Moonlight Drawings

While at Zoolights I started "drawing" with the moon on a whim.  It's a technique I once saw a fellow photo student use.  There was a big, bright lovely full moon hanging low in the night sky and so I used its light through a long exposure to create lines and pictures.  While the shutter is open for the long exposure, I move the camera around like a writing instrument.  I have no idea what will materialize but since it's digital I don't have to wait very long to find out.

I got some interesting photos but the masterpiece of the series is definitely Constellation Little 'dillo.

Do you see it too?  :)

A New Year, A New Smile

On account of various childhood injuries, Keck has had 2 chipped teeth since I first met him over 15 years ago.  I always found them rather cute and thought they gave his silly little smile lots of character.  However, in the name of good oral health, he decided to get them fixed some time ago.  It took a number of professional opinions and even more visits to our dentist (whom we really love and appreciate) but Keck finally had the chips fixed and now has an even more beautiful smile if that's even possible.

BEFORE

AFTER

Post Holiday Wrap-Up

We had a great time over Christmas and New Years with the family out from Florida and Texas.  We even had the actual Christmas Day and New Years Day off - a first in many years.  We gathered around the Christmas enlarger on Christmas morning and I finally got to open the knives I had gotten the sisterly telepathy about weeks earlier.  The thing about working with good knives is that you realize you've got some bad habits from working with those bad/dull ones for years and you cut your thumb again and again.  Then your husband does it too and you end up at the urgent care clinic with the doctor gluing the flap shut on his thumb to avoid having to use stitches.

Anyway, after the gifts we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and got started on a fairly early dinner, that turned out to be fabulous and and later watched The Dark Night.  We did some shopping and took a drive up to Flagstaff a few days later.  We welcomed 2009 in the apartment where we can see the various fireworks shows from our balcony.  

The best part of their visit was how our place looked after they left.  If you recall I had been wanting to clear the clutter in our place and really downsize the amount of stuff we have.  Well with 5 people working on it we really put a huge dent in things.  Our place seems nearly twice as big now and the carpets are shampooed and look almost like they did on day one.  There's space for all the necessary things and those things are now all put away in said place and all the unnecessary things were either tossed, donated or packed away for now.

One last note - over the last weeks I've also come to accept that we will be staying in Phoenix after all, at least for a while.  So it seems there will be more Zoolights to wander through and cacti wrapped in Christmas lights yet to photograph. We've started looked for a house to buy and trying to familiarize ourselves with that most overwhelming process.  We're also working very hard to come up with a sizable down payment over the coming months.  With the way things are right now making a big move will not be the best decision for us at this time.  I know lots of people will be disappointed by this (us too) but we sincerely feel we're in the right place for right now and appreciate everyone's support throughout this fairly difficult decision.