My 76-year-old dad jogs most mornings, six laps around the lake (about two and a half miles), and Anthony has been wanting to go with him. This morning, he finally could...

Anthony decided that one lap was enough for him. I don't blame him. My dad, who is pretty fit, went on to do another five laps as Anthony and I went back into the house.

We've continued to visit area playgrounds. The first was a playground in Stow, Ohio, and it's still on my list to post more about the second, an amazing playground in Ravenna. Today's pictures are from the third, a playground in Independence that we visited a few days ago. (We visited a fourth playground today, but I haven't looked at those photos yet.)

This time I brought my Nikon SB-800 flash, and tried to use it on-camera for some simple fill. I set it on manual mode, and adjusted the power anywhere from full to 1/64th, to try to get an [...]

Today we visited a most excellent playground in Ravenna, a town four miles north, and among the resulting photos was one of Anthony gleefully enjoying a spin on a suspended tire. I liked the picture, but thought that a more punchy treatment would suit it better. I've occasionally liked the results of a "Dave Hill look" treatment (described here, and another example here), and what you see above is the result.

This time, though, I took advantage of a new feature of Lightroom 2 to soften it up, and take off the edge that the normal Dave Hill result.

You [...]

We had a short rain shower today – standard fare for an Ohio summer – and Anthony wanted to go out in it to play. At first he ran around with childlike abandon, and I snapped some shots with my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4, but for some reason every one was horribly out of focus. I didn't notice anything wrong at the time, but anyway, I wanted to get closer without getting wet, so I switched to my Nikkor 70-200mm.

In the short minute that it took for me to get the lens and switch, Anthony's mood went from arms-swinging-around-dancing-like-a-kid play [...]

While I was busy with Lightroom things the other day, my sister and mom took Anthony and Josh out to a big public playground in Stow...