Scale, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.
When we visited Katie Rose in the NICU the other day, the nurse let Phyllis put her hand in the isolette near Katie’s head to help give my photo a sense of scale.
[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 120mm (180mm in 35mm terms), 1/8 of a second at f/5.3 and ISO 640, handheld, image stabilization engaged.]
First Look, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.
Katie Rose Davis was born on Tuesday, May 13 at about 10PM. Her gestational age was roughly 24.5 weeks, and she weighed a little under two pounds.
So today Katie was three days old. Her eyes were still fused shut at birth, and we were lucky enough to be in the NICU when she opened her eye for a first peep at the world.
It’s hard to fully fathom how small she is, the photo below helps to give a sense of scale.
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I feel a little funny discussing photography at a time like this. But Life (and life) goes on. And it is really amazing how digital technology makes it possible to take casual shots like this in a mixed, low light environment. Image stabilization, the ability to raise my ISO, and to tweak color balance makes this easily possible,
[Both photos: Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens, ISO 640, handheld, image stabilization engaged. Far above: 200mm (300mm in 35mm terms), 1/10 of a second at f/5.6; immediately above: 24mm (36mm in 35mm terms), 1/25 of a second at f/3.8.]
Alamere Falls, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Alamere Falls tumbles down a cliff to the Pacific Ocean in Point Reyes National Seashore. This awesome waterfall lies north of the Bolinas plateau and south of Arch Rock. From the Bolinas side, it’s about four miles on good trails, then a half a mile scramble down to the falls and beach, so a total round-trip hike of about nine miles. The Point Reyes southern district trail map shows the route pretty well (look towards the bottom of the map).
Julian, my oldest son, and I started in mid-afternoon with a good lunch at Robata. For the record, Julian inhaled 18 gyoza (Japanese potstickers). Then we stopped in Mill Valley and picked up a slab of bread and some gourmet chocolate to take along for dinner, and headed for the trailhead. Our plan was to get to the falls an hour or so before sunset when the photography would be good, and hike most of the way back in the dark.
It was a pleasure hiking with Julian, who enjoyed the sights and sounds of birds, flowers, and bullfrogs. The only real disappointment was when the trail passed Bass Lake, a possible swimming spot. But poison oak made the approach to the lake too tricky to attempt.
When we got to the turn-off from the Coastal Trail down to Alamere Falls, Julian particularly took pleasure in the Park Service’s “Dangerous and Unmaintained” trail sign. This path does tunnel through poison oak in places. You reach the top of the falls by jumping across the creek as it approaches the falls, and are then standing 150 feet or so above a sheer cliff to the beach. It’s very dramatic and a bit vertigo inducing (photo from the top of Alamere Falls to follow).
From the top of the falls, we made our way down a crack in the cliff to the beach. This is a reasonably steep climb, and I decided I didn’t want to go back up it in the dark.
On the beach, the sun was heading down and a rainbow played in Alamere Falls (above). I let Julian take off his clothes for a dip in the creek (below) while I photographed.
On the trail home, as it got dark, we switched on our head lamps and talked about a wide range of topics. Julian said, “When I’m grown up, I’ll take my oldest son here.” Back in the parking lot, Julian was asleep almost as soon as I cranked the engine. There was no traffic, and we were home to a sleeping house by midnight.
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Nicky Jumping, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
On a recent trip to Alcatraz, Nicky started jumping in the exercise yard.
I was mindful of Philippe Halsman’s famous portrait technique of asking his subjects to jump. As Halsman put it, “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.” For example, here’s a famous Halsman portrait of Marilyn Monroe jumping on the cover of Life Magazine.
So when Nicky started jumping, I viewed it as a photo opportunity. I had my little Canon Powershot G9 set on aperture-preferred metering at the smallest aperture (f/8) to take advantage of the magnificent depth-of-field implied by the small sensor size of the camera. (For more about this effect, see pages 56-57 of my Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers.)
I knew there would be shutter lag, a delay between when I pressed the shutter release button and when the exposure was actually made. So I waited until Nicky was just taking off, pressed the button, and caught him in mid-air.
Nicky’s comment on looking at the photo: “I was trying to fly.” Well, fortunately Nicky is not quite the Birdman of Alcatraz, but he certainly made a good stab at flight!
[Canon G9 fixed lens, appx. 45mm in 35mm equivalent terms, aperture-preferred mode, f/8 at 1/160 of a second and ISO 80, hand held with image stabilization engaged.]
Portrait of Mathew, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is a portrait of Mathew taken recently at pickup time in his pre-school yard. I’m struck by how much more like a little boy Mathew looks with a haircut (compare the hirsute Mathew).
It seems to me that Mathew’s personality comes through this photo. This is a determined child who knows what he wants and is loud in both happiness and sorrow. The child is the father of the man, and Mathew’s larger-than-life personality will probably (and hopefully) not diminish as he grows.
[Canon Powershot G9, 44.4mm (210 mm in 35mm terms), image stabilization, 1/100 of a second at f/4.8 and ISO 200, hand held.]
I guess opening presents is hard work! When our Mathew is asleep, it’s possible to forget the often joyous and always loud being that inhabits this three-year-old body.
How time flies! Lo and behold, the babe in a basket has transmogrified into a boy in a box!
I photographed our Mathew Gabriel in the box at ISO 800 using my Canon G9, and then post-processed for noise reduction.
We took the kids and their bicycles (always a production) to the Prospect-Sierra yard. Julian spotted this praying mantis, and the boy and the bug became fast friends. Before we left, he brought it gently to a nice bush.
What fun to be four boys in a hot tub! Shown here next to the tripod.
Nicky’s moving on to elementary school Kindergarten after three years of pre-school. He’s been very happy at Step One, and these have been good years for him. But he’s very excited and happy to be graduating, and counting the days until his new school begins.
We’re very proud of Nicky.
It was a bit dark at Nicky’s graduation ceremonies because it was indoors and the kids were in constant motion. I considered using flash, but thought that would be disruptive and inconsiderate. So instead, I boosted the ISO and took advantage of image stabilization to photograph hand held.
[200mm Vibration Reduction lens, 300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/40 of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 400, hand held.]
On Saturday we went exploring and found this tree. The kids had fun. Nicky is above, Mathew immediately below, and Julian is far below. After a while, I took their portraits.
As I watched the kids play, I mused that parenting alternates between terror (as Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz might have exclaimed in Heart of Darkness, “The horror! The horror!”) and magnificent wonder.
Phyllis made this castle cake for Julian’s tenth birthday party using a mold she got from King Arthur Flour. The cake is in a grand tradition that includes Faulty Towers Cake, Herbie-the-Love-Bug cake, and (unpictured) dragon cakes, dinosaur cakes, fantasy cakes, Thomas cakes, and much more.
Related stories: Blowing out the Candles, Nicky and the Chocolate Sandwich, Peering at the Golden Gate, Flowr Pie.
Phyllis sent Dr. Michael Katz, the high-risk ob-gyn whom we credit with the safe birth of our younger two sons, the photos of Mathew on his third birthday.
Dr Katz’s response: “thanks for the update. Is that hair color because of the cerclage or the medications?” (If you are lucky enough not to know what a cervical cerclage is, here’s a definition, and here’s part of our story.)
I love Phyllis’s reply to Dr. Katz. Here it is.
Hmm…the data is entirely inconclusive…if you compare the three test subjects (all male):
– Julian, age 10 in two weeks (alas no cerclage and no medication)
– Nicky, age 5 1/2 going on 15 (cerclage, bedrest, and lots of medication)
– Mathew, recently 3 and very proud of it (cerclage and some medication):
You will see that there appears to be no correlation whatsoever in terms of hair color and cerclage/medication used. To further study this hypothesis, a new control group (with one member) would have to be formed and again tested with the cerclage/medication hypothesis. Unfortunately the continuation of this study seems unlikely: Tired test mama says: “three boys are enough!” Crazed test Dad says “Another baby? With another husband!”
We’re so proud of our three boys, they are all so different and all so wonderful! Thank you for helping us have such a great family!
We celebrated our youngest member, Mathew, and his third birthday yesterday at home with his siblings and grandparents (above). I managed to take his portrait between strenuous bouts of cupcake eating, candle blowing out, and present opening.
This morning we were at another party for Mathew at his pre-school, Step One, where Mathew wore a Thomas-the-Tank-Engine crown (below).
Here are all of our family at the Step One party for Mathew:
I don’t feel I can take as much time post-processing photos of my kids as I can with photos that I’ll publish in books or sell as prints, but here are some general tips for kid photography.
Get down on level with the kids. Make the same effort to connect with a child who is your subject as you would with an adult whose portrait you are creating. Connection is easier to accomplish when you are down on the floor with the kid rather than way up there like some giant.
Consider boosting the ISO rather than using flash. This makes your photography less disruptive than with a flash going off in everyone’s face, and avoids problems with redeye and blown-out highlights, while still allowing you to capture motion. (And kids are constantly in motion.) ISO 640 is a good light sensitivity setting for indoor candid photos of kids.
Use noise reduction software in post-processing (Noise Ninja works well for this).
In the photos of Mathew, I reduced the noise on a Photoshop layer, masked the layer, and painted in his face. I did the same thing with a bit of luminance sharpening, using the Unsharp Mask on the L channel in LAB mode. This selective noise reduction and subtle sharpening creates a kind of halo effect around the face of the child. Sharpening only the luminance channel in a photo creates a more flattering and less harsh effect than using Photoshop’s Smart Sharpen filter. Selective layer masking restricts the effect to the child’s face.
Last, but not least, I candidly confess that I cloned the cupcake and cinnamon toast off Mathew’s face, and enlarged the catch lights in his eyes.
Most important of all, in Mathew’s words, “Me had good birthday!”
Related story: Dropped in His Tracks.
I’m not sure how much rest Phyllis got covered in two of our boys, but she had a smile on her face anyhow.
Happy Mother’s Day!
