11-25-12 Happiness

There are many ways to picture happiness but I would choose the look on Evie's face from this Thanksgiving's celebration to illustrate it. It's hard to know what she's thinking, but in the arms of her loving great grandmother, it can only be good things. . . .

11-24-12 Gladly Would He Teach

I have always liked Chaucer's description of Nicholas, the young scholar who stars in one of the many stories Chaucer tells in his Canterbury Tales. About Nicholas he says: "Gladly would he teach and gladly would he learn."That's a good description of my oldest son, Brian, who in this photo is seen giving his second cousin Ethan a lesson in math and English. And Ethan is clearly a willing learner. . .

11-22-12 The Announcement

It isn't broad public knowledge but I guess I'll say it here: Brian and Katie are expecting their first child, which will be our (Deb and me) first grandchild. It's about time!This photo records the moment after the announcement was made. I wish I had Glenyce (far right) framed better because her reaction of joy is especially obvious. This child will not be Glenyce's first great grandchild but I'm guessing it never gets old.

11-19-12 Mother & Daughter

It is a rare occasion that I can get Deb and Glenyce to pose for even an informal portrait. This opportunity presented itself at the 2012 Lake Area Technical Institute Festival of Trees. And they both look "mahvelous. . . "

11-12-12 A Special Moment

This isn't the only young DeGeest child that I've photographed while being baptized. Not too many months ago it was Evie. If you checked out Evie's photo, you also saw Ethan (featured in today's post) getting a good view of his sister.

10-27-12 Serenade

This photo documents both an impromptu performance by our son Brian and my Mom's last Thanksgiving outing in 2008. I had forgotten about this photo and I'm happy I'm a packrat.

09-22-12 Gentle

That's little Ethan D grasping his aunt Deb's thumb.Canon 5D 1/80s f/2.0 ISO640 135mm

09-19-12 The Youngest Shep

I don't know what it says about me that I take more pictures of things than I do of people. I don't know the answer to that but I do know that I don't see my youngest son, Jon, enough.This photo was taken near Sitka, Alaska, a few years ago. At the time, Jon was working for an adventure company and we got the royal treatment when we visited. And I liked Sitka, except that it stayed in the 50s the whole time we were there. (July!)

06-09-12 My Oldest Son

I'm off on an adventure for a couple weeks and I'll be off the wifi "grid" for much of that time. Thus, I'm auto-posting things that aren't necessarily new or unseen. Most of the photos you'll see are some of my favorite Instagram photos.

From Another Time

While going through my Aunt Betty's photo collection, we came across this portrait of her sister (my aunt) Phyllis. I was struck by the beautiful, Rembrandt lighting. I also like the sepia tone of the print. I remember reading that toning was more about preservation than it was about creating an effect. Of course, it would be decades before color film would be introduced when this photo was taken - the early 1920s.Three other things strike me about this photo. First, the aspect ratio is very odd by today's standards. I have cropped this photo a bit and the original was narrow and tall. Why? I don't know. The second thing that I noticed was that Phyllis' right hand is blurred, no doubt because the photographer had to use a slow shutter speed. Old films were slow and required several second exposures. Finally, I am impressed with the perfect condition of this photo. It was properly processed and then properly preserved.Who will be looking at our photos 90 years from now and writing commentary?In my continuing effort to get more people to see my students' photos, here's another great portrait, done by Kendra Gortmaker. Her subjects are her daughter and husband and she used availably light to make this photo. Here's Kendra's web site.

Pacific View

This post has more personal meaning than it does photographic value. It is a quick shot I took of the display for my Aunt Betty at her recent memorial service in California. The cemetery is called Pacific View and though the Pacific ocean isn't visible in this photo, it is visible from Betty and Cliff's niche.Pacific view has conventional graves, as John Waynes' proves. But this cemetery has several buildings with walls of niches. We don't have anything like this in South Dakota and I'm not sure why. We have more space? Is is cultural? I've not read it but I just put The American Way of Death, Revisited on my reading list. Maybe I would get some answers there. . . .

Transformational Technology

This is a photo I took of Ethan working on an iPad during his sister, Evie's, baptism gala and there is much that I could say about the photo or about the event. But I want to talk about difference between adults and children when it comes to iPads.Give an iPad to a child (or an adult who has never touched a "regular" computer) and they adapt very quickly. It turns out that the fingers of the hand are pretty facile and intuitive tools. Even a caveman would probably agree with that.But give an iPad to an adult with years of normal computer use and they will say, "Can I plug in a mouse?" or "How do I hook up a keyboard?" Quite honestly, keyboards and mice aren't the least bit "natural" or intuitive. In fact, the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented in the 1878 and designed in such a way that keys wouldn't jam together if a person typed too quickly.Keyboards, mice, desktops and folders were integrated into desktop computers because computer engineers wanted to make the transition from a traditional office to an office centered on computer workstations less threatening. Microsoft even threw in Paper Clip Man in MS Word to give a human face to the New Machine.The iPad, and other tools like it, are changing all of that. In fact, I've read that Jobs wouldn't allow USB ports in iPads because he didn't want it to be driven by peripherals. He wanted to push "touch" and the human hand as the most logical peripherals. Beyond that, you don't have to worry about saving documents. Computer folders are very 20th century.I think the iPad is the prototype for the next generation of computers - no mice, no hard drives, no DVD drives, no folders and no desktop. And certainly no Paper Clip Man. A keyboard? No doubt there will be one for people like me, who at least in this way, are stuck in the 19th century.But now that I think of it, Apple has given us another glimpse of the future of computer input: Siri, which is voice recognition with a friendly attitude. But beyond that, it is intelligent voice recognition - Siri gets to know us and knows what we mean even when we don't say it. Wow!