'Tis the Season for Writing with Light

I've posted about photographing fireworks and sparklers before, but I always seem to do it on the 4th of July or after. Since that's not all that helpful, how about I do that BEFORE the holiday for a change?

Whether you are shooting fireworks high up in the sky, writing words with sparklers, or twirling glow sticks all around, the process is the same. You'll need to shoot in manual so that you can leave your shutter open a long time, raise your aperture a bit, and keep your ISO relatively low.

It's worth the time it takes to get it right.

See? Here are the basic steps:

1. You need to leave the shutter open for a looooooong time, so grab a tripod or find some other sort of stable surface to set the camera on. I've been known to use a chair or the top of the patio table.

2. Unless you have a co-conspirator who can press the shutter button for you, you'll also either need a camera remote or you'll need to use your camera's self-timer for sparklers photos. I generally use the camera's self timer since I never know where my remote happens to be hiding.

3. Since you're going to have that shutter open for a looooooong time, set your ISO low. I set mine at 100 because that seemed to be a good number for making sure I didn't let too much light in. This is how you control how much of the background shows in the photo. I prefer when I can't see any of it, so I go with the lowest number possible.

4. Set the aperture to a high number. That will do two things for you. For one, it'll help make sure you don't let too much light in. Secondly, it will help keep your image in focus.

5. Figure out how long you'll need to leave the shutter open. For sparklers, I figure it out with a little trial and error. I practice writing out my word without using any actual sparklers until I have the camera set just right. For fireworks, you're going to be able to close the shutter much faster. Test a few shots and see where you need to be. That's the joy of digital photography anyway. If at first you don't succeed, delete and try again.

6. For sparklers, if you aren't good at writing backwards, just write forwards and flip the image later. You don't even need Photoshop--even plain old Windows Photo Gallery can flip an image.

That's it. High aperture, low ISO, slow shutter speed. See?

f/32, ISO 400, 6 secondsThat was the first one I took that night. After seeing it, I bumped the ISO down to 100 so that you wouldn't be able to see me in subsequent shots. It worked.

f/32, ISO 100, 10 secondsGame on!

By Choice

I've been asked approximately eleventy bajillion times how the Big Kid is handling all of the changes around these parts. The short answer to that question: FANTASTICALLY.

The longer answer: she's figuring it out.

Early on, there was no doubt that Alexis was feeling a little green flowing through her blood. She was jealous in the most obvious way possible, and she knew it. That was the key, of course. She knew she was jealous and since she's a big kid, she was able to verbalize it. She even went so far as to complain that she felt dumb for feeling jealous when a "shopping spree" ended with Mila getting diapers and wipes and Alexis getting a giant pile of nothing.

Along with the jealousy came some shenanigans. Alexis offered her new sister up for sale, trade, and then tried to just flat-out give her away. The tricky part of all of that, though, is that the kid likes to yank my chain just as much as I like to yank hers. There is no doubt that at least some of the shenanigans were part of a purposeful scheme to see how I would react. It grew old quickly when it didn't get a rise out of me.

Even as the alleged shenanigan were going on, Alexis couldn't walk past Mila without stopping to smooch her forehead, declare her adorable, and gush over her.

The gushing hasn't stopped. Not even for a second. During gymnastics class, water breaks are an opportunity to visit her sister. Mila gets attention long before I do every morning. Every chance she gets, Alexis swings by and stops in the Mila Zone.

And then there is what she was doing last night.

Alexis is determined to teach Mila how to speak Spanish, so many moments start with Alexis saying, "Me llamo Alexis. Te llamas Mila. Me repites por favor: Mila." Mila responds by ignoring Alexis, which is pretty much what I do as well since I've heard it so many times. Instead of continuing the Spanish lesson, though, Alexis veered into new territory. There is a quote that she heard on the Disney channel and she decided Mila needs to learn to say it.

"Repeat after me: Sisters by chance, friends by choice. Mila, we're sisters by chance, but friends by choice. We'll always be buddies, right?"

Right.

(Mila started deliberately smiling at people on Saturday. It's now Alexis' favorite thing to dance like a fool so she can catch a glimpse of a grin.)

Trolled

I gave birth to an internet troll.

Well, not literally, but only because she's not allowed to read the comments or leave a comment.

Miss Alexis, she of many opinions, seemingly makes up her mind about things without my permission. Heck, she doesn't even follow my lead sometimes. Even crazier, sometimes she's wrong. When it comes to the topic of breastfeeding, she is wrong. Period. End of story.

We found out about this little troll thing about a month before Mila was born. There was some sort of conversation about babies eating and it became clear that she hadn't connected Point A to Point B. When it was connected for her ... HEAD EXPLOSION.

I don't really know how she missed where milk comes from, but she did. Her complete shock about the whole thing led to a second conversation about you do realize that's how you ate, right? There was another HEAD EXPLOSION after that. Her total and complete shock and disdain for the whole thing led to much taunting and goofing on her because if you're going to say that babies drinking breast milk is gross, I'm going to have to point out all of the gross things you eat and where they come from.

The day I got to tell my 8-year old about how cow boobs produce milk was a really fun day. That's all I'm saying.

Now that the initial shock has worn off, Alexis has moved onto the embarrassed portion of the festivities. For what it's worth, I find it mind-blowing that we adults are still having the same conversations about breastfeeding that we were having back when Alexis was tiny. It's a boob, y'all, not a two-horned unicorn that poops bullets. There's really no reason to be alarmed or nervous or anything. You carry on and I'll carry on and we'll all be happy.

Which is all to say that I'm a discrete sort of person, but I'm really tired of any sort of commentary on the subject. So, while I am discrete, I don't go waaaay out of my way to be that way. If we happen to be running errands, I'm not crawling into the back seat of the car and hiding behind tinted windows. Maybe if you don't want to see something, you shouldn't be looking in my car. Miss Mila and I enjoy the comfort of the front seat.

It's also possible that if we are at Kennywood (we have season passes which were acquired on Black Friday for half price -- BEST THING EVER), I'm going to stop short of walking all the way to Kiddieland and hiding in the designated nursing area behind the concession area. I will go there, but frankly it's kind of gross back in ye ole Mommy Dungeon. There are crazy spider webs hanging from the overhang, I don't think the rocking chairs have even been wiped clean, and the lack of ventilation makes it muy caliente. (It's basically a small fenced in space at the back of the building). The one nursing area is nowhere near as nice and accommodating as the dozen or so designated smoking areas, so screw you society and your weird priorities, I'm finding me a table or bench somewhere off the beaten path.

Every time I do, Alexis loses her mind. "But, MOM! Someone is going to see you!" "Nobody needs to see that!" "Can't you go in a bathroom or something?" "MOOOOOM. YOU ARE SO EMBARRASSING."

I reply to her trolling appropriately, of course. The "go to the bathroom" line was treated with "You are a genius! We should move the toilet in our house to the kitchen so I can go to the bathroom while I cook dinner! Or, we could sell the kitchen table and I could serve dinner on the bathroom counter!"

She wasn't amused. She did shoosh with her trolling, though.

Basically, we've discovered that an internet troll who thinks boobs should be hidden is every bit as mature as an 8-year old girl who just realized that boobs can make milk. The difference is that she's learning that it's actually no big deal while the troll will keep on ignorantly trolling.