Welcome back from Wisconsin

So I have returned from Wisconsin — the flight and train ride back was smooth enough, and I was delighted to return to find that my apartment had not caught fire, nor was burglarized. I spent a few hours unpacking, running some errands and taking care of some rather important things (call you say “Unemployment Benefits,” kids? Ah, I thought you could), and now have to get to work on some various projects.

But, I thought I’d share this family photo that I took last night, just because I think this is the first full “family” photo that we’ve had taken in, well, ever, really.

(going clockwise from top left) Dad, me, Casey, RJ, Erinn, and Mom

For non-shutterbugs reading this blog, this was literally a last minute affair: my mom was not home until Sunday, and then we had to wait until late Sunday night after my sister’s birthday dinner and after my sister’s boyfriend and his kids had left. The good news (for my dad, especially) is that I managed to get it right on the first shot, which was as much of luck as skill, really.

For the shutterbugs, this was taken with a tripod at 800 ISO, 1/10 shutter speed, and 3.5 f-stop. Yes, this means that the impossible happened and my niece and nephew held still longer than 1/10 of a second. Keep in mind that there is no lighting set-up at work here aside from the regular lights of the house. What really helped was that I took the photo in RAW format, and was able to then make some important adjustments for the incandescent lighting. Then, in Photoshop, a little bit of tweaking with the Levels tool to bring out the darker areas, and Viola! A rather nice image all the way around, I think.

I also got some shots of RJ & Erinn, as well as my sister and I with the kids. But this one is sort of like getting a photo of Lorenzo Music; very rare.