Babies, Spinning Blades and Deadly Balls

The title is a more exciting way of summarizing what seem like endless weekends of baby parties, chores and other activities related to kids. So where to begin? Saturday was a beautiful day here in the Bay Area despite the weather man's prediction of showers. I actually never understood how the forecast could be wrong when all you have to do is look outside. Anyway, I find it therapeutic to mow the lawn, get a little exercise, smell the fresh cut grass and... have a little girl tugging at my pants. Yeah, Zoe wanted a piece of the action and who am I to say what the girl should do. So she helped me push the thirty pound lawn and was absolutely thrilled.

There's something frightening about a dozen six year olds hurling bowling balls as fast as they can, every which direction. And as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Technical Baby Photography Note: The custom white balance (i.e. shoot a white piece of paper and tell the camera it's white) is one of the most underutilized features and can make a dramatic difference in your indoor photography. You can set the white balance in post-processing (i.e. in iPhoto, Lightroom or whatever software you want to use), but who has the time with kids screaming at you from the living room? And if you shoot JPGs (which is what most parents do), then changing the balance after the shot works but makes for choppier color gradients.