Bath Time

I had my the day off yesterday so I was helping with bath time. But instead of really helping I grabbed the flash and camera and went to work. I converted a few to black and white and they seemed to turn out all right. You may be able to see in the first picture we had to bribe Owen with candy. Like I have mentioned before I am not above bribery. Lighting was, shoot through umbrella camera right. More here. ~Erik

Will the real Santa please stand up?

Sorry for 2 posts in one night but I had to post. Which Santa do you think we liked better? Tell us your first impressions. Yeah, I know Owen is in his happy place in the second picture.

Family Photo Shoot

Angela has been hassling me the last few months to get a family picture. If you follow the blog you will have seen that I have done photo shoots for quite a few different people. Unfortunately that hasn't left much desire to try and rope my own kids in for a formal family shoot. I will say this, the kids did very well for not having anyone taking the pictures. You can't see it but I was triggering the camera with a remote on a 2 second timer. Not really ideal but it seemed to work. Apparently the kids have had a camera stuck in their faces enough times that they know to smile and look at the camera. Also we are not above bribing. I know we shouldn't negotiate with terrorist, but candy goes a long way. There are a few more shots here. Lighting setup was a big softbox camera right with AB 400, shoot through umbrella camera left and rim light for the middle shot right behind Owen and Kaitlyn. Sorry for the lighting info. ~Erik

Sledding Fun

After Thanksgiving dinner the kids went sledding down my parents driveway. It was a bit to dark to get some normal pictures so I set up my flashes. The kids had a really good time sledding down the driveway and running back up. Kali doesn't like sledding too much, she is kind of afraid... but Owen and Kaitlyn sure like it. The picture at the bottom shows the set up. There are some other pictures here. ~Erik

Some Like to Bounce...

One of the problems that I run into as a photographer is that there usually isn't enough natural light for the lenses that I have. One way to get around this is to add a flash, the problem with an on camera flash is that it can leave the subjects looking washed out. Almost like the paparazzi's just shot them. If you have a flash that has a swivel head just aim it at the ceiling or a big white wall. This will give you smoother lighting that looks much better. In these pictures I used a flash to bounce off the ceiling which made for nice even lighting. The lighting looks pretty natural which is nice. If you are shooting people you have to be careful that you don't get ugly shadows under their eyes. You can aim at a wall or you can shoot from above them looking down. The shots of Angela and Owen below where both bounced off the ceiling but I had them look up. You can see the nice catch light in their eyes. I cheated a bit because I used my off camera flash setup but it works the same as an on camera flash.

Massey Family Thanksgiving

We had a really nice Thanksgiving today with Erik's parents and family. It was a nice day and the food was wonderful. I love the aroma of turkey and the way it just makes you feel warm and good inside. The kids especially liked the mixed drinks - no nothing like that - juice mixed with soda. They couldn't get enough (probably because I never give them soda). Even Owen chugged down a good 4 glasses of the stuff. Oh well, it's only a couple times a year, right? I just truly am so thankful to have married into such a wonderful family, who takes me in as one of their own. I am so blessed to have so many special people in my life. ~Angela

I too am very grateful to have married such a wonderful woman. Look at the picture above, not only is she nice but she is hot! That and she makes beautiful children, quite the combo. Tomorrow I will post some info on how I took theses shots (Some like to bounce). There are more turkey day shots here. ~Erik

We have kids not pets...

Well we have a fish, that's kind of like a pet. Its not that we don't like cats or dogs but we have to clean pooh and pee off the ground from our kids. Why would we add a pet to the mix to add to the madness? Beth and Ian got some kittens a few weeks back and have brought them by a few times. You may have a hard time believing this, but the kids love the kittens. Owen especially loves to chase them and giggle, while the kittens are scared silly. Something that I learned is that it is harder to take pictures of kittens than it is to take pictures of kids. Who would have thought that? Kids are not trivial... The kittens' names are Sheba and Boots. Enjoy the pictures. ~Erik

High Key Owen

Things have been a bit slow this week. I didn't have much to post about so I dug through some of the old photo's and grabbed this shot of Owen. I edited it up in Lightroom, I still have 17 days on my free trial. I am trying to decided if its worth the cash.
Owen loves to read, well have someone read to him. He is always bringing books to Angela and I to read. It sure is fun having kids in that age range. Maybe not the tantrums and whining but everything else is fun. It would also be nice if he were potty trained...Ok enough. ~Erik

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween. By the way, this is Angela. Erik would never say that he loves a holiday. I, on the other hand, love all holidays. I especially love holidays with my kids! Kids just light up and get so excited about all the details and fun events. Halloween is especially fun for me because of the costumes. Most years I will rope Erik into dressing up and doing a big family theme, but he was off the hook this year. I let the girls pick what they wanted to be and then pick out patterns and fabrics. I love the way their costumes turned out! Did I mention I love Halloween? Kaitlyn was an angel, Kali a pink fairy princess, and Owen a vampire. I had a lot of fun with their costumes this year (partly because I just got a new sewing machine that is amazing). We also did a lot of fun things leading up to Halloween. We entered a pumpkin in the local library's pumpkin painting/carving contest and won the grand prize. It was supposed to be a literary character. We did Frogilina from the Froggy series by Jonathan London. If you haven't ever read a Froggy book, you should. They are so cute. Maybe I could talk Erik into taking pictures of our pumpkin and posting them. Anyways, I have gone on and on. Sorry for my rambling. Happy Halloween everyone! Enjoy the holiday season (I know I will).

Beach time...

It seemed like everyone was sick this weekend and we spent too much time in the house. We decided to get out and go to the beach. It was probably about 30 degrees outside but not much wind. The kids were glad to get out of the house for a while. You can see by the first picture I was teaching Owen how to throw like a girl. Its never to early to start.... ~Erik

Sunday photo shoot

I have been working on some lighting techniques from Strobist. This is a single light setup and can be seen here. I used the white backer board to even out the lighting. The picture of Angela shows a bit of disdain as I made her model when she wasn't feeling to hot. She had the stomach flu in the morning and was still gracious enough to model. The colors worked out nice since Owens outfit matched the wall I was shooting against. Better to be lucky than good. Enjoy the pictures. ~Erik

Where's the Snow?

All the snow is gone well kind of... It melted when I took these pictures but right now it is snowing again. It was good enough weather to get the leaves off the lawn. The kids had a good time playing in the leaf piles. The bottom picture shows the lighting setup used for the first two pictures. Owen has a unique gift for finding any standing water. He finds it then, inevitably, jumps into it. I hope fall will hold on for a few more weeks. ~Erik

Snow Party

It's the weekend and I am not grounded anymore. My wife is pleased with me again so I am back in the saddle. Mid week we had some snow. It was a bit early but we got a few inches. The kids had a fun time playing in it and Angela was ready to move. You can see in the first picture Angela captured a cute shot of Owen right before he got pelted in the head with a snowball from the girls. Monster kids I tell you, they look innocent, but they are wild. In the next post you will see that all the snow is gone. So sad for Angela...~Erik

Anchorage Trip

We took a trip up to Anchorage to help my sister and husband move. I suckered my little brother into coming also. We drove the truck up and pulled a trailer too. It was a bit tight in the truck and Owen kept kicking Matt's back. Matt had enough and said he just wanted to sleep in the back of the truck. I thought it was a bit weird since it was 35 F outside but he had been accommodating by helping with the move. So we threw him in the back. Kind of looks like a homeless guy that jumped in the back of the truck. I told Matt that if a cop pulled us over I would act really surprised like some homeless dude jumped into the truck without us knowing.
The second picture is showing some fall colors. The leaves are dropping fast. The first picture is a shot of the mirror on the truck and I thought it looked cute. Enjoy. ~Erik

Super Cute Baby Shower Cake...

We had a baby shower last night for my friend, Pepper. It was a great turnout and she got tons of gifts, which is just what you need for your first baby! I made this cake for the shower that I copied from my old roommate, Loralee. For those of you who like all things crafty, you should check out her craft blog. She is super cute and clever. Anyways, the shower was fun. I really like the way the cake turned out and people said it tasted good too. I, personally, don't like the taste of fondant, but I love the smooth finish it gives a cake. Erik also threw a picture in of Owen attacking a giant chicken finger. That boy likes to eat.

O-Buddy

I came home from work yesterday and Angela and Owen were sitting on the side of the driveway waiting for me. I may be a bit biased but I have good looking kids. Actually I thought the colors looked nice so I made them pose for a few pictures. Owen had the whole fall thing going on. I used Picasa to make the cute little collage, don't know if I like it, but it was different. ~Erik

Reinforcing Bad Behavior...

I rate my posts by the number of comments I get. I have found that when I have a questionable post I receive the most comments. It's not the first time I have heard, "Don't laugh at Erik, it only eggs him on..." Nowadays it is usually my wife that says, "You're not really posting that are you?" In answer to a few questions I have gotten, Angela took the Neti pictures. Pretty good, huh? Even though she objects to some of the posts she does help me out at times.
This post will have a very mild mannered picture to try and win back some of my conservative readers. No vomit, dead ants, snot or even mucus. Owen fell asleep while eating, cute but not as dramatic as vomit...I hope you enjoy. If you want more posts like this leave comments. ~Erik

That was then, This is now...

We decided to go up Russian River Falls trail this last weekend. The kids did great - it's 4.6 miles round trip. We went last year around the same time with our friends, the Hansens. We took pictures last year at this bridge which is about the halfway mark. We decided to pose them again to see the difference. You can tell they are all braver or crazier than last year because they are standing on the rail this year. They all have grown up - Owen even joined in on the fun. Addy was sleeping so she missed out.

Here are the latest family shots for the Masseys and the Hansens. When we were looking out over this spot at the falls, we saw a small black bear, but that's for another post. I'll let you guess whether we are writing this from the hospital or not.