He’s disappointed that you didn’t prepare your documents!

He ponders how to proceed. There’s no use just sitting on the information he already has.

Finally, he leaps to action!

Something seems askew.

Time to crunch some numbers…

Success! You’re getting a refund

Lefteris and I are both big, big nerds, so it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

By the way, I’m doing everything I can not to *constantly* post photos of my (supremely adorable) son; instead I’m limiting myself only to extra-special shoots. In this case Emily came over to do a family photo session for us, and we followed it up by setting this scene up in our dining room and tag-teaming the shots. Some of these are hers, some are mine, all are fun!

I’m not sure if this is a keyhole on the left, but if it is, that is fantastic.

Couldn’t have been happier with the placement of this arrow.

This was at the EU. I love how graphic it is.

A locksmith’s shop!!

We took a day trip out to Talliores…

Not sure why this instruction was required, but…okay.

And this was the only lock we saw at CERN!

Just before our paperwork day in London, Lefteris surprised me with an anti-honeymoon long weekend in Venice. By anti-honeymoon, I mean that we went just *before* we were married, and we spent the whole time pretending we were strangers meeting in a strange city. Scandalous.

Everything you’ve heard or read about Venice is true. It’s amazing; it sort of seems like a Disneyland version of itself. Very few people actually live there – pretty much everyone you see is a tourist. But the setting is authentically, astoundingly beautiful – the whole place looks like a painting with the soft light and worn textures. The canals are dirty but it doesn’t seem to matter. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I really look forward to returning with absolutely no agenda other than to wander.

Here is a small portfolio of photos, and here are a few favorites…

We took a gondola ride at dusk.

The door buzzers looked like faces – in fact I did a whole post about that!

We wandered the canals and eventually went to Murano. I was really excited to go there, partly because I have great memories of being fascinated by a glassblower in Washington state when I was a small child, and partly because it (among many other places) features prominently in my favorite book of all time, The Solitaire Mystery.

There were interesting textures everywhere. I like to shoot these and have them on hand for later Photoshop projects.

Really, the evening and night-time may be even more beautiful than the daytime.

There were also fantastic locks everywhere – enough for a whole portfolio of those, too!

But wait! What is that in the distance!?

He crawls stealthily into the unknown…

…searches high and low…

…investigates hitherto unseen shapes and colors…

Frankly, it’s exhausting. Time to relax with his monkey sidekick.

He feels refreshed.

Poses for a formal portrait, and takes a well-earned nap. All explorers do.

But his cohort of animals can’t wait to hear his report – they gather around…

The penguin disputes his findings.

A heated debate ensues.

But all is forgotten over lunch!

See you next time, explorers!

This ice cream stand, The Big Dipper, is an old haunt – I used to live just a couple of blocks from here. There are few things in the world better than one of their cones on a summer night.

We took a drive out to Flathead Lake.

There was a little cabin next to a museum – I focused in on the lock, naturally.

And we had some gorgeous views on the flight out of town!

There are a few more shots in the portfolio.

This was shot in front of our lemon tree, as the sun was rising behind the tree. I set the camera up to overexpose a little (since his shirt and jacket are so light, and I wanted them to look that way on the shot) at first, shooting in AV mode – but I quickly switched to manual as that became a hassle, mostly because I wanted those strokes of sunlight in the upper-left. This was shot with my 50mm lens.

After that I went to a wider lens – my 24-70 – and put him in the middle of this alleyway, to play with two things: 1) the obvious, leading lines all pointing to him; and 2) bringing him toward the sunlight but not quite into it, while the background was all in the shadow, to experiment with making him pop out against the darker alley.

In the shot above, the sun is coming over my left shoulder and bouncing off of a part of the right wall back onto him. The wall is a warm white color – making a huge, flattering light! Next, I had him move closer to the wall camera-left, while I moved closer to the reflector wall, to get a different lighting setup and a much more neutral background.

That was fun because just by moving him closer to the beginning of the alley, I could add “fill” light that was really spill light from the (unreflected) sun. Eventually that overtook the bounced light – with just a couple of steps. These were shot at f2.8, by the way – enough depth of field to keep the front of him entirely in focus, but still throw the textured wall out of focus to make a nice clean background.

All before the baby woke up. More in the portfolio!

…had almost the exact proportions of a shot I took on the DLR in London a year and a half before:

Neat!

These are Lefteris’s parents, Perry’s grandparents, and two people for whom I am extremely grateful – for raising an amazing son (two amazing sons actually, but I’m only married to one!) and for welcoming me into their family with such acceptance and generosity. When Despo asked me to take photos of them with Perseus I immediately thought of this setup – and I love how it came out – grand, sort of timeless, and appropriately dramatic.

Perry has some very amusing similarities with his pappous; the two of them definitely have a special connection. Perry actually has his other grandfather’s hands physically (my dad’s – and I have them too!), but we see him a LOT of the time with his hands folded across his belly, deep in contemplation – just like his philosopher pappous. They had the most beautiful little conversations in the mornings, in Greek of course, sometimes even ancient Greek as Theodore taught Perseus ancient theater texts. This was not one of those occasions…

Finally a portrait of Despo. She’s so beautiful; and this is exactly the photo I’d first imagined taking.

To wrap it up, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot showing how we set up and lit the scene. One thing I’ll note is that I used the black side of this giant reflector to minimize the light bouncing back into the shadows – which, without the black, really was quite a lot from the semi-gloss off-white paint in the room. Also, that yard-and-a-half of fabric does a good job of looking like wallpaper in the photos, don’t you think?

More in the portfolio!

Regardless, these people are so good-looking there’s no way I can stop myself from highlighting this shoot.

I’ve had a lot of fun shooting my brother Adam and sister-in-law Jenna over the years. Favorites were our weekend in Paris and their maternity shoot. Now their little guy, Logan, is here! Over Christmas he was about 5 months old and we took the opportunity to do some great family shots. He has such a huge grin – I would be in love with him even if he wasn’t my nephew.

We shot this in my living room, featuring the Christmas present Lefteris and I got for ourselves – a new sofa to replace the Ikea sofa I’ve been rocking for the last 8 or 9 years. I’m really enjoying how it looks with the cowhide, painting, and photos on the wall – very California.