Cousin Mayhem

There's a special kind of bond between cousins that can, apparently, only be expressed by playing iPad games side-by-side.

Or unleashing mayhem on your grandmother.

This Is Not a Macro

228.365 50mm f3.2 1/50 ISO 200You know how you can tell? 

This is the tool you need to impress your grandson.  And to work on this machine, which will be just the thing to make sure he dreams of you at night after he flies back home.

No Horizon

226.365 50mm f2.5 1/100 ISO 200I find that, here in North Carolina, I want to take lots of closeup shots.  The flowers, the bugs, the green-ness.  I feel like it's a little bit of a cop-out to wander around with the macro tube confident that it will serve my needs.  But when I got to my Dad's house yesterday I realized why that might be: there's no horizon here.  I'm used to being able to see for miles and to reaching for my wide angle lens.  Here there are no long views.  The woods enfold you and that dense tangle becomes your view.  (I took this same shot off the back deck last winter.  Even when the leaves are on the ground you can't see much.)

I know this should fall into the category of Duh.  I grew up in this house, cutting trails through that very scene.  (My best friend's house and the pond where we swam were both through those woods.)  But I'm only now beginning to see it as a photographer, a whole different kind of seeing.  I am charmed by the dappled light and by all the little layers of life (that lend themselves to macro) but it would take longer than I have on this vacation to figure out how to see the place in medium or wide shot.

Losing My Tolerance

225.365 200mm (+12mm mac tube) f5.6 1/250 ISO 800It is HOT in North Carolina.  Yes, I have lost all tolerance for sticky, muggy, heat in the years since I transplanted myself out West.  Also, as it turns out my kid is allergic to mosquito bites.  Not that I would let the keep him inside too much, but he is getting a little swollen.

So we headed for the Museum of Life and Science and after a walk down the dinosaur trail (hugely upgraded since my childhood) we headed for the relative cool of the butterfly house.  Yes, the tropical butterfly house was more comfortable than the actual weather of central NC yesterday.

I am such a wuss.

In Style

224.365 50mm f2.5 1/400 ISO 200Have you noticed?  Chickens are the new Labrodoodles.  So trendy.  In my world it started with my brother, on his little urban lot in Denver.  A friend from growing up just quit the big-city life of Chicago, moved home and started a love affair with chickens.  My mom and stepdad are in on the action too, with eight or ten hens in the prettiest little coop overlooking the rose garden.

Ezra, naturally, would have spent all day in the hen house if I would have let him.  He fed them meal worms right out of his hand.  He discovered that they love the cicadas and sent us off into the yard to fetch them.

And then, because this one is Durga (which is also the name of a dear friend) and because I love portraits, and because I discovered that chickens never stop moving and therefore it is a challenge to make a portrait, and because I love a challenge:

I know it's kind of ridiculous in North Carolina, a huge poultry state, to suggest that chickens are a New Thing.  But I say it's official: so on trend.