Sock it to me

I can almost hear the iconic line from the end of King Kong, "It was beauty that killed the beast", when seeing the Sock Monkey attempt to take over the Eiffel tower.   Or, a drastically scaled down model of the tower that adorns our buffet.   Over Christmas, our daughter got a sock monkey kit and we had finally got the materials to make it a few days ago.   As with most things she gets, our daughter immediately put a stranglehold on it, never to let it go or venture too far from her sight.   She named it "Ted" and has elevated the monkey to a status immediately next to her beloved stuffed Rabbit.   I was wanting to capture this moment in a way that would be both innovative and amusing to me and her.   My first thought was to put him on our scaled down model of a suspension bridge we have, but I couldn't get the pose right.   I then got the tower and his thread smile lit up like the imaginary search lights attempting to lure him off the landmark.   I had a pretty good back light from the outside windows illuminating the ceiling, making the "down below" shot work quite well for me.   He's hugging the top of the tower, not allowing the pesky biplanes to shoot him down like they did with his movie star distant cousin.   While he is just full of string and cotton filling, one could almost sense he has a playful side, being a great partner and security toy for our daughter.

Slip, slidin' away

During the park outing, I grabbed my daughter's beloved rabbit and went to try and see if I could get him to pose for me.   I can almost hear him laughing with me as we went throughout the play area of the park looking for places to take photos while my daughter was off playing on the swings or seesaws.   I tried to get him to swing back and forth from the monkey bars but that was hard since he doesn't have opposable thumbs or a inner sense of balance.   Swinging was kind of difficult also because of the whole thumb issue and the fact that he couldn't grab on to the swing chains for support.   However, I set him down just once and he took advantage of the brief sense of freedom to take a ride down the "crinkly slide", as my daughter calls it.   It's a slide made out of rollers instead of a solid metal chute and allows for adults like myself to have fun on it too.   Turning around, I saw him going down the slide with what I was sure to be a huge smile on his face.   His eyes were just gleaming with the excitement of being able to be a kid (stuffed rabbits are notorious fuddy-duds when they get a little older) and I pointed my camera to him at the right time to catch all of that.   Shortly thereafter, my daughter realized what was going on and ran up to grab him from the fun we were having.   Unbeknownst to her, we'll continue our daily chats about politics, sports, and whatnot while she is learning new things at school.

If I can't see you.....

You can't see me.   Today, with a bit of a mild spell, I took my daughter to the park for some calorie-burning activities.   It was pretty empty, so we had essentially the entire play area for ourselves.   Swinging on the swing set, playing in the sandbox, and perfecting the see-saw's dynamics were on her priority list while I attempted to catch her in an unguarded moment with my camera.   Since she is extremely wary of my motives, it was pretty hard to get her today.    I went in under the pretense of snapping photos of her beloved stuffed rabbit taking a ride on a swing she was pushing and managed to get some fun shots of her.
 

When photos are taken of people with the eyes shut, it aggravates me as a photographer since moments are hard to get more than once.   However, there are few times that when a subject blinks at the right time, all the emotions and feelings come out just with the simple act of smiling or other body language.   This is precisely what happened with this shot of her pushing her animal.   I can almost see both the embarrassment of being caught in a shot along with the sheer delight of having the time of her life with me and her rabbit.  

New Year

I neglected to follow the spirit of my blog for the past few days as I haven't made a new entry since the 27th, due to my inability to access any of my technological instruments since then.   However, it is a new year and it will be a good one for new pictures and getting back on track with the blog.   It's been a strange few days with the weather patterns: wind, rain and drizzle, and lots of fog.   Not just the thin layer of fog seen almost every morning, but the thick, soupy fog that cause all the wrecks heard about on the news most nights.   I went out and shot the Monroe water tower, or at least attempted to, in the thick fog next to the interstate running through town.   As I was driving to the area, the tower was almost missed even though I had been over in that area many, many times.   Almost like a lighthouse appearing on the outcroppings of the ocean, the tower started to come out of the fog and I saw the outline of it.   What made the picture more interesting to me is that the tower is painted white, making the silhouette a cool contrast against the fog.   Only when I got up near it did the entire tower become visible and I wanted to try and get a photo from beneath, hoping the top would be swallowed by the fog.   Nonetheless, I found it a neat shot on a foggy, cool, wintery day starting the new year.