Meet Me In St. Louis

I've always appreciated the Gateway Arch from a distance. This week I'm in a hotel right next to it so finally got up close last night and was amazed. It's dizzying to stand underneath and look up. You think it's going to fall over. I thought if I banged on it I'd get a hollow drum sound, but the legs are reinforced with concrete halfway up its 630 foot height. As I walked away I kept looking over my shoulder thinking, "If it tipped over now, would it hit me? Yep...keep walking." I spent some quality time with the Arch, taking 80 pictures by setting my camera on benches and blindly pointing it upward at different angles. The Arch is not lit up at night, so many of these were 30 second exposures. I got 2 acceptable shots.

Easy Rider

I did one of the coolest things this week while on the road — everybody from work rented Segways and we took a tour of Baltimore harbor. When you activate the gyros the whole thing levels out, it's an unreal sensation like you just switched on your hovercar or lit your lightsaber. It only took a couple minutes to pick it up: lean forward to go straight, tilt back to slow down or go in reverse, ZTR turns with a rocker on the left handlebar. I almost lost balance a couple of times turning on cobblestones, but never wiped (though my boss pulled a spectacular four-point dismount). At one point I got my right wheel stuck on a level raised curb while my left wheel started following the sidewalk downhill ... the platform I was standing on started to tilt more and more as the gap widened. It was straight out of Dukes of Hazzard. I hopped off the curb just in time and kept it together. I'm ready for the Segway halfpipe. If I only had five grand.

Carter Turns 3

On Saturday, Carter had four friends over for his third birthday. We played the standard Grandon party games: musical pillows, pin the flag on the mailbox (from Blue's Clues) and Dino Toss (which is getting beat up from many years of beanbags). We learned that 3-year-olds aren't exactly into following the rules of games yet, but they had fun flagging the mailbox without the blindfold anyway. Add lunch (PBJ) and cake and you have the standing agenda for a Grandon birthday party. We just hope Madeleine's friends still like Dino Toss when she's 18.

Snooty

I may not be handy enough to do drywall or figure out plumbing, but if you need a hot-glue gunslinger, I'm down with that. Here's my fun project of the weekend, a lighting snoot made from plastic straws and Cheerios box cardboard. This little contraption fits over the rectangular part of the flash head to turn it into a spotlight. Instant drama!

The Monster Lives...

Over the last month I've been reading an excellent blog called Strobist, all about improving photos using minimal gear to get the flash off the camera. So this is the new portable lighting rig I've been gathering components for over the last couple weeks. Friday night bedtime I go to lock the front door and discovered an air mail package (Joanie was hiding it, I'm sure). The last part arrived from Hong Kong — cheap wireless strobe triggers. My family hadn't seen any of the other pieces yet, so when I pulled everything out of the closet at 10:00 p.m. and excitedly started putting together this gigantic thing they thought I went completely nuts. (Now they're concerned I might actually take it out in public and people will see it.)
While I'm still most fond of available light photography, I'm at a latitude where the ultimate thermonuclear source occasionally gets blocked. So now I've got this 8-foot lightstand with a 4-foot umbrella, complete with 1988 film-era Nikon SB-24 strobe ($40 eBay instead of $300 new). I can set it anywhere between "Sleepy Firefly" and "Nuke." The wireless is so cool: for Claire's evening birthday party I set up the bare flash on a side table to bounce off the dining room ceiling and walked around shooting in fantastic light without redeye or blinding anyone.

Claire's First Birthday

Claire turned one on Saturday and she had a small party. She looked a little confused when we sang Happy Birthday, but pleased. Madeleine made her a flower-shaped cake and used way too much food coloring ... her usual recipe. Current Claire milestones: she has 9 teeth, she loves to crawl and cruise but also stood up a couple times today without support, she just started climbing onto sofas but can't get down once she's up (same with stairs). She loves to groove to music by rocking back and forth, her favorite song is the Corner Gas (Canadian TV show) closing guitar theme. And she gets very excited to try new eats that aren't baby food. We'll see if her hands are less red from the frosting in the morning, we couldn't quite get it all out.

The Whole Fam Damily

The title is classic Grandpa Hugh. Here's an outtake from our session for the church directory.

First Day of School

Thursday was the first day of school! Finally, back to a regular schedule for everybody. Madeleine is in 7th grade, and Malcolm is starting 5th. So Malcolm gets on the bus Thursday morning, and through the windows we watch him go straight to the very back of the bus. There's nothing like being on top of the heap. It's a good thing the first week of school was only two days, these guys are worn out already and are so happy it's the weekend. Hey, we began this blog on the first day of school last year, so happy anniversary, faithful readers. Both of you.

Visit to Mecca

Last week I had a training class in New York so I made my first pilgrimage to B&H Photo, a gigantic store from which I would like one of everything, please. I couldn't believe how many people were crammed in there, both customers and staff. What an operation. The warehouse is apparently upstairs — the salespeople type your order into the computer, and a bucket lift brings your bundle out of the ceiling and rolls it across a system of rollers to the checkout. This photo was taken with a $900 wide angle that I fitted to my camera during just one of my turns at the sales desk. I also checked out the NYC Apple Store, which is basically a giant glass cube on the street. Inside the door is a glass spiral staircase that leads you under street level to the store. Sweet. Don't go there to buy a computer, though. There are probably 100 Macs on display, and every single one is occupied by a teenager sponging free e-mail.