Photoblog 2.0

First Birthday, photo by Harold Davis.

Katie Rose was one year old today. Chronologically, that is. Meaning that she was literally born one year ago. Her “corrected” age, which is an indication of where she is developmentally, is between eight and nine months. This corresponds to the age she would be if she had made it to full term. (Parse that sentence for verb tense!)

We had a small first birthday party with a single candle with the boys and Grandma Barbara. The guest of honor presided on the table. She didn’t know what to make of the candle, but enjoyed all the attention. The boys enjoyed the cake, and Julian enjoyed holding his sister. Katie Rose has come a long way in a year.

Katie Rose’s chronological first birthday is fast approaching. Of course, she’s not really a one year old. Her “corrected” age, as they say, is about eight months (this counts from when she would have been born had she been full term).

Developmentally, depending on what specific aspect you are looking at, she’s roughly in the seven to ten month range. Her gross motor skills are the biggest single issue. Since she has no mobility, she’s either put down or carried everywhere. This is frustrating her, but she’ll be getting some physical therapy to help. It’s clear that she’ll be very happy when she can lift up her torso, and begin to crawl.

Still, any excuse for a party is good. I think Katie is kicking up her heels with glee because she knows it’s her first birthday party soon. Katie is so full of life.

For me, remembering back a year brings a frisson of acknowledgement of how thin the membrane is that separates life and death. Katie was poised on the razor’s edge between life and death for longer than I care to think.

Katie Rose is a miracle and stands for hope against all odds. But there’s an alternate universe out there in which I’m a widower with three boys, and Katie is dead, or a vegitable. So I am counting my manifest blessings.

Stories from a year ago: The Day My Daughter Was Born; The Birth of Katie Rose.

Lensbaby Baby, photo by Harold Davis.

Dear World,

My Dad likes to photograph me with all kinds of weird lenses, first the fisheye and now this Lensbaby Composer with a plastic lens. Dad says he switched in a plastic lens, and trained the “sweet spot” on my eyes so that they are in focus and the background blurred. What are you going to do when your father is a photographer? Sometimes he gets into Photoshop and makes me look like an old painting. I think that’s funny.

Anyway, World, here I come! My Dad has taken me to playgrounds for the first time, and I’ve met girls my own age named Ingrid and Samantha. Dad can’t resist telling their moms the story of my birth, how small I was when I was born, and how I beat the odds. Dad says they gave me a “low single digit percentage chance” and that I am a true miracle.

So I say, World, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Here comes Katie Rose!

Portrait of Nicky, photo by Harold Davis.

I took this portrait of Nicky—now missing his snaggle tooth and with a gap—using my new Lensbaby Composer with the optic swap system, plastic optic, and the 0.42X super wide angle auxillary lens. I used a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second on manual exposure control (there’s no way to control the aperture with the plastic lens attachment).

I’m still getting to know the Lensbaby Composer system, but I’m currently wild about it. A great new universe of totally weird creative possibilities that are far away from the f/64 school of photography (and I say that with true affection for both approaches).

Working on Our Book, photo by Harold Davis.

While Phyllis works on our book that is coming out next, The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing, to be published by Focal Press, Katie Rose snoozes on her lap. Another example of multitasking with kids, Phyllis is participating in life as an InDesign wonkette and a heated baby sleep platform.

Make-Like-A-Fish Mathew, photo by Harold Davis.

This photo of Mathew concludes a round of photos of my four kids; besides Mathew, in no particular order, Nicky, Katie Rose, and Julian.

To get this photo, I did what I advise in my Photographing Kids, Family, and (other) Weird Things webcast. I got down on Mathew’s level and asked him to show me what a fish looked like. I was ready for him when he pursed his lips, and I snapped the photo with the focus point on his right eye.

Julian at Mirror Lake, photo by Harold Davis.

Julian was in his element at Mirror Lake in Yosemite, trying to see if he could crack the ice on the lake.

Little Madonna, photo by Harold Davis.

When Katie Rose gets sleepy, she gets very quiet and very still, as in this photo.

Last week, Katie Rose had a nasty virus with a high fever. She kept her mom up literally for two entire nights. But she’s feeling better now.

Katie Rose clearly loves the idea of food. She reaches for any food item remotely near her. But she doesn’t have the physical skills she needs yet to swallow or hold onto anything long. Obviously, this is a child who gets the idea, and she lets you know her frustration in no uncertain terms. Appearances can be deceptive: Katie Rose is often the opposite of quiet. It’s amazing that such a small package can make such loud noises.

Watch out world, Katie Rose is coming!

Snaggle-Tooth Nicky, photo by Harold Davis.

Nicky is very proud of losing his front baby teeth. The snaggle tooth shown in this photo came out a few minutes after I took it. He’s so excited! He can’t wait to get to school and show his friends.

We spent a day with Katie Rose at the Whitney Clinic for developmental followup at six months gestationally corrected. This was a tiring day for Katie (and for us), but happy, because our little girl is doing so well.

Katie Rose saw a nurse practitioner, a pediatric neurologist, a physical therapist, and we saw a social worker. This clinic is a very friendly place, and very thorough in their follow up of at-risk babies. They are going to be helping to arrange for a physical therapist to come visit Katie and teach us some exercises for her.

Dr. Mednick, the pediatric neuroligist who is the medical director, told us that Katie Rose was not the baby he had expected to see based on her file. His body language made it clear that he was really pleased.

24-week preemies, like Katie Rose, have about a fifty-fifty chance of survival. Katie’s chances were a good deal worse than that because of the circumstances around her birth (the antibiotic-resistant infection) and how long she spent in resuscitation.

So to hear from Dr. Mednick that in all likelihood Katie would have a normal and productive life brings back memories of how tough things seemed when she was born, but mostly fills us with thankfulness and joy for the miracle of Katie Rose.

We look forward to bringing Katie back to the clinic next year, so they can see how she has progressed.

Background story & info:

• Information about preemies as told in The Story of Katie Rose (PDF version of a book intended for siblings of preemies)
• The Birth of Katie Rose Davis
• The Day My Daughter Was Born
• Katie Rose on my blog

Katie Rose in the Bath, photo by Harold Davis.

Katie Rose is doing the normal baby things. She enjoys her bath. She weighes over fifteen pounds. She’s gaining the strength and understanding of the world she needs to start crawling. She’s starting to sample “solid” foods.

We’re headed for the neurological follow-up clinic in a few weeks, but as far as we can see she’s acting like a normal almost six month old. Although she was born nine months ago, her gestationally corrected age, which means when she would have been born had she made it to term and is what is used for development comparison purposes, is about six months.

I’m writing this because I’ve had a number of inquiries that start “We haven’t heard from you” and ask whether Katie Rose is all right. So thanks for all the interest, Katie Rose is fine, it is just that I’ve been busy.

Not too busy to use my camera to turn my kids into freaks! Here’s Katie Rose through a fisheye lens, you can read Fisheye Family to also see her brothers rendered in this decidedly cruel and unusual (but funny) fashion.

Fisheye Family Katie, photo by Harold Davis.

I sometimes enjoy the creative challenge of being constrained to a single lens, and it is certainly a challenge to create portraits with a fisheye lens. Fortunately, my kids get the humor of the thing, and play along.

Besides the obvious distortion and curvature, the key thing to bear in mind with a fisheye is how much close foreground it includes. In the landscape context, this implies that you better have something interesting in the foreground of a fisheye composition (consider my Between the Earth and Sky as an example).

Moral: if you are taking portraits, you need to get the lens really, really close, like an inch away.

For more fisheyes of my tolerant kids see Cruel & Unusual Lens.

Katie Rose does not go gentle into that good night. She never has. When they almost gave her up for dead at birth she fought her way to life. She seems to regard sleep in the same way, as a little death. She hardly naps. Sometimes it takes hours of holding to get her to sleep at night. When at last she does go to sleep, sometimes she’ll wake sobbing when we put her down. So we hold Katie Rose a lot. Fortunately, she’s wonderful to hold, an affectionate and warm bundle of a baby, shown here in her mother’s embrace.

View this image larger.

This photo was shot in near dark conditions at ISO 2000. For those of you who are not photographers, this means that I set the camera to be twenty times as sensitive to light as I normally set it (ISO 100). The clarity you see in the image would not have been possible at this sensitivity setting with previous generations of cameras. To me it seems miraculous. No doubt, next generations will improve rendering in low light conditions, but it already makes possible a kind of photography that was impossible in the past: candid portraiture in low light conditions.

Like Katie Rose in Chiarascuro, I used layer masking and Noise Ninja to selectively post-process for noise. I also selectively converted noise to simulated film grain using masking and a film grain filter from NIK (although unlike that image I did not partially desaturate the colors).

Feeling Better, photo by Harold Davis.

It’s great to have Katie Rose beginning to feel better after her recent cold. Thanks to everyone who asked after her!

Cold, photo by Harold Davis.

This is Katie Rose’s first cold, and it is not a pretty picture. Because of her damaged lungs (normal for a 24-week preemie who spent time on a ventilator in the NICU) her breathing sounds like a race car, fast, and kind of thick. She’s hungry, but when we try to feed her she usually starts coughing, and spits it all up. The coughing also means that she doesn’t sleep very well, and neither do we. Phyllis has been up with her for most of the last three nights.

The good news is that she’s generally healthy, and this too shall pass. We’re bringing her in to her pediatrician tomorrow, and maybe some antibiotics will help, but one way or another I expect her to feel better in the next few days. And, she’s worth it.