Stomping In A Winter Wonderland

Christina Patoski's "Front Yard View of the Holidays"

Christina Patoski has been photographing front yard Christmas decoration for 30 years. As I understood from listening to her interview on NPR, the displays that strike her range from the spartan to the large scale "over-the-top" ensembles; yet what draws her to each of these scenes is the visual impact and eloquence, which she adeptly captures in her photography. Click on the thumbnails below to see some of her works, which I have located across the internet. You may wish to check out her book, Merry Christmas America: A Front Yard View of the Holidays.

Winter Haiku

long past the moonrise
amidst the glittering snow
branches are creaking

Photo from http://www.35degrees.com/gallery/koya_san

Yogurt Boy

As many toddlers this age, Adrian is beginning to learn about spoons and forks. Mind you, he is learning that spoons make the best drumming utensils on the table, and forks are best for waving around and making adults nervous. Once in a while, he actually feeds himself with them, as seen here, when he decided that feeding himself yogurt while sitting on Mommy's lap was a GREAT idea.

Baby's Got Blue Eyes

Is Somebody Actually Under There?

Aww Mom, Haiku AGAIN?

My son runs past me
And from the spring azaleas
Come little giggles

Post-processing is good, m'kay?

It's really quite amazing what you can do with the "free" copy of Photoshop Elements that comes with most digital cameras, scanners, and printers. You can see above what I was able to accomplish with just a little practice, using the crop and clone tools.

The first picture, leftmost, is the original. I felt that the piece of furniture on the right and the register cover under the subject's feet were distracting from the subject.

The first thing I did was to crop out the piece of furniture that was intruding on the left side of the photo; this is easier than trying to clone it out, and helps to elongate the height of the picture, which emphasizes the vertical nature of the subject and the environment he is interacting with. This brings us to the center image.

The final step was the one that required the most skill; using the clone tool. Frankly, a little practice with this tool can truly produce wondrous results. I cloned the floorboards, sweeping from front to back, replicating wood grain until I reached edges. I did not make the edges crisp and perfect, since the high resolution of the photo allowed me some slop, and since over-perfected processing can actually make the photo look "not quite right" to the viewer. That gave me the image you see on the right.

And that's it -- and what a difference from the original. The composition is much improved, and the subject truly becomes the focus of attention.

Guess This Picture

What is Chris doing in this picture? Is he...

(a)Yorfing behind couch pillows after having too much to drink
(b)Searching desperately for the TiVO remote
(c)OMG XbOx iZ HuGe LOL!!!

Ah, Tradition

Here in the good ol' U-S-of-A there seems to be a tradition of lathering up your young child's hair, styling it as embarrassingly as possible, then taking pictures. These pictures are judiciously saved for future use -- in other words, for showing to your child's hot saturday night date when he or she is a teenager. It is difficult for a guy to make a move on a girl when she keeps laughing hysterically at him.