Playing Hooky

My wife is on maternity leave for just a few more weeks so we decided to play hooky on a brisk Thursday afternoon and check out the National Aquarium in Baltimore. If you are ever in the area, I highly suggest it. Ticket prices are pretty steep, but if you're local you should consider the family membership. It'll save you some dough and supports a good cause. 

Sam (currently 2 1/2 months) had a limited experience there, having slept through most of it in the free baby carrier that the aquarium provided. He kinda looked like this Emerald Tree Boa. -->

Alex (almost 4) was a bit more adventurous and ran from tank to tank. He had his favorites, which included NEITHER of these two:

Big Scary Shark. (Latin: sharkus nightmarus)

Freshwater Crocodile

But, he's a trooper and had a great afternoon. And, since I wasn't working, I had no problem not getting the appropriate captioning information. If anyone knows the names of any of these, let me know in the comments!

For the gear heads out there. All the images were made with a Canon 5Dmk4 with the Sigma 35mm 1.4 ART, except for the emerald boa, which i made with an iPhone6 and the Snapseed app. They were processed in CaptureOne. I turned up the crunchiness a bit, to compensate for shooting through 2" thick aquarium glass.

Science is Messy.

Last year I was fortunate enough to shoot my second book in the Try This: series for National Geographic Kids with super author Karen Romano Young.  While I can't show any of the pictures from the book until it's actually published, I decided to shrug off "real" work on this rainy Tuesday and do some quick images of some of the things we did, post mortem. Science is messy and involves breaking as well as creating. Here's to wreckage.

 

Acadia Institute of Oceanography

After finishing the shooting for Try This: Extreme, my second National Geographic Kids book last summer (see how I name-dropped right there?) I had something of an epiphany: I really like photographing kids as they learn and explore. Witnessing kids tackling a problem and solving it (in often unexpected ways) is really fun. The experience of shooting both books reminded me of my two summers at the Acadia Institute of Oceanography in Seal Harbor, Maine. The experience had a huge impact on me– not just because of what I learned, but because of the kids I met, the music I heard, and the overall experience of getting out of my small world and exploring a larger (and wetter) one.

Reflecting on all of this, I contacted Sherry at AIO in the summer of 2016 and arranged to head up there to make some images. I was surprised at how it still seemed so familiar—the ping pong table, the salt water tanks, even the tie-dyed shirts! It seemed like very little had changed about the program in the 25 years or so since I had been a camper there. I don't know if the lack of cell phone reception in the area kept most of the modern world at bay or if it was just that the camp philosophy that I remember—relying on your intelligence and observation rather than technology, has held true. However refreshing, this anamnesis presented a challenge right off the bat. Was I photographing kids doing science or just documenting a mirror of my own childhood?  I only had a few days to shoot, so I was worried about tackling too much and coming up with an incomplete story.

In the end, I kind of punted. I decided to pursue the science/learning aspect of the camp, and only document the lifestyle, more personal side of the summer camp experience as it came up. I figured that I could always revisit camp in a year or two. The idea of poking around tidal marshes, climbing mountains, and snorkeling on the most beautiful coast in the world? The things I do for my job.

You can find many images in the Learn and Explore section of my website.  Here are a few other favorites showing the more personal side of camp.

You Say Tomato, I say Olive.

Olive, aged 4 weeks.

Olive, aged 4 weeks.

Several of you have asked after my new studio mate, Olive. (Pictured to the right in an old photo.) For those of you who haven't met Olive, she is a rescue tomato that has moved into the studio with me. As a young plant she was abandoned outside when the weather started to turn cold by a neglectful gardener. (Errrr.... me.)

I am super pleased to announce that with a little TLC she has really bounced back and is even swaddling her first fruit. What a difference a few weeks can make!

Here she is now. As you can see, I've had to upgrade her furnishings a bit. The trellis has been replaced with a $300 Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod and the spare LED bulb on the magic arm has been switched  with not one, but two grow lights. I'm thinking of ordering a K 5600 1600 Joker but I'll have to wait until after the holidays.  

Thank you all for the offers of home cooked meals for her and plant sitting services. She (we) really appreciate it and just wanted to let you know that we're going great!