Salt Lake Temple and Auto Awesome

So after work the other day, I popped by the Salt Lake Temple and shot a few pictures.

Some I liked

Some I didn't like as well

But I gave another shot at an HDR photograph. 

I haven't been able to get the knack of HDR. Here's the mistakes I was making: 

To change the exposure of the image, I was changing the aperture instead of the shutter speed. Changing the aperture also changed the depth of the field of focus. This made it trickier for the software to overlay images. 

I was exporting gigantic .tif files from Lightroom to Photoshop Elements.  Elements really likes jpegs. 

So I shot five pictures adjusting the shutter speed then exporting them to jpegs before working with them in Elements. It seemed like everything worked swimmingly.

But the story doesn't end there.  One of the features of Google+ photo albums is that they auto-awesome your photographs. It's not opt-in awesome - this awesome is automatic.  Photos with similar backgrounds are put together in an animated gif type format, and they've now introduced the sparkly lights feature. If Google detects lights in your picture, it makes them sparkle. 

That is auto-awesome!

Scott Noir

Baby Blessing Photos

Life Hack - HBD Tommy

Growing up we always forgot MaryElla's birthday. Not when she was little, but by Junior High there was little to no chance that anyone was going to remember poor MaryElla. The legend goes that one time Yan got home from school to find MaryElla baking a cake in the kitchen.

"What'cha making a cake for?" he asked innocently.

"MY BIRTHDAY!!!!" came the response. (She really did speak in all caps.)

"Oh . . . happy birthday. Can I have some cake?"

Tommy has the terminal birthday in our family's calendar year. As the caboose, there are times that some birthday supplies that were in rich supply around April have just run out. Birthday candles are one of these supplies. We're always pretty sure we have them until it's time to put them on the cake. I'm pretty sure Tommy has had the big "3" candle on his cake at least twice (and he wasn't turning 3 either time.)

This year was one of just those events for us.

Since there's no way you can put off birthday festivities for a run to the store to pick some up, and no one wants to blow out a scented candle sitting next to the cake, some quick thinking is required. I'm going to share our little life hack.

Get as few cotton swabs as you think you can get away with (we went with three since we found one birthday candle.)

Cut off one end of the swabs

Dip the cotton end of swabs in a tub of petroleum jelly.

Put swabs in cake - cotton end out

Light the cotton end of the swabs (Caution - I'm not sure if cotton swabs are really made of cotton. I know the stems are not wood anymore. There's a good chance that lighting these things on fire is leeching some type of deadly chemical into your cake. You should never do this. . . ever!)

Blow out the "candles" as quickly as possible. Note - cotton and petroleum jelly is one of those survival techniques for getting a fire going when your life is in danger. Blowing out these "candles" is up a step or two on the difficulty scale.

Ta-Da! The experience of blowing out the "candles" was enjoyed and for a fraction of the cost.

 Happy Birthday Tommy!

First Snowman - Winter 2013

We've had a delightfully long, pleasant autumn this year. We're well into November and most days the temperatures have been downright balmy. The downside to pleasant autumns is that at some point you just would like a little snow.

Saturday 11/16 afforded just enough snow to make it seem like it was snowing without all of the downsides of travel in snow.  I headed to class early and the roads were just a little slushy. Imagine my surprise when I got home and 3,4, and 5 had rolled up ALL THE SNOW in the front yard to make a snowman. A little too slushy and a little too wet - nonsense! Undeterred they collected and compiled into one bite-size snowman.

Yes - those are rose bushes with roses still on them in the background

I don't think I want to play - I'll just stay inside where I'm warm in my fancy orange sweat pants.

First Real Bath

In the Wolford family, Mary's mom gives the baby's first bath.  I know, the first bath is at the hospital when the nurses clean the newborn up, but the real first bath can only happen when the umbilical cord falls off.

(Umbilical cord maintenance is another one of those areas that medical science engages in flip-flops. This time we didn't put any alcohol on it - it hasn't always been that way.)

Today the umbilical cord finally fell off, and we took care of the first bath tradition.

Tommy and Mimi were buddies posing in the little tub to make sure the light would be okay.

Quick Time Lapse - SLC Airport Runway

Mary isn't getting out much these days.  Friday night we put the baby in the car, went and got milkshakes (just the three of us) and watched the planes come and go from the parking lot by the Antelope Island causeway entrance.

It's only nine seconds long, but kind of fun to speed up with the magic of time lapse and be impressed at how efficient those air traffic controllers are.

Take Two - Alice Kay

Things went a little easier this time.  Alice was significantly less wiggly. We heated the sun room up to 80+ degrees which made her nice and sleepy. 

Baby Alice - Anne Geddes Is Cooler Than We Are

With so many options to share information with family and friends, sometimes our little blog gets neglected. It seems like Google is pushing us the direction of Google+ and even though we resist, they make it so dang easy. The Facebook has a much larger reach, so for brand-new-baby pictures, it's probably the best option.

That being said, we've particularly enjoyed the blog to share some thoughts and experiences at a more relaxed and comfortable pace. Nobody wants to read a seventeen paragraph diatribe on the Facebook, but a surprising number of you put up with it here.

Alice was born just before 8:00 AM on Friday 10/25.  That coincidentally is my Grandmother's birthday (MaryJane), and Becca was born on 4/19 which is her mother's (my great-grandmother's) birthday. Not only do we recycle names, we apparently recycle birthdays as well.

We named the baby Alice Kay - we have several Alices in our family including my grandfather's sister and their grandmother (my great-great-grandmother.) Alice Wright married John W. Seaman - this guy -

who was a sailor in the Union Navy during the Civil War. I thought I had a picture of Alice Wright, but I can't find one right now. May have to edit this with a little help from Patti. 

The Kay is for Mary's mother and grandmother. 

We're a little stuck on a nickname -Ali and Jo Jo are our favorites right now. Honestly most of the time we accidentally call her Mimi which is a little confusing for kid 6. 

After surviving the hospital stay (they ratchet up the degree of difficulty by periodically waking the baby up just for fun) we have tried to get back into the swing of real life. I'm taking a little time off of work, and friends and family (especially Mary's mother) have been incredibly helpful. As we get our feet under us, Mary and I thought it would be fun to do a little photo shoot. (Much more me than Mary; she's mostly just semi-tolerant of hair-brained schemes.)

So we got out some drop cloths to use as backgrounds and covers, we got some pillows, a pumpkin, and a couple of fall gourds. This is going to be a regular Anne Geddes shoot. 

That's when the wheels fell off.  Newborns are particularly difficult to pose. Not only are they squirrely, they are pretty much uncooperative betraying a lack of support of the arts. 

Photo evidence that we couldn't get it to work: 

and we gave up. . .

We tried a simpler set up today and ended up with a little nicer result.

Junior Honors Society Inductee

Fall Pics - not everyone wants to play