Growing up in the Age of Technology

It seems that it's a truth: when ones grow up with technologies just part of your environment, you take to them like any other constant of your world. Lately, I've been seeing this with Townshend.

A few months ago, he figured out how to navigate my iPod. He doesn't really read, but he can recognize word shapes and letters, plus some albums have pictures. He's figured out how to turn shuffle on and off and how to pick and choose different sorting methods; all together, he can find most anything in there that he wants most of the time. 

I keep the iPod on airplane mode ('cuz who needs internet on an iPod??) but that keeps him from stumbling upon anything too untoward. And so, for the last few weeks, he's been playing with the iPod during his quiet time. And he enjoys being able to pick and choose which songs to listen to and when. Then, he figured out there was more to do on there than just listen to music. And in airplane mode, the camera and video are still very much functional. 

He's so very proud of his work! Taking pictures of outside, taking videos of his cars and various other toys, etc. He enjoys showing them to me. Then, after about a week (afraid of maxing out my memory space) I finally uploaded his pictures and movies onto the computer so I could make more space for future compositions. 

In a week, there were about 380 something files to be taken off. Here is a sampling of some of my favorites:

As he calls it, "All the Green ones"

Reality at our house:

Portraits:

More things around the house:

Then, he turned to his books. Here's a few:

one all about animals

one all about Monster trucks - "All the wheels"

one about the 50 states (in varying levels of focus)

Plus, at least 15 like this:

And this cute one:

It's fun to see how things look from his point of view. And who knows, maybe this is the beginning of a new passion for photography. 

Studies of Movement

Recently, I was reading up on the basics of photography. I do like taking pictures. One might even say I'm "Shutter-Happy". But I almost always use the automatic settings on my point and click camera. Still, it really is a great little camera. I've had it for some time and, generally, I'm quite happy with the results (and if there are pictures that I'm less than pleased with I will run them through Picasa or GIMP until I am satisfied). All that being so, I know that there are ways my pictures could be improved.. but the idea of using the manual settings is a little daunting to me.

However, I've got some vacation coming up and I thought it would be fun to improve my photography skills. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to capture some really great shots.

So, I started reading up on the basics of photography which lead directly to reading the manual for my little camera. Turns out that, while it's nothing super fancy, it has quite a range of options and abilities that I have not been utilizing. This opened up all sorts of avenues for experiments!

Eventually, after doing a good amount of reading and taking notes on a few specific settings, I thought I'd put my knowledge into practice. To start off, I figured that playing with shutter speeds would give the most obvious results (good or bad). So the other day, for my lunch hour, I took myself over to Daley Plaza to take some pictures of movement. (the fountain was green since it was St. Patty's day.. Heh)
Here are the results:

too fast.. not enough light got in (i think)
or maybe I was playing with the light contrast right then... 

too slow, over exposed...

this one had the smeary motion that I was going for, but was over exposed.. perhaps it was too sunny?

 this one turned out well, you can see individual water droplets and the color is good too!

Heh.. so, clearly, I still have lots to learn, but it's an exciting beginning!