Christmas Kids 5

It's Samantha again. When you're not yet two the running, squealing, eating, drinking, whirling, rolling, unwrapping, giggling, and hugging wears on a little girl. Then you've got to plug something in to let everything kind of recharge. And do that down the carpet where you can still peer at everyone surrounding while your mind sorts through it all to find a pattern that will make sense next time… Next Christmas.

Once again the stabilizers in my mighty Canon EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens and the magical sensor in its 7D let in enough brightness from surrounding candles. I first reworked the dynamic range in her eyes and mouth in PS4 while painting away background distractions, then I called in AlienSkin's Exposure 5 to let me evoke the palette of slightly over-processed Polaroid film to multiply the romantically flickering moment.  

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Christmas Kids 4… Sigh

Is this going on too long? I tell ya, there's a compulsive thing about kiddie pix, almost obsessive… once you start holiday kids - well it's like shooting up smack. You know wudd''m-sayin'-here? 

This is Samantha again… She's about 22 months old here. Still sitting on the same couch no which I kicked off this sister-series. All the toys on christmas day, Sammie's playing with her blanket. Go figger, eh? 

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Four At Christmas

Nope not her birthday, that's in September… but that still makes her four at Christmas… In case you didn't know, well, she tells you… A LOT :-)

And so the kiddie pix keep on comin' like hits on Top Forty AM. Damn it's hard not to take these kiddie images this time of year. It's like eating chips… Hard to stop after one, y'know?

Incidentally this was grabbed through my big… EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USMl lens on the Canon 7D. The stabilizers help a lot with hand held grab shots. But it still took about a 3000 ISO and the grain looks like a snow blizzard. Thus the high contrast conversion. Worked it in PS4 to both darken and diffuse the background living room as Katelyn ran all about. She's sooooo quick. I like the way she's running out of the frame.. Kind of a comment on the transience of youth, Christmases past and like that, huh? You catch snippets: on your sensor, in your memory… both the pixel and brain kind. 

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Merry Christmas Kid 2

And so the cute kid pictures keep on coming. LOOK it's Christmas, OKAY??? Y'gotta problem widdat? Alright, so anywayzzz, here's the other grand niece. She's just about four now. Heard Santa Clause on the roof sometime in the night, well… morning. Maybe sleigh bells, y'know what I'm saying'  here? Stop smiling. These are important exercises… Candids and all that. Natural light. Handheld. Important craft… OKAY? OKAY?

So.. if you're wondering what this is all about, look at my last post. Sigh… And, well, Merry Sparkle Season :-} There'll be more, till I get it all outta' my system. Sigh….

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Misty Sammi Christmas Moment

Yea, okay… kids at Christmas. Clché time. Sigh… But there are a few things guaranteed to tractor beam a photographer's.. ANY photographer's lens toward them. Think about it… think trains, hot wardrobe malfunctions, blooming flowers, sunsets, puppies/kittens, and yeah, kids. They're all like dirty little secrets for us hip, cool, and avant avant… artist-types. Still, just as sentimental hooks in romantic Barry White songs tug at us… so to do weeuns at Christmas time, right? So okay, here are my grand nieces everyone. Gotta get it outta my system, K?

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THE DEATH PLANK OF DOOM!

Thousands of hoards,  no…

Hundreds of thousands…

Crossed, ducked

To all fours

Toward

Slaughter.

Here: its last

Image before

They came to

Rip it away

Without a

Trace.       

This’s the finest image remaining with no more to be made since its destruction. Before that for decades it sat craving to do again what it did the day before it stopped doing what it did… So well.  

 I captured it through a Canon 40D’s 17-85mm (f4-5.6), then tortured out an appropriate dynamic range in PS4 using Topaz Adjustment to butcher squealing pixels here and there. The fog and sky textures are my own dark imagining. Hell, the whole thing’s now my murky fantasy since the thing’s been battered into rubble. 

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Don't you love the way they write comic books? The imagery… "12 CLICKS FROM ARMAGEDDON!" "THE DEATH SPORE FROM HELL" "BOOM!"…. Great stuff… Ambiguity? Whudda hell's "ambiguity?" Breathless… You go panting, gasping. It's all made deliberately and flamboyantly unreal as possible. Heavy metal on crack. A hand holds a ball of light set to detonate.

In '04 a number of authors wrote in a book called Give Our Regards To The Atomsmahers that "Nightmares, after all, teach us far more than wish-fulfillment dreams." I'm a sucker for writing that's all in caps… Made up of declarative sentences and riddled with exclamations. The thing about black and white thinking is that it's so easy. You never get muscle fatigue since it doesn't work any…. mental muscles. It's a world bounded by one force… Vertigo. Wheeeeee!

Not to worry about whetting the imagination's appetite, they provided everything you needed to know in those bold sentences crammed with sounds… BAFF! BONK! WHAP! WHUMP! KA-BLAM! EEEEEE!…

Every now and then that kid in me wants to scream something in all caps that's dark and menacing and just stands on its own bottom… something like… THE DEATH PLANK OF DOOM!

Protection's Just Another Cage

How many years
Is a generation?
How many are
Packed in a century?


How crowded is
It in  a compression
Of minds that
Escape only in dreams?

What happens when
The rains never stop?

St. Augustine, Fla. has two monuments… One to a sheriff who locked away slaves to protect others from them. One to marchers who burst free. Have you noticed that protection is another cage?

Images captured through my Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) onto its Canon 7D sensor. Processed in PS4 with assist from various AlienSkin and Topaz tools. Custom filters and brushes. No stock images… ever. 

Naughty AND Nice

So here's my question… Adjectives modify, right? Well in that sign up there over the windows, "Elegant" is the adjective but… but… which of the other words does it modify? Huh? Huh? And for that matter, is the gift a "What" or a "Who"?

Only three words yet… Life is so confusing…

The shop's in St. Augustine, Fla. and I caught it with my Canon 7D through my normal Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) zoom. Post was done in PS4 with an assist from Alien Skin's Exposure 5 where Ektachrome looked right to capture that old-time-shoppe thing after I'd customized it a tad.

 Look closely at the left window where they've posted a sign that reads, "20% off all swimwear". Hmmmm…. given the, er, elegant window stuff, wuddaya thinks left of their swimwear after they lop off another 20%? I shoulda gone in to find out, huh?