Today was sunnier and warmer than forecast. We were all home around lunchtime, and we took advantage of the chance to play together in the yard. I played with my camera, and F played with my other camera. G played with grass, flowers, rocks, and dirt. Oh, and a soccer ball, for about twenty seconds. I refer to both cameras as mine, you’ll note — they are mine, all mine! Unless I want there to be any pictures of me that don’t involve a mirror or have a curiously wide angle and, often, a foreshortened arm at the bottom.
G obviously shares my opinion that our lawn mower doesn’t work very well. She sat for a good while ripping intently at the grass with both hands until the spot in front of her was nicely trimmed. Seeing what a good job she’d done at that location, I picked her up and shifted her by about a foot to get a more even lawn treatment. She didn’t appreciate having to start over, and returned to the original spot to make sure it was good and bald.
I was challenging myself to get some shots of G’s hands at work. My Panasonic LX3 is better than my SLR (with the lenses I have) for close-up pictures, but with those hands up to all sorts of interesting things, the autofocus and shutter response times were a serious frustration. When she moved on to collecting and moving small rocks, I had a little more luck.
Still, most of the images were like this, or worse. G is pretty enthusiastic about cameras, so shove a lens within a centimetre of her hands and she’s likely to want to interact. Despite the fact that she’s already splitting her attention between the rocks in one hand and the hair elastic in the other, she finds a spare finger to prod the lens with. She multitasks so much better than I do.
I like this shot. It’s in focus! ! ! OK, well it’s natural that you wouldn’t be as impressed with that as I am. Anyway, I also like the record of the rock-feeling stage she’s at right now. She’s generally got at least two in her hand when we go inside, and I’m astonished that she lets me take them and put them outside the door “for next time.” She doesn’t forget to pick them up the next time she’s out, either.
Whoa, she laid down and held still for a minute.
I had picked a flower so I could cheat at taking macro pictures of it from different angles. G enjoyed it when I was done.
She investigated its properties thoroughly.
Aha, well, if you didn’t want to see a macro photo of the face of a dirty toddler with a runny nose, you’ve just discovered that you’ve come to the wrong place.
I am seriously considering entering this one in PW’s macro photography assignment.