Had this past Wednesday off. Nothing particularly stunning about that in itself as I have usually 2-3 a month off typically, but this week the weather was exceptionally nice and seeing that the Ape was driving us nuts at home, we decided to go to the local mall to help him blow off some energy. Why the mall when the weather was so sweet? Mostly because of the play area there and because the parks we usually attend are like ghost towns now with no kids for him to play with. Took the camera with for kicks. From past experience, the play area has a big skylight over it that lets in gobs of natural light, so armed with the 80-200 @f2.8 and 3200 ISO I knew I could get some nice snaps of him playing. Here’s the three I like best from the day:

I really like the first one because of the directional light coming from the big bank of side windows to the left of the play area and where he’s standing. His expression is also awesome as well — so full of confidence, I’m somewhat envious. The last one is a bit grainy because it was at 6400 ISO if I remember, but I just like his expression, so it’s OK. B&W works great for high ISO shots, very filmic, though the color originals actually were quite nice too.

Aside from the mall, took a few other snaps that day I liked. First is the grody Jack o’ Lantern from Halloween we still have out front. It’s just starting to turn and get interesting, but I snapped it anyways. I’m actually going to go back to it as time goes on because the mold, decay, shrinkage, etc. gets really interesting after a while and makes for some real horror shots if you’re patient. For now though, it’s a good start:

Played around with it in Photoshop and Lightroom a bit for fun and liked the results, so there you go.

Also took this shot of the antenna on our roof for the TV. We got cable actually, and digital TV makes this a bit of a moot point as well even if we didn’t have cable, but it still looks neat. One of these days we’ll get rid of it . . . In the meantime though, some PP in Photoshop for fun. Looks very Christopher Griffith, but in color. That’s OK, I was just playing around for fun.