As I mentioned the other day, today Anthony had his first shichi-go-san event, an important milestone in Japanese culture for kids aged six, four and two. The event's name means "seven, five, three", and represent the ages when you add a year to account for their time in the womb.

The Heian Shrine near our place is very popular for this, and last year I would sometimes just hang out around the shrine during and photograph the kids, the results of which I've posted in "Kids in Kimono: Cute Enough to Eat", "More Kids in Kimono: Still Cute", and one [...]

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the participants in the eclectic musical ensemble are all acquaintances of one guy, who thought it'd be nice to get them together. Some of them belong to a camera club together, so advanced amateur photographers were plentiful in attendance, both on stage and in the audience.

The central acquaintance, Nishimoto-san, had a Canon 85mm f/1.2, a beautiful, robust lens, that we all ogled. Nikon has nothing comparable, though there is a Nikon 50mm f/1.2. Zak used to have one, which I've borrowed to good effect to get artsy-fartsy with the shallow depth of field, [...]

Having just returned from a trip Stateside with Anthony, I'm reminded that I neglected to post these photos before leaving. Before the trip, I had posted about Curious George's new passport; these are from the same photo session in early July, where I took the photo for Anthony's new Japanese passport. (We'd renewed his American passport last year.)

Anthony was hamming it up, as you can see, but we eventually got one for his passport. Even in the one directly above, he's still smiling too much for a Japanese passport, so we had to tone it down.

Until you actually [...]

I've been quite busy helping my folks with some cleanup projects lately, but wanted to do at least a quick post from the Conflagration of Cousins week, which has now finally ended, as all but Anthony have returned to their various far-away corners of the world.

We attempted a group shot of the six kids, a short but stressful event that was doomed to failure from the start due to lack of planning on the part of the photographer (me).

First I'll recount what actually happened, then, based upon what I learned, what we should have done differently.

I told [...]

When I got my Nikon D700 last year, I also picked up the new Nikkor 14-24 zoom. On the D700's full-frame sensor, the 14mm is about as wide angle as you can get without being a fish-eye lens. I haven't used it much, mostly because it's big and heavy specialty lens that I have to switch to for the one moment in an event where I think it might be useful, then switch back, and I often don't think it'll be worth the bother.

I have used it around the house a bit, having posted photos with it here and [...]