him curl into it in his sleep, and just listening to him breathe. It is a remarkably relaxing way to end the day.

Tags:   Owen sleeping painting with lights dreams child crib asleep Nikon FM2 Fuji Velvia 50 Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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A shot I grabbed of Owen earlier this year just as I was about to slide down half the muddy trail to Abiqua Falls on my butt. Actually I only slipped once...

Owen wanted so much to come with me. But it was chilly, snowy, rainy, windy, and muddy and that was just a few too many "y"s for him. So I did want any responsible parent would do, I locked him in the car for an hour... just kidding. Wendi had opted to wait at the car with him, where he cheerily passed the hour ejecting the CD from the CD player repeatedly.

I, on the other hand, got wet from the knees down and muddy from the knees up, funny how that works. But we all had a blast doing are separate things.

Actually though I look forward to when he can start hiking, and not just because I get tired of packing him around in his backpack. In truth, he currently weighs nearly as much as my camera backpack does anyway. I figure any extra weight is just resistance training.

It has been quite an adventure though (I mean fatherhood, not the waterfalls, though those are often adventures too). I have also found it amusing. Namely in that every time I tell someone I know who also happens to be a parent about Owen's latest escapades they always caution me. "Oh look out for when he starts doing that..." or "Oh boy, then they become a handful" or something similar. Yet each time he gets to that phase, ie. crawling, then toddling, then walking, picking things up and carrying them, just becoming more aware in general, the whole thing that is parenthood just gets better. I have never once watched him take off across the living room for the stairs once he has figured out the gate has been left down and thought "Drat, I wish he wasn't so mobile". Or watched him pull himself up on the toilet so he can pull himself up into the bathroom sink (which he has just learned to turn on) and thought "Aye, what a headache he is." I guess it is all perspective. Or maybe I just feel a kindred adventurous spirit in the making. I hope so anyway. I look forward to the day he can go sliding down that muddy trail with me, and not just so he can carry some of my camera gear... ;-)

Tags:   Owen window portrait child fatherhood parenthood Velvia Nikon FM2 35mm film Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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My son Owen asleep on a car trip back from the coast. I take a fair number of photos of the little guy (who is rapidly getting less and less little) as you might guess. I mean, I am after all never without my cameras. But this is the first I have posted of him, usually I let Wendi post my photos along with hers on her account. But I wanted to get this photo up because not only do I really like it, it has a fairly interesting story to go with it that should interest some people. This is Ilford HP5 shot at 800 and processed through DR5 in their warm tone developer.

DR5 is a cool little company in Colorado that takes a variety of black and white films, and I do mean a variety, and processes them as positive slides. They have two different developers to boot. One for neutral black and white slides and the other a warm tone developer. And they look gorgeous. This digital representation pales in comparison to how the actual slides look on a lightbox but it still shows a bit of that quality. The grain of the HP5 at 800 through this developer is just beautiful too. Anyway, I have known about DR5 for a number of years but have never actually sent them any film until I finally decided it was about time I tried them out. I am going to have to do this more often!

They also process Scala by the way for any of you photographers still running around with some. I actually have a single roll of 120 left in my fridge...

Owen is definitely an easier target while sleeping and I couldn't pass this shot up. Especially with him conked out on my fleece. The lighting was actually kind of tricky as we would drive through patches of shadow and bright light, I was shooting manually on the Contax AX (I just like to say that) I was testing that day and didn't trust the camera enough to switch it over to any automatic setting. And why would I need to in this case, I know perfectly well how to expose film. It is too easy to replace trust in one's abilities with trust in a machine's abilities. Of course I might have completely blown the exposure because of that trust (I do make mistakes afterall), but in this case I didn't.

Tags:   Owen DR5 driving sleeping sepia Ilford HP5 car trips asleep Contax AX 35mm things to do with your black and white film portrait children Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Forget Panetta as head of the CIA, give me the new Canon 5D and I'll do surveillance. :-p

I borrowed the new Mark II from a friend to try some low light photography as the high ISO capabilities of that camera had me highly intrigued. I did find it kind of funny that as he handed it off to me he was apologizing at how grainy the 25,000 ISO setting looks. Yeah, sure it does, but when you are used to shooting TMAX 3200 you don't mind a bit of grain. We are kind of silly about grain. Personally I love the look of a nice grain. Give me a print that I can put my nose up to and enjoy the pattern of good Tri-X grain or Tmax 3200 and I am a happy guy. It is one of the things that has actually slowed me down in my embracing of digital, is that sometimes I think it looks too clean! That and digital noise does not look as nice as film grain. But that is all a different story.

So here I was in a completely dark room photographing my sleeping son shortly before his second birthday. It was so dark I could not see to focus and had to make some test shots to adjust the focus manually. It was really almost pitch black. As it was I was still shooting hand-held at 1.5 seconds (with the IS on) and getting acceptably sharp images. I know this image is soft, but I like it that way, makes it a bit more dreamy I feel. It is afterall about the impression and mood of my son sleeping as opposed to being able to sit here and count all the hairs on his head.

Needless to say, that camera's ability to shoot in the dark is amazing. I am fascinated by the ability to shoot in a way that I have never been able to shoot before, that is hand-held, non-time lapse photography in low light. I am really anxious to see just how much better this aspect of digital capture grows in the next generation or two.

And so we are celebrating his second birthday today, the actual birthday was yesterday. It amazes me sometimes just how fast this whole childhood thing has progressed. I remember well the 6 lb little boy we could barely wake to feed. Now we can barely make him sleep, he is so excited and curious about everything. So happy birthday O, I love you.

Tags:   Owen children sleeping birthdays they grow up so fast surveillance portrait asleep Happy Birthday Owen Canon 5D Mark II high ISO love duotoned quiet I wonder at which age he is going to start to be seriously freaked out by his dad's midnight photo sessions hehehe Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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