Madeline - 2 years old

Adrian - almost 4 and a great big brother

Adrian & Madeline - Christmas 2011 / New Years 2012

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and a great start to 2012!

- Eric, Sara, Adrian & Madeline

Has it only (and already) been two years since Madeline joined our family? A year ago I shared the letter I wrote to her when Sara and I found out we were expecting her. Early this morning marked my daughter’s 2nd birthday, and I feel the need to brag a little on my kids.

Maddie loves music and dancing around. I attribute these skills to her mother (Lord knows I’m more of a Carlton Banks on the dance floor). She only needs two beats of rhythm to start bopping to the music, and usually the second note is optional. She just loves to dance around.

Right now she absolutely loves to run up to Dad and give hugs and kisses. Even if she’s given me a dozen kisses as I’m trying to get out the door she still runs up for one more just before I go. It just melts me.

She’s a bookworm. She’ll just grab a book and climb up on my lap and it’s story time. She absolutely loves looking through books.

She has hilarious curly hair bedhead when she wakes up.

She now wakes up and quietly climbs out of her crib and starts getting into things. She’s already been known as “Maddie Sneakers” by Adrian for her stealthy antics for a while, now she’s upgraded to “Super Sneakers.”

She’s not a terribly picky eater, and usually enjoys getting into whatever snacks her big brother Adrian has set down to go play with trains or blocks or find fun of some sort.

She laughs through her nose a lot, and it cracks me up. Adrian loves to act silly and make her laugh, and it’s pretty impossible not to smile and laugh when they get the house full of giggles.

I’m certain she knows she’s cute – hears it all the time – but isn’t abusing her charm too much to get out of trouble just yet. Let’s keep it that way, ok?

Almost every time she sees my iPhone she starts chanting “e-hat! e-hat!” to watch & read along to the Cat in the Hat book app. She also switches to different book apps left and right and even deletes apps if Daddy blinks while she has his phone.

She’s my favorite Madeline in the whole world. Happy birthday Maddie!

It’s Labor Day in the US and a busy Monday morning at the Bu household.

College football season’s here and with it my ideal autumn morning weather today – nice and cool and sunny, I’ve got my favorite hoodie sweatshirt on and a rather well-made coffee to start the week.

This weather always reminds me of autumn in Scandinavia when I spent a school year there from autumn 1999 to early summer 2000. My first experience living abroad, first away from home, cool weather, writing on paper, watercolor painting for a while even. A small fortune on film photography processing and postage. Walking and wandering. Coffee and the Swedish art / custom of fika. Warm clothes and wonderful gatherings with new friends.

Autumn makes me nostalgic for time in Sweden.I’ll get my head out of the clouds once I finish this coffee.

My dad’s habit of finding quirky gifts strikes again. A crisp $1 bill got him this nifty Kodak Instamatic 104 Outfit box set at a garage sale. Sweet yellow Kodak box contains an Instamatic camera, unused flash cube, old AAA batteries and box from the last 126 cartridge that expired in May 1975 all stored inside. Now I’ve just got to find a 126 film cartridge to reload and get snapping with this camera!

The surprise gift just sucker-punched this sluggish Monday. It was his original find of a manual Minolta 35mm camera that got me hooked on photography way back in the teenage years. A Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, Agfa folding bellows camera, this Instamatic 104, and a handful of garage sale and auction treasures have been great surprise gifts since then!

Can’t wait to try out some Instamatic 35mm photos!

Monday reminder: go shoot some photos today! -eB

I’ve collected a case worth of camera gear and, shiny as it all is, I don’t keep lenses or accessories long if they are not getting regular use. Enter one of my favorites – 105mm f/2.8 macro. Great lightweight telephoto lens for portraits, wedding ceremony snaps, and of course macro close up photos. When a recent bride chalked out two hours for her and her bridesmaids to have hair and makeup done at the hotel I got the macro lens out for detail shots of some seriously shiny rings.

Here’s the setup, in vivid iPhone snapshot format.

Tricky thing with a telephoto macro lens – if you’re shooting straight on at your subject there’s not a lot of depth of field wide open. It takes a good deal of light to be able to stop down the aperture for more depth and still have a fast shutter speed for hand-held close-up shots. A large window and tons of diffused overcast light did the trick for lots of light. I saw the shiny black marble-esque window sill and knew it would make a sweet reflective surface to shoot on for a certain idea. Set up the rings and went to town. Here’s one of my favorites from the set of improvised macro photography setup.

Geeky gear specs: Nikon D700 with Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 Macro – exposure 1/20 second at f/45(!!) at ISO 800. Balanced on window sill and lens propped with the ring box lid & bathroom tissue – use what you have at hand!

Why not have me tell your wedding story too?  Drop me a line here to find out more!

From a production geek standpoint, I was impressed. It upstaged the lighting gear from most the local shows I’ve rigged and worked, pretty slick setup.

If geeking out over production setups isn’t your thing, here’s something everyone can appreciate: a show that looked as good as it sounded! And when a show looks good, it photographs all the better. Here’s a few favorites to illustrate.

News From Verona

Attaboy

This guy Grifin was having such fun in the front row they recruited him to rock out on stage for a song.

If you get the chance, check out Attaboy and News From Verona on the Everything Matters Tour.

Image © copyright Eric Bucholtz 2007, all rights reserved.

Conversations about how to take and make great photos have come up all this week and every time one of my photos is referenced it seems my best explanations for the images taken is simply dumb luck. Having a camera nearby and ready is a large part of the formula, but serendipity when holding the camera up to my eye has been responsible for supplying great subjects, sunset lighting, or reflections.

Dumb luck / preparation / serendipity struck again when I pulled off the Pacific Coast Highway to shoot some of the shoreline. I turned toward the land and perched to wait for a passing car to add interest to the foreground, and saw a yellow dot in the distance. I lucked out when a sharp yellow Chevy Corvette convertible came zooming by.

Today’s free lesson – keep a camera handy, and be ready. You never know when a sharp subject will line itself up for you.

Nikon D200, 24mm f/2.8 lens at 1/160 sec f/6.3 ISO 100

Image © copyright Eric Bucholtz 2007, all rights reserved.

I backtracked for a camera on my way to breakfast at Albuquerque’s finest Motel 6. Taken during the great southwest stretch of a cross country road trip south along Route 66 and Interstate 40 west to California then north to Oregon.

Nikon D200, 24mm f/2.8 lens @ 1/250 sec f/8 ISO 100