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Take Better Photographs! Giveaway: Beautiful Beasties

I love taking animal photos: the four-legged, the six-legged, the winged. (Yes, I’m counting insects as animals, just go with it.)

But the biggest challenge is taking photos of my own pets. How best to capture the wriggliness, the silliness of a puppy? How do you convey the loving trust they have in you, licking your face or lying across your feet whenever they’re given the chance?

I don’t think I ever really satisfactorily managed to get Zooey’s personality on film. He was just too much dog for two-dimensions. And also, his black fur was impossible for the camera to focus on. I just lacked the technical skill to coax the camera into doing him justice. And it makes me sad, that I don’t have any really great shots for us to remember him with.

I have the same issues with Karma. Her eyes just sort of meld into her black face mask and I can’t quite record how much she loves those kids. How mournful she is every morning as she watches them walk to their school bus. It’s a little piece of heartbreak every morning.

I’m an OK photographer; I think I have a good eye. I’ve become pretty good at guessing how light will translate to the screen, and the zen of sitting with a subject and interacting with it through a lens is one of my happier pastimes.

Look how proud he is.

If you don’t know what’s in Jimmy’s mouth you probably should read the deer heart story.

I don’t have the technical skills to get a great shot every time, though. If I’m not blessed with the light I love (mid-day? night? Rainy? I’m screwed) I’ve forgotten how to compensate. I’m the biggest cheater ever when it comes to depth of field (I just switch to my telephoto. That is, presuming I’m not just using my iPhone, which I confess I do way more than I should).

I’m not a good photographer. To be a good photographer takes skill, a good eye, a bit of luck and the patience to take and sift through lots of pictures.

The quality of your results can be directly measured by the breadth and depth of your knowledge of the technical workings of photography.

– Jamie Pflughoeft, Beautiful Beasties

In other words, luck, patience and a good eye can only take you so far. At some point you gotta do the homework.

What I do know about the technical tricks and rules of photography I learned from reading photography books, behind the counter of Lincoln Camera during breaks and lunch hours. I looooove photography books, such a gratifying blend of tech geekiness and eye candy.

Beautiful Beasties is a photography book dedicated entirely to the visual capture of our furry and feathered friends. It’s a lovely book, as photography books should be: a feast of heartwarming, funny, breathtaking, wonderfully expressive animal portraits. And it’s full of practical tips to get the best shots of your animals— not just the digital photography techniques about aperture, lighting, ISO noise and shooting in the RAW, but also how to read an animal’s body language and evoke facial expression. Special difficulties (like how to photograph a black dog) are helpfully included, and there are great sections on post-production, photo organization and advice for those who are considering photography as a profession.

It’s geared, obviously, to the unique challenges that pet photography poses, but it’s a solid tutorial on the mechanics of photography in general. There’s always something new to learn.

If you could use a refresher on your photog technical skills (or learn them for the first time), or want to take your animal photos from ok to good (or great!) it’s a great read.

And here’s your chance to win a copy 🙂

Just follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget (may have to click through if reading in RSS). Up to 10 entries possible if you’re into upping the odds!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

September 21, 2012
Girlfriend Can Ride a Bike

After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable.

A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs,
and round and round they seem to go.

You ride through Dreamland

on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow.

-H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

I know, it’s terrible. She’s 8 and just getting her training wheels off. We just don’t have anywhere convenient to ride… so we’ve neglected to take the time to teach her.

She doesn’t like to be taught, by the way. She likes to know how to do it. I did my run around the park while her father tried to teach her, she got mad and stubborn, and the two of them sat on a bench, equally willful and perfectly prepared to wait it out until I was done and they could go home.

I didn’t witness it but trust me, I know exactly what it must have looked like.

Apparently a woman passing by asked Cass if she was learning to ride her bike, and Cass gave her some unsatisfactory answer. Or maybe she took her cues from Jeff’s grumpy butt and the set of Cass’s shoulders, I don’t know. In any case she took the bike from Cass, got her on it.

And taught her how to ride.

All you have to do is try. A willing suspension of disbelief that gravity will win. The sudden, unlikely belief that you can do it, a burst of confidence given from a stranger.

I didn’t see any of it; I heard the story from Maverick when he met me with some water as I rounded the turn on my second loop around the track (yes, he’s a good boy).

Ten minutes. Ten minutes for someone to stop, teach my daughter to ride, and disappear.

Jeff still had to work with her on turns and stopping, but the whole thing had transformed from a reluctant lesson to a shared pride and joy.

And I was suddenly struck by the memory of what it was like to learn to ride as a child. My father’s hands, releasing their hold of the bicycle seat. The feeling of speed, of freedom, of flying. The still-present fear of falling… and not quite caring.

Beautiful.

Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds.

The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus;

it gives him no wings of his own.

-Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles.

A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom.

The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.

-Sloan Wilson

The realization that this is our last child we had to teach to ride— and that we gave that chance away— it’s kind of rough.

Still, I do like the magical quality of the tale. Thank you, kind stranger, for helping us avoid what probably would have been a battle of wills and scraped knees, drawn out for who knows how long.

Do you want to come back in a year when Jacob gets his learner’s permit?

September 19, 2012
alternaVites: Non-Gummy Kid Vitamins They’ll Actually Eat
These things sneak up on him for no reason,
these flashes of irrational happiness.

It’s probably a vitamin deficiency.

―Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

A little background:

1) When I was younger my mom used to give me my vitamin as I was headed out the door to walk to school. These were like Flintstones vitamins, only store brand; they were brown, football shaped and tasted like crap. They were the undelicious non-equivalent of eternal gobstoppers: if you sucked on them, they would last all day long. If you bit into them, the insides were even more chalky, bitter and unappetizing. My dad walked with me 3 blocks, as far as his bus stop, most days, and as soon as I was out of eyeshot I spit those things out. I’ll be damned if my mom didn’t see and recognize them in the gutter- days later, still pretty much intact- and lay into me for not eating them. That woman had eyes like an eagle.

2) In high school, my favorite snack was the giant Pixy Stix. The blue flavor, to be exact. My friends and I— people who really did not need any extra sugar-induced energy— would buy them by the fistful and shoot ’em down before going to parties or dances or clubbing or whatever. I could go on to regale you with stories of the “hilarious” things we did but they’re all super cringeworthy now. Still funny, but definitely cringeworthy. In retrospect it’s amazing we had friends willing to be seen with us in public.

3) My husband has a love of sticky candies and the dentist bills to prove it. His daughter has inherited his love of tooth-killing delicacies and likewise is doing her best to fund our dentist’s twins’ college education fund. It’s not entirely her fault, she has very tight back teeth and tiny enamel fissures from night grinding.

That being said, I couldn’t understand why her teeth would be so imperfect and expensive when my boys eat essentially the same diet. Jeff does sneak her extra treats, but at 8 she’s had as many cavities as Jake has in his nearly 15 years, and Maverick has never had even one.

One possibility is the fact that she’s been on those stupid gummy vitamins for pretty much as long as she’s been eating solid foods. When they came out, I thought they were brilliant; my kids hated the chewables (but not as much as I hated the brown football vitamins). Turns out, a gummy is a gummy, and those things are loaded with sugar. (And depending on the brand, if you’ve bought gummy vitamins in the past you might be owed a refund due to inaccurate health claims.)

I’d like to think, of course, that she’s getting all her essential nutrients from her diet. But she’s a picky eater (again, her father’s daughter) that at times appears to live on carrots and air alone, and a supplement just gives me a bit of peace of mind.

This past month she’s been taking alternaVites, a really brilliant new offering from Rich Vitamins.

alternaVites are a potent multi-vitamin that delivers a kid’s essential vitamins and minerals… in Pixy stick form. Only without the added sugar and resulting off-wall-bouncing.

Get this, ladies and gentlemen:
- Sugar free. Aspartame free. HFCS free.
- No artificial flavors and preservatives.
- No animal products or byproducts.
- Formulated with ingredients that do not contain the major food allergens (egg, milk, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish).
- Certified kosher pareve.
Nice, right?

It comes in strawberry bubblegum and raspberry cotton candy flavors. We got the raspberry, and Cass seems to think it’s tasty. I bet the strawberry is even better, but that’s mostly because I hate raspberry flavored anything. Maverick described it as tasting like a Flintstones all ground up, which doesn’t sound terribly appealing to me but I guess is a normal acquired taste for kids.

You can shoot it like a Pixy stick I know I’m going to be criticized for describing it that way but that’s how we always referred to downing our giant stix: we always tried for one shot or you can mix it into yogurt or applesauce or whatever. I don’t really like that idea since I don’t approve of “deceptively delicious” practices with your kids, you don’t teach your kids good eating habits by tricking them (but that’s another post). More to the point, with mix-ins you then have to police that they eat every bit to get the full dose and that’s a pain in the arse.

Anyway *waving hands* back on track. I do hate that these are packaged individually in plastic packets. The daily serving part I like; I just wish that they were in paper straws (you know, like standard Pixy stix) that could be recycled. I think. In theory. Can Pixy Stix wrappers be recycled? I haven’t had one in years, I’m not sure.

So, to recap:
- Gummies are bad for your teeth, even gummy vitamins.
- Your kid may be spitting out chalky chewables at street corners behind your back.
- alternaVites have all of the good stuff you want to fill potential gaps in a picky eater’s diet, with none of the tooth-rotting, bank-account-draining bad stuff. PLUS the added cool factor of a delivery similar to an awesome candy that your mom never lets you have.
- Your mom is probably being a big hypocrite by not letting you have said candy but tough, she’s your mom and you should do whatever she says. She’s doing this for your own good.
- Apparently just thinking about how you used to get all hyper on giant Pixy Stix is capable of making you write a disjointed blog post like you’re all hopped up on a sugar high. You’re totally right to not let your kids have them ever ever ever.
You can buy alternaVites on the alterVites website; I’m sure you’ll see it popping up on your store shelves soon. You can keep an eye out for new developments, sales and whatnot on their Facebook page, and on Twitter if you hang out there.

Use code moms20 for 20% off your order at alteraVites.com! Shipping is free if you buy 2 packages (30-day supply) or more. Never say I never gave you anything.

Do your kids take vitamins? Which do they like?

Disclosure: I received a 30-day supply of alternaVites for review purposes. No compensation was received; all opinions my own. I did not go out and buy Pixy Stix for myself or my children after writing this, even though I really wanted to.
September 17, 2012