Hello, Summer Vacation.

Goodbye, lovely school year.  (Hello, end of year slideshows ...)

Revisiting jpg vs. raw ...

Ok. Y'all know I'm pretty much a jpg shooter, right? I wrote a big, long post about it way back oodles of years ago in 2009. And I'm still pretty much (95% of the time) a jpg shooter.

But sometimes, an occasion pops up where a raw file will just hold up much better than a jpg. Like this last weekend. When I photographed Littlest Dude's school performance of Theseus and the Minotaur. In the dark. I kid you not. D.A.R.K. The windows were taped over. In some scenes there were no overhead lights, only flashlights and the glowing red eyes of the Minotaur. So, at the rehearsal, I popped the camera into raw+jpg mode for a couple images to do a little experiment. Here's the SOOC.



The image above is shot at ISO 4000(!!), 100mm, f/4 (the widest aperture on my 24-105mm lens), and 1/40 sec (yes, way too slow, and yes, slower than I'm able to handhold well). As you can see, despite such a high ISO and such a low shutter speed, the image is nevertheless underexposed. Oh yeah, and it's also orange, noisy, and ugly (not the people! the image of the people).

Below are my two edits. Note: these are both quickie edits done in Lightroom. I don't like to spend oodles of time trying to fix sucky pics. For both I significantly bumped the exposure, used the custom white balance dropper to click on the students' shirts (thank you, GCA, for choosing 18% gray uniforms. grin), and reduced the noise from high ISO and underexposure. The first one is my jpg edit.



This next one is my raw edit.



The raw file was a significant enough improvement that I decided to shoot the evening performance in medium-raw mode. Did you know there was such a thing as "medium" raw? I didn't :-}. But I opened up my camera manual and went searching, because I didn't want to wrack up a bunch of 26mb files, 'cause that'll eat up my hard drive more quickly than I care to consider.

So here were my takeaway decisions for shooting the evening performance based on my rehearsal experience:

1. Ditch my 24-105 lens (which is what I usually shoot performances with). Instead I brought my 24mm. I needed to be able to gobble what little light there was. The 24mm lens is a light gobbler. Yup, I'm pretty sure that's its technical name. Light gobbler.

2. I shot in medium raw format (resulting files are about 12mb, instead of 26mb).

3. I kept my ISO at 3200, my f/stop at 2.8, and my shutter speed above 1/160 second (except for the minotaur scene; some of those exposures are 1/10 second).

The result images of these settings is in the slideshow below. The rehearsal is at the beginning; the evening's performance begins at about the 1:55 mark.



And that's my little tale of why I shot in medium-raw this weekend. Oh, and Littlest Dude? He was the most adorable "scary narrator" EVER. And yes, as his mom, I might be just a little biased. (the 3 other scary narrators were also excellent!)

Year in Review Slideshows

Truly, 2009-2010 was an amazing year at Grace Classical Academy. Wonderful teachers, enthusiastic students, fabulous field trips, delightful productions ... all documented below. :-)





And Shakespeare, just so I have all the videos handy in one spot for me to find ...

Deep, Deep …

in Yearbook-ville. 

And, again, as last year … ever so thankful for the organizational tools of Lightroom.  I can’t imagine this task without it.

P.E.

My idea of P.E.:







Their idea of P.E.:



The goal: to shoot the "dart" into Scooby's mouth.

Orange County Child Photography

Homeschoolers are weird?!?

News to me. Littlest Dude's uniform of the day:

Some days we call this math.

FROG-O-RAMA

I thought our hike was just going to be PE for the day. But, I'm pretty sure all that frog action means I can count it as Science, too. :-)

The Year of the Essay

Eldest Dude is taking the most remarkable online writing class this year. He loves the class. I love that he loves it. I really can't speak highly enough of the Classical Writing curricula or of Kathy Weitz, the teacher for the online class. Here is Eldest Dude participating in his class last week, and the resulting essay...



A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. ~ Proverbs 15:1

God used many people to convey his teachings to us in the bible. One of these men was Solomon, the third king of Israel. Solomon was probably most noted for his great wisdom and his great architectural projects. But it was also Solomon whom God made the chief author of the book of Proverbs. It is in this book that Solomon says, “A soft answer turns wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.”

Essentially, this verse tells us to keep our calm when dealt a wound. By responding in anger to any such blow, we will be exposing even more harsh words and injuries to ourselves. However, if we respond in calm to these angry words, we can also calm our oppressors. The reasons for this we will observe in the following.

If we choose to follow this advice, we will find ourselves with many more friends and allies than if we choose to shout back at our tormentors. People will think highly of us, because self-control is one of the most admirable traits in a person. And instead of fighting back and offering our enemies more chances to hurt us, with a few gentle words we can settle the argument and prevent any further dispute.

If, on the other hand, we don’t follow this wisdom, we would be living a very miserable life with few friends or potential allies. When we have a reputation as an angry and brash arguer, we can’t expect others to trust or respect us very much. And in continuously arguing with our enemies, we only weaken our relationship more with them.

Likewise, when we quarrel with family, we can settle the dispute much quicker with kind, soothing words than with loud and hurtful arguments.

Aesop’s fable, “The Bear and the Bees”, can be a witness to this verse. One day, the bear was roaming the forest in search of food. He came upon a hornet nest, and curiously began to probe around it. He was still in the midst of this when one of the swarm returned home. The hornet guessed the purpose of the bear’s action, promptly stung him, and flew inside the nest. The bear, outraged and furious at this injury, flew at the nest to destroy it. This simultaneously brought out the entire swarm, and the bear was forced to run for his life, only barely escaping by jumping in a pool.

We cannot close this essay, without an acknowledgment of the accomplished mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal, who said, “Kind words don’t cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

After observing all these points, we can see that this advice of God as penned by Solomon should be very closely followed.

Reading Progress

Well. This is definitely NOT going down in history as a speedy Keller course in beginning reading. [firstborn Dude had about 5 days of reading lessons before he was picking up everything in sight and inhaling all the words] But we're making progress. We just finished our first box of Bob Books, as well as a handful of Nora Gaydos readers. Something tells me that if Littlest Dude had less exposure to computer games, he would probably have a greater thirst to be a reader. Just a hunch.







photographic gymnastics: btw, I took each of these while we were smooshed together in my reading chair. 1st pic is camera held above my head, 3rd pic is camera balanced precariously on my knee.

Canyon View Academy gets ... Official?

For the past several weeks (and particularly the last two), I've been fairly consumed with pulling together a yearbook for Middle Dude's school. Compiling pictures, sorting pictures (into grades, activities, etc.), taking pictures, editing pictures, designing pages, etc. And I admit this ugly truth: I've been neglecting my family in this pursuit (oh yes. I have. Because I'm quite bull-headed and closure-oriented when in the midst of a p.r.o.j.e.c.t. If I lose momentum, well ... it's just not pretty or pleasing to my "check-it-off-the-list" personality). Here is the fruit of my labor thus far.



Hmmph. Certainly doesn't look like much when I consider the vast hours invested. But it is what it is.

Here is Middle Dude's official class page.



So Eldest Dude decides that we need our own official yearbook page. And, of course, we all dropped what we were doing (hey, we're all pros at procrastinating real school stuff) in pursuit of pictures to make us "official." Here's the result.



I'd like you to take notice of a couple of the distinctives of our Academy:

casual uniform attire,
stickers from grocery store errands ok,
bare feet encouraged, messy uncombed hair allowed,
no make-up necessary.
I know, I know: you'd all like to be a part of such an academy, wouldn't you? Well, I'm sorry to inform you that enrollment is now closed. Because the page is done, and I'm not going to revise it. Cause that sucker is crossed off my to-do list!

Homeschool ... Chronicles? Travails? Absurdities?

The problem with number lines that make you count backwards? Sometimes you write backwards, too.



Is this really conducive to efficiency and neatness? Methinks not.



But he's cute. And I don't take kindergarten very seriously. So I'm gonna let it slide.

Keeping it Real: Homeschool Edition, Part 2

The three dudes all share one bedroom. This leaves us with an extra bedroom that we can use as a dedicated school room. It's a great, wonderful, spacious room with bright light, bookshelves, three table/desks, walls for posters, timelines, a whiteboard, and a chalkboard easel (thanks to Aunt C & Uncle G). As a homeschooler who knows many other homeschoolers, I KNOW it's a total luxury to have a dedicated room for school. Here's the irony: we NEVER use it.



Here's where school takes place: crowded together at the coffee table. Dont'cha love the exasperated look on Eldest Dude's face? Admittedly, it *is* hard to concentrate on tough stuff when Littlest Dude is singing and making machine gun noises while copying out his math work. But they both seem to prefer this set-up than a quieter, more isolated one. So here's our quirky modern version of ye ol' one-room schoolroom.

Keeping it Real: Homeschool Edition, Part 1

I guess he didn't want to do what I asked him to do.








As you can see/guess, I was terribly sympathetic to his plight... ;-)

Blog Around the World Guest Post

note: This is the same post that ran over at Blog Around the World. I'm just duplicating it here for ease of reference. Y'know, in case I ever get around to Blurp-ing (printing) this year's blog...

If you had told me this time last year that I would be a "blogger," I would have scoffed. Because, you see, I thought blogging was necessarily all about writing. And I Don't Like Writing. At all. It stresses me out.

Whoops. Let me back up and introduce myself. (I'm afraid I'm going to be a little wordier than usual, as y'all may not know me. I promise, it won't happen again!) I'm Susan: a 40-something Wife/Mom living in a testosterone-filled home with my husband, three sons, and dog. And I'm a HUGE photography afficionado. I had an epiphany one day last November: that I could document our family life by blogging with photos, NOT words, and thus I began Short on Words.

Homeschooling is a quite-large ingredient of our lifestyle. Here's a sampling of how it plays out in our family and how I document it on my blog ...

PE









Geography







Science
Oh yeah - my guys pal around with Einstein...




Reading
Books are a really BIG DEAL around here...





Art Appreciation



Oh yeah. Sunsets count as art. They're my favorite kind. Art by the Master Artist.


Drama
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream


Too bad I couldn't find a photo of my youngest son throwing a tantrum. He's the Drama King in our home.


Nutrition



Yup, they like to read the nutrition information on the back of the box...


Christian Studies





Life. Faith. Photography. Schooling. Blogging. This is the year, for me, that it all converged.

And as a result of this whole "Blog Journey", I've come away from the experience with some unexpected surprises. My photography has improved ten-fold from all the practice, practice, practice. My "documentation" of our family's year is exponentially more detailed than it's ever been. (Can I confess something? As a homeschooling mom, I've had more than an occasional guilty moment where I've wondered whether our boring quiet home lifestyle and schooling provides enough excitement and fun for the boys. When I look through the last several months of blog posts, I clearly see that YES!, our life affords them plenty of joy.) And this year ... [drumroll, please] ... I don't have to WRITE my annual Christmas letter. I'll simply reference my blog. :-)