These stats, tell the story pretty well…

• Chicago’s average temperature for March 2013 was 32.6-degrees, which was 20.9-degrees colder than March 2012.
• Only five days in March 2013 made it to 50-degrees or higher, while 24 days made it to 50-degrees or higher a year ago.

Tom Skilling’s post, at Chicago Weather Center, really highlights just how cold Chicagoland has been this past March.

Being the older brother, he is far easier to photograph…you can tell him what to do, where to stand, how to stand, and when to smile. He usually listens too. Usually. The problem lately has been getting him to smile in a way that doesn’t look goofy. He is going through that phase, that I think every kid goes through, where when asked to smile, he tries to give you a big toothy grin, but it looks more like he is grimacing in pain instead. So after shooting a few throw-away photos trying to get him to relax, and smile naturally, he got the hang of it. At that point, I was able to quickly shoot some really nice portraits of him.

The gallery above shows my three favorite portraits I snapped of him that day…I really cannot decide which one I like best. Each one shows off his personality pretty well though, and I am quite happy with each of them.

We went to Heron Creek Forest Preserve, and went straight to one of my favorite spots to shoot portraits. A downed tree trunk, makes for a good makeshift bench, or a prop to lean on, while a number of trees and shrubbery(!) surrounding it make for a nice background. After shooting some portraits of the kids, the nice late-morning sun disappeared behind a blanket of clouds. This made getting a good exposure a little more difficult, but all things considered, I am fairly pleased with the outcome. Especially since it was shot using a remote trigger, without anyone behind the camera to keep the kiddos attention directed at the lens. I consider it a small victory that my 4-year old is actually looking at the camera with a non-goofy smile on his face (or without tears in his eyes, or gazing skyward at a passing airplane/bird), and my 7-month old is gazing in the general direction of the camera.

Somehow, we managed to forget that we have a 4-year old and a 6-month old. Needless to say, I managed to record a few less-than-perfect outtakes. These photos document the joy, hilarity, carnage, etc, while shooting our Christmas card photos this year. All I could do was laugh at them. Enjoy…

If I recall correctly, this was a test to see if I had decent lighting, and an appropriate amount of fill-flash. My son took it upon himself to make it a funny face photo. My daugher, yeah, she was just unhappy. Looking at it now, this probably should have been our Christmas card photo.

An accidental press of the remote shutter release reveals a true gem.

What attempt at a family portrait is complete without tears?

An airplane passing overhead is WAY more exciting than smiling for the camera.

On the count of three, blink and give me a goofy smirk. Excellent, well done.

For every good photo of a baby or toddler, you always seem to have 2-3 of these…they are paying attention to you, they smile for 1/1000th of a second, then contort their mouth into some odd shape just as your click the shutter. I’m convinced they do it just to spite you.

I should note that I did get some great individual portraits of the kids, along with some family portraits that did not include tears, ridiculous smirks, closed eyes, or skyward gazes. However, you will have to wait to see those on our Christmas card…for me to post them, here or on Flickr.

Happy Holidays!

As I was looking through the images of people’s everyday carry items, I got to thinking about my everyday carry items. So without further adieu, here they are…

Wedding Band
I still love the engraving inside the band that my wife surprised me with on our wedding day, “Come Rain, Come Shine”.

Leather Coach Wallet
My wife gave me this Coach wallet in 2003 (or maybe 2004?). It is the only wallet I have ever owned that cost more than $25, and probably not coincidentally, the only wallet that has lasted me longer than a year or two. After almost 10-years of use, and a trip or two through the washing machine, it has held up remarkably well. That being said, it is starting to show it’s age, and I have a feeling a replacement is on the horizon.

Apple iPhone 4S
An iPhone has been in my pocket since the original was released in 2007. It serves as my connection to the world with Twitter, Facebook, Mail, Messages, the Internet, and a slew of other apps. It is also serves as pretty good point & shoot camera, and with a full suite photo editing apps, it is probably my most used camera.

MINI key, Leatherman Micra & clip
In an odd twist of irony, the key for my MINI Cooper S isn’t exactly…uh, mini. So I try to keep things to a bare minimum on my keychain…my MINI key, house key, mailbox key, and a Leatherman Micra multi-tool.

Tag Heuer Formula 1 Chronograph
I’ve always loved watches, especially Swiss timepieces…Tag Heuer, Rolex, Omega, Breitling, Tissot, Oris, etc. My Tag Heuer Formula 1 was a gift from my wife on our first anniversary. A great looking watch, that can survive the high g-forces of Formula One…so it will continue look great on my wrist for a long, long time. At least until I can add a Rolex Submariner, an Omega Speedmaster, or a Tag Heuer Monaco or Carrera to my collection (hey, I can dream).

Ray-Ban RB3342 sunglasses
A nice set of aviators to shade my eyes in style.

Canon EOS 40D with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
My DSLR, combined with a fast 50mm prime lens, makes for a nice, lightweight, versatile, go-everywhere camera setup. It’s not pictured here, because it took the photograph of my EDC items.

Moleskine notebook w/stainless steel Parker Jotter ballpoint pen
For sketching, designing, notes, and whatever brain droppings happen to hit the pages.

Apple MacBook Air
My work laptop, so it travels with me at least five days a week. A beautiful design…thin, lightweight, and with a 256GB solid-state hard drive, quick. Handles everything I need to do at work, and occasionally serves as a my mobile photo editing platform.

Apple iPad mini
Another work device. Technically, I’m “field testing” it, but I like it so much, I have started using it almost exclusively over my iPad2.

I shot the photo above on a very hot, very muggy morning last summer at Fort Sheridan. Earlier this week, I found out that the my photo was selected to be published in the winter 2012 edition of the Lake County Forest Preserves quarterly magazine, Horizons, to accompany an article about the history of Fort Sheridan.

It may just be a local publication, but I am pretty proud regardless. You can see my photo in the latest issue of Horizons, here (pages 16 and 17).

It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that we were welcoming him to the world…7-weeks early…and spending nearly a month in the NICU (you will need to be a Flickr contact in order to see more than a couple photos).

Reminiscent of a photograph I took in March of 2011: Rain Collected, Tree Reflected.

Photograph taken with an iPhone 4S, and processed with Snapseed for iOS.

This is the photo I took for  our daughter’s birth announcement. You can see a behind the scenes photo of how I took this shot on Instagram.

Olivia was born yesterday (June 12th), at 12:04pm…she weighed in at 6-pounds 2-ounces, and was 19 1/2 inches long.

More photos will be coming…

Two weeks ago, toward the end of the Phenology & Photography workshop at Ryerson Woods,  a few fellow photographers and I had the opportunity to  photograph the Lake County Forest Preserves’ rescued Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio), while he was perched on the hand of an Environmental Educator.

Sadly, the owl passed away earlier this week. A brief story of how this Screech Owl was found and rescued, and how it came to live at Ryerson Woods, was written up by Jen Berlinghof on the Lake County Nature blog. It is both a sad and neat story, and I am glad I had the opportunity, albeit brief, to photograph this owl.

http://lakecountynature.com/2012/05/30/screech-owlstory/

This was my first serious attempt to capture a landscape at sunrise, and only the second time I had ever been to Fort Sheridan, so I really didn’t have a shooting location planned out. I was going to be winging it, and choosing my shooting locations as I came across them. However, having wonderful “golden hour” sunrise light, and a truly beautiful shoreline at Fort Sheridan made finding locations and scenes fairly easy. About the only thing I could complain about was the heat and humidity…even at 5:45am, it was already 81º, with what felt like 1000% humidity. Not exactly idea conditions for hiking about a mile down to the lakeshore with a bag of camera gear and a tripod.

The end results were well worth it though…a series of very nice landscape photographs of Fort Sheridan and the Lake Michigan shoreline at sunrise.

Photograph taken with Hipstamatic, Americana Lens / Blanko Freedom13 Film / No Flash.