Kate and Simon have started something she calls “Simon School.” She picks a topic each week and they have lessons, in lieu of preschool (he’s not potty trained yet, so we can’t quite send him). This week’s theme was dinosaurs.

I think Simon School has been pretty successful so far. All day today he’s been tromping around the house in great-big Simon steps, roaring, and referring to himself as “The Tyrannosaurus Rex.” I’d post video, but our camera that takes video is in the shop (again). Anyway, it’s really cute.

When he woke up from his nap he came downstairs and told me “the Tyrannosaurus Rex turned into Simon.” And then he was all snugly. Life is good.

MostlyLisa, one of the blogs I read on a semi-regular basis, posed the following question: “How did you get into photography? What or who was your muse?”

Well clearly this was a no-brainer for me. My kids! Well, my kids and my dog. We bought our first digital camera about a year before Simon was born, and used it like anybody uses a point-and-shoot. When Ellen accidentally dropped that camera (which I consider a huge blessing in disguise) it set off a chain-reaction of upgrades (okay, two) that culminated this June with the purchase of my first DSLR. By the way, Ellen, anytime you want to come over and “accidentally” drop my television, computer, and iPod, feel free.

The vast majority of my photography is my family and my dog. Part of this is because it is all I have time for. Between work, other commitments, and other interests/hobbies I find it difficult to find time to take and process pictures of them, much less anything else. But the pictures I do take, I want to share. I want to become more involved in the large and active online photographic community.

But then I think about all the weirdos on the Internet. They’re out there and they’ve already impacted how I write on this blog. I decided to stop talking about politics after a conveniently anonymous stranger commented that I was “brainwashing children”. Was it a totally ignorant and ridiculously outrageous comment? Absolutely. Was it also enough to make me not want to deal with it? Definitely. But it begs the question: what other kind of undesirables are out there, reading my content?

The amount of information we publish in this medium can impact our lives in a number of ways. How much we provide is a decision we all have to make for ourselves. Unless you’re a 3 year old who relies on his parents to make that decision for you. Oops. The rule we established with Simon is that we’d post pictures on Flickr that were “public” up until the time he turned one, at which time they all became available only to those we’d marked as “friends” or “family.”

I relaxed that rule a bit when I got the new camera, because one of my main subjects is Simon, and I want to share my. . .um. . . art. As of today, my paranoia has gotten the better of me (again), and I’ve changed most of the Simon pictures back to their restricted status.

I’m clearly somewhat conflicted on the issue, so I throw it out to my readers: What lines do you draw with regards to pictures of you, your family, and your kids on the web?

Mary has been getting a lot of attention recently, but we’re trying to give Simon his due, too. Having Kate’s parents in town helps tremendously. The kid gets tons of Grandma and Grandpa love. I had a chance to take Simon, his soccer ball, and of course my camera to a nearby field earlier this week.

Look at that form. At 2 years old! That’s sick.

Due to popular demand, here are the first four pictures of Mary and our family. I would be posting more, but I’m having issues with the Flickr uploader and am needed back at the hospital. More to come!

I came home last week to find my basement looking like this. Simon loves it. The kid won’t stand still for more than 1 second, so my attempt to get him in the photo with a slow shutter speed didn’t work at all (see the blur in the lower right hand corner).

Go Caps! (Just went up 3-2!).

Edit 04/18/08: The Caps ended up losing 4-3 in double OT. But it doesn’t make this any less cute.

Our friend Lou Ann purchased a brand new spiffy Canon 40D and was kind enough to lend me her old Canon EOS Digital Rebel. It’s clear that I have a lot to learn about how to use a DSLR, and how to do post processing. So this is the first of what may be come many “lessons learned” posts.

I took Simon out last night to play baseball with his Spiderman bat and ball. I took the camera along to snap some photos. This was at about 5:30PM, so the sun was low and the light was nice and soft. I learned two things last night.

1. Pay attention to shadows! Of about 70 pictures that I took, maybe 15 were keepers (in my book - others may beg to differ). Of those 15, I only thought 3 or 4 were worth posting for the world to see on Flickr (again, others may disagree!). Many of the pictures were discarded because of shadows. Either he was facing the wrong way and his face was in shadow, or more egregiously, my shadow was in the frame distracting from the picture. It’s something I didn’t think of at all and didn’t really notice looking at the camera’s LCD when reviewing pictures.
2. Despite the good light, I didn’t set the camera correctly to get the vibrant colors that I really want when taking photos. I didn’t do any post-processing initially, and everything looked a little washed out. Kelly responded to my twitter complaint this AM and suggested that I fiddle with the saturation.

I followed Kelly’s advice (thanks, btw!) and increased the saturation in photoshop to create more vibrant colors. Mouse over the image below to see the difference a little saturation enhancement can make (IE6 users won’t see an image - look at this one on Flickr. Oh and download a better browser).

So my question is this. While I prefer more vibrant colors in my photos, how much saturation is TOO much saturation? If I move that slider to the end of the spectrum, I can get an image that is clearly too saturated. My problem is that my eyes have a hard time distinguishing when that threshold has been crossed. Any suggestions?

I first started using Flickr in October 2005. Several months later, I wished I could upload and share some of the short videos of cuteness that abounded. Now, this is reality (yes, it’s been around on other sites for a while - but I wanted a central media repository). Yesterday Flickr launched the ability to upload small (< 90 second) video clips. The clips appear in your photostream just as photos do, and you can basically perform all the actions on them that you would on photos: tag, set permissions, add to groups, etc. Oh, and apparently this feature is currently only available to "Pro" users ($25/year).

I know this is probably going to be a controversial move within the Flickr community, as many Flickr users are very serious about their photography. I know there have been some vocal opponents of this as it has been kicked around in the community. But for a Flickr user like me, who posts mostly pictures of my kids, dog, travels, etc., this definitely has potential. Since the videos I take are very rarely over 90 seconds, they will fit well in the "story" that my photostream tells.

I also use flickr as an emergency backup of my "best" photos. If my hard drive were ever to die on me, I can rest easy knowing that I have the majority of the photos that I care about loaded onto flickr. I hope that I can do the same with the little videos that I take. My big question is if the file that I upload (60 fps 640x480 AVI) can be downloaded again at some point in the future, or if only a converted, web friendly version will be stored by Flickr. I suppose there's only one way to find out. Here's more of Simon's American Idol training: