Death by Platypus

It’s a Holiday flashback!! I’ve got a bunch of Holiday photos of the kids to put up. Let’s see, where did I leave off last month…

Trail of Lights

After going to the Zilker Tree lighting, we had to take the kids back for the Trail of Lights. Here’s the proof the kids had a great time:

And I got more fun shots of the tree:

37th Street

Later in the week, we bundled the kids up and went out for dinner at Mangia, then a stroll down 37th street to catch all the lights. Sadly, the ringleader moved away during the year (he used to let people walk all the way around his house – lights covering the walls, the trees, everything in the backyard… you walked by his electric meter and could watch it absolutely flying…), but the rest of the neighborhood stepped up admirably in his absence.

The highlight though was the sock-monkey manger:

Gotta love Austin!

First Night

And rounding out the Hedge Family’s Holiday-themed adventures for the year was our third annual trip out to First Night on New Years Eve. This event is a blast if you’ve never been – arts and music and crafts for the kids scattered all over Downtown Austin.

Quinn casting a larger than life shadow on Congress St. bridge	Tyler enjoying the Asylum Street Spankers

Sharing a big ole laugh with Mommy during the Spankers	Mommy gets a nosy-nuzzle from Tyler

As dark hits, there’s a parade down Congress. Most of the participants in the parade are dressed up in wild costumes or riding crazy floats.

Congress gets ready for the parade	Patiently waiting

The kids’ favorite from the parade	Part of the Bike Zoo

After the parade, there was a “kids fireworks” display – maybe a dozen wimpy streamers into the air from the top of an office building. Pretty lame. They do a “normal” fireworks display for the grown-ups later in the evening that we’ve never been able to stay for. Hopefully, they’ll decide to beef up the kids display next year.

The kids were champs this year – often staying out past bedtimes, but loving every minute of it and sharing the Christmas spirit. It’s nearly the end of January now and Tyler still sings Christmas carols from time to time.

Today I commuted by bike for the first of hopefully many times. I went shopping at REI over the weekend to by a rack and pannier bags for my rode bike and wound up bringing home a Novara Fusion commuter bike – wider tires and handlebars, attached lights and rack, fenders, seat post shock absorber… even a bell

 Anyway, it’s about 8 miles each way, but up and down the hills of 360. I’m sadly out of shape but managed a comfortable ride into work in 35 minutes, and a tougher ride into 25 mph head winds in about 45 minutes on the way home. Not good times, but then this isn’t exactly my road bike (and who am I kidding, I’m surprised I could still make it there in back).

I doubt I’ll ever ride on the rainy, sub-40, over-90 days, or days with client visits, but I think I’ll work my way up to riding 4 days a week over the next month or so.

It’s good to be out from behind the oppressive big company firewall

 Hooray for live streaming of KEXP!

 As I mentioned, much has been happening in my photography pursuits. First off, for Christmas, Alyssa and both sets of parents got together to buy me a Nikon 105 Macro lens – something I’ve been talking about getting for some time, so I knew it wouldn’t be out of the question that they’d all overspend to buy the whole thing for me. But to my complete surprise, Alyssa also went out and bought me the just-released Nikon D300 camera body as well!! I had absolutely no idea that was coming. She’d even gone so far as to email one of the mentors from the Montana photography trek I went on asking about what camera to upgrade to. What a fantastic surprise!

The camera is incredible – 12 mega-pixels, more contoured body, more control via dials/buttons on the body (as opposed to frequently having to navigate through menus to change things like ISO or exposure bracketing), 6 frames/second shooting rate, plus lots of other really cool features. It’s a lot of fun to shoot with. So far no pictures taken with it are on the site (I was just aiming to get the 2007 stuff done), but they’ll be there soon.

The macro lens is also amazing. Tack sharp and fast. And the closeups speak for themselves:

Truck with old 18-200 lens	Truck with 105 macro

In addition to the new gear, I’ve also been playing with a new technique (well, new to me) – High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. In short, you take multiple exposures of the same image and blend them together to match the greater array of light the eye sees that a camera can’t (ever tried to take a picture of someone under a shade tree in the bright sunlight? either the sky is washed out or the shadow area comes out black, however the human eye has no problem seeing both the light and the dark areas correctly). 

I got turned on to a hugely popular photo blog site from a guy that’s actually from Austin – Stuck in Customs - and had wondered how he made such otherworldly photographs. Then at a photography meetup, I met another guy who had been playing with HDR as well, and he gave me some tips on how to get started. While I really like the heavily stylized, oversaturated look both of those guys do, I’ve been using the technique but trying to stay more realistic. I’ve got several images posted to the website in a super-secret link right now. Here’s a sample:

In other photography news, I entered my work in a show! Actually, my Mom found out about it and sent the info along. I’ve got three images in the Walker’s Gallery in San Marcos, running from January 11th through February 29th. The world will never be the same.

And finally, I did close out the last of my 2007 shots on Alpha Dog. I’ll still be adding some fun shots in future blog posts, but as far as the “good” stuff, you can check out a few new kid shots, new holiday shots, and some shots from a fun trip to Pedernales Falls we took (several repeated in the HDR section).

Holiday wrapped up nicely. I got a new camera and lens. Playing with HDR (multiple exposure blending) photography. Put my work in a show for the first time. Kids have nearly driven Alyssa and I out of our minds. And I’m in a new job.

All that and a ton of pix to post, but now I’m so far behind, it’s gonna be hard to jump in…