The baby.

So yesterday I spent the day running anti-predator behavior trials (otherwise known as scaring the crap out of little fish by propelling model trout at them) and "preserving" fish (otherwise known as anesthetizing them, killing them, and slicing off some fins for later genetic testing - it's a really glamorous job, this!), which meant that unfortunately I was stuck in the lab all day and didn't get a chance for much photography. Hopefully today I'll be venturing into the field. We shall see! Till then, here's another one of the new baby. Or rather... child. You know what I mean. And I think I finally got the colors right - thanks, Frank!

Much better than flying over the ocean.

So because it's all I have so far, I give you the view out of my plane window. Lovely, huh? I about died when after seeing patchwork fields for hours I looked out of my window and saw this. Now it's time to go do some quality researching!

A bit knackered...

Gotta admit, this is the only picture I managed to save as a jpeg aside from the others I've posted, so this is what you get for today! Tomorrow? I don't know. Here it's 11:40pm, but I've been awake for 21+ hours due to my flying to Alaska. Did I mention I'm in Alaska? I think it's roughly 3:40am my time, which is why I'm not being at all coherent, and why I'm not giving you a "real" photo. More dress-up, too, not to mention the awful state of the family room. I apologize. My mother was in China. Actual photos of Alaska to come... :)

The arrival of Child No. Six

I think the picture says better than I could what an exhausting day it was yesterday. Yesterday my mom came home from picking up Child No. Six in China (Children No.'s Four, Five and Six, are all adopted). They were both exhausted, as was my step-dad from taking care of the house (and all the children) by himself for the past week. I was also exhausted from telling my step-dad how he ought to be running the house and from my week of parenting during his week-long stint in China. So a quarter the people in the house were pretty jetlagged and the other three quarters were angry at the jetlagged quarter for being jetlagged, and tensions were running high. Luckily for all our sakes, after a few hours everyone fell asleep wherever they happened to be, which is when I took this one. The shutter didn't even make them stir.

So in case you were wondering why Child No. Six's right leg looks kind of odd, she's actually "special needs" and has a problem with that leg that the doctors in China tried to repair but didn't really fix adequately. She's reasonably mobile, albeit with a very significant limp. The only thing she really can't manage is stairs, so we might ramp the house, but we'll see what she needs and go from there. All the kids that were adopted were classified as "special needs" actually, which is why my mother took them, because they each had only a very small chance of finding homes. But as of now Children No.'s Four and Five are both in perfect health, so I have a lot of hope that we'll be able to make Child No. Six just as healthy and happy as they are. In conclusion, adoption is fun. You get lots of cute little subjects for photography.

In her backyard domain.

This would be Child. No. Four, who always loves to play dress-up. It's a really great distraction - grab the box of dress-up clothes and Children No.'s Four and Five will be occupied for at least an hour before they start to fight over the tiaras, which lets me get a little something done. Or at least I get a television show under my belt which is always nice when I'm completely exhausted from their antics. So the two of them were swinging on the swing set in costume and I was photographing them, as I am wont to do, and just kept shooting (rather blindly, actually) as they were called inside for dinner. One after the other, they jumped off the swings and ran into the house, which is when I captured this one. I always love photos of them when they're in their dress-up clothes, it just makes everything a little less normal. Plus it probably says something really deep about childhood innocence or something, I don't know.

After being uploaded, my images seem to look a lot less saturated so maybe I'll try to counteract that in the future, and I hope the color balance doesn't make you all wince. I've been using photoshop for a few years now, but only recently with the goal of making my work look life-like!

Day one.

My first day with my Rebel, I couldn't help but photograph pretty much anything I laid eyes on. Being that my parents were both in China at the time, and had left me in charge of my four younger siblings till they returned with Child No. Six, that mostly included the little ones that I was attempting to keep safe and sound for the return of those who are far more competent at childcare than I.

In any case, this is Child No. Five playing in the driveway. I'm still having trouble not taking way too many pictures of the same exact thing with the burst setting. I just don't want to miss anything! And as a result I have about twenty different versions of this picture with my brother doing slightly different things with his hands. Not very space-efficient when having three or four would probably have been enough to choose from, especially with my slightly compulsive reluctance to delete any image I've taken.