Monday Baby Blogging: Playing In The Park

Just a couple of pictures this week, from a trip we took to the park last week. (Portland has so many small parks, almost anywhere you live in the city you’re walking distance from one).

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I love this photo of Sydney. It’s a nice photo of her at play, and at the same time it explains why it’s so difficult to take nice photos of her at play.

Sydney is looking so much like a kid these days, it’s amazing — although partly that’s because she’s quite tall for a three-year-old.

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Maddox still looks like a baby, though (yay!).

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Although she’s getting bigger. Last time I went to the park with Maddox she wasn’t able to do any of the climbing activities, but now she’s learning to climb. When she reached the top she lost her grip, slid all the way down backwards and on her stomach, then looked up at us and grinned her open-mouthed grin. Let’s just say, it was cute.

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9 Responses to Monday Baby Blogging: Playing In The Park

  1. 1
    Myca says:

    I love that for Maddox it’s not about success or failure, it’s just about fun.

    Climbing up a slide is fun! Losing your grip, slipping and sliding down the slide on your tummy is fun!

    Man, wouldn’t it be great if we could hold on to that perspective.

  2. 2
    Kate L. says:

    Man, Sydney is really tall! And she most definitely looks like a little girl – no more baby, no more toddler.

    And I agree with Myca – the world in general is much better through a child’s eyes :)

  3. 3
    Sailorman says:

    What type of camera are you using? There are some photo tricks to getting pics of running kids that I would be happy to pass one if you don’t know them already.

    cute pic, BTW. :)

  4. 4
    Myca says:

    Not to turn this into a photography tips thread, but I’d sure like to hear it, Sailorman.

    I’m using a Canon PowerShot SD400 DIGITAL ELPH.

    Make it work! Make it work!

    ;-)

    —Myca

  5. 5
    Sailorman says:

    the smaller P&Ss are trickier. Usually there’s significant lag for focusing. The actual shutter lag is still quite small–it’s the focus time that’ll kill you.

    One way to get around that is to prefocus. you aim somewhere at equivalent distance and brightness, push the shutter down halfway. then the actual shoot (which can be aimed somewhere else) is superfast.

    However, focus is only half the problem. The other thing to remember is shutter speed. If you’re shooting a child running sideways you have to use a fast speed to freeze the action; that’s the fastest apparent. “tracking” the kid with the camera helps but the feet will still blur.

    your camera (I scanned the manual online) has a “kids and pets” shooting mode. Have you tried it?

  6. 6
    Julie, Herder of Cats says:

    In bright daylight, the key is to get rid of the automatic program (and then drive yourself crazy manually setting everything …)

    Big f-stops (the “f” number) will alleviate a lot of the need for focusing since the depth of focus becomes deeper, so being out of focus isn’t as critical. Since it’s broad daylight you might wind up with a slightly longer exposure, but not something so long she turns into a blur. Which could be a cool effect if done right.

    What I noticed is that you’re not tracking her at all — the wall is in near perfect focus and there’s no blurring of the leaves on the ground. She should be clearer and the leaves and wall should be blurrier. It also looks like the camera selected a small aperture as it is on account of everything but Sydney looks to be well focused. Based on that, I wouldn’t stress too much about the slow focus response.

    Since it’s a digital, go someplace where you have a constant supply of moving objects. Practice shooting until you can track one of them perfectly, then you’ll be ready to take pics of kids at play.

  7. 7
    Angiportus says:

    When they get a little older you’ll have to show ’emthat little teeny teeny park that’s just a concrete thing no bigger’n a big pizza–Mills Ends I think it was called–is it still there? Someone with more recent experience of your [nice] city can enlighten us…

  8. 8
    pinkmohair says:

    Adorable – wish we had a park near us!

  9. 9
    Olive says:

    I’ve always thought Sydney looked strapping for her age. They’re both really charming in your photos; I like the resemblance between their foreheads.