#111 on my hobby

current music - live in buffulo (2004) by goo goo dolls
current mood - chipper

so my hobby of photography continues to go from strength to strength. having moved on from holding the camera the right way round to taking off the lens cap, i can now truthfully and proudly claim that i have read the manual, all 223 pages of it. obviously i have absolutely no bleedin' idea what any of it means but i'm working on that.

seriously though, i have just begun to take the camera off of the fully automatic mode - this is the run home to mummy mode, it sets up everything for you - i just need to point and shoot. now that's served me well so far. i was very pleased with my australia photos given that i'd only just got the camera but now the time has come to experiment a bit. so today i sped up the film and the exposure and then got n to leap off his trampoline and risk life and limb; a sacrifice worth making for his father's hobby, i think.

then i used gimp (no photoshop for this linux using suburban mediocrite) to isolate the image from the background and ... hey presto!

i've decided i've got enough half photos to slam a favourites collection on to flickr. as soon as i do i'll let you all know my dear hob-blogglings.

#110 on rites of passage

current music - live in buffulo (2004) by goo goo dolls
current mood - satisfied

we speak of rites of passage for our children. and rightly so. n passed an important threshold in his short life today when my hand released his bike saddle he pedalled from me before coming to a controlled, if a little undignified, stop. i remember my brother (and his pal) teaching me to ride a bike and how grown up and in control of my destiny i suddenly felt.

there are rights of passage for parents too. giving birth (a's bit), cutting the cord (my bit) and so on. they range from the formal to the religious but i also believe that they are also informal. you'll never know just how proud i felt as n wobbled off across the grass. it was a perfect metaphor for my job of preparing him for his send off into the big wide world out there.

way to go n. i love you.