Fisher-Price photo shoot sneak peek

We finally received a preview of the photo shoot with Fisher-Price in Toronto a couple weeks back. Wanna sneak peek?

These are a couple of the group shots:

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736CF

Lucas is squeezing me in a hug, not snoozing!

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736D5

In this one, he’s actually got one hand on each side of my head and is squashing my cheeks. This is what a toddler looks like at the very end of his attention span. My smile, not coincidentally, seems to be looking a little forced at this point, too!

Fisher Price Mom Gr#12736C9

Fun, eh? I have to admit, I was nervous about seeing them, but I love how they turned out. Getting eight moms and half a million kids (or did it just seem that way?) all looking in the right direction at the right time is a challenge I hope I’ll never face in my photographic career!! 😉 I’ll get a CD next week with a few more shots, and I’ll share them and more details about the program as I receive them.

Happy Friday!

On tweeting the fine line between promoting and bragging

There was a social event a month or two back. To be honest, I’ve completely forgotten what it was for, but it was one of those “invite a lot of local bloggers and tweeters out for a night” type of things. Someone asked me if I was going, and it was the first I’d heard of it, but then over the next hour I saw tweet after tweet after tweet about it, and it seemed like just about everyone in my social media circle was on their way.

I have to tell you, it was a little too reminiscent of high school. My first reaction was a visceral, albeit short-lived, pang of rejection. “Everyone else got invited and I didn’t?” I didn’t even particularly want to go to whatever it was, but I sure as hell wanted to have been invited.

On the other end of the spectrum, I do get invited to some wicked cool events, like the Marksover and the Fisher-Price playpanel. I feel an obligation whenever I get invited to one of these events to talk about it, to tweet about it, to photograph it and to blog about it. I’m no fool, I know that I have been invited less for my outstanding array of knock-knock jokes for all occasions and more for my influence in social media circles.

And of course, there’s the annual run-up to big conferences like BlogHer, which I have never seriously considered attending. Even though I don’t particularly want to go, it’s a little bit painful to watch my friends tweet about getting their tickets, heading to the airport, meeting new friends and, last year especially, getting boatloads of swag. I wouldn’t mind not going if I weren’t hearing in real time how much fun everyone was having without me.

I was thinking about all this when I read a couple of recent articles online. One was a NYT article called On Twitter, ‘What a Party!’ Brings an Envious ‘Enough, Already!’ It’s about people’s reactions to tweets from the recent SXSW festival in Austin, Texas:

Twitter users are tiring of it: the sharp pang of envy that comes when someone they are following on the social networking site is clearly having a better time than they are — right now.

Recent tweets from attendees at elite conferences like TED and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have prompted bitter ripostes, accusing the authors of showing off rather than sharing. (From @davewiner: “can’t breathe their air, don’t want their tweets.”) Even those tweeting from warm weather spots have felt the jealous wrath — or “jealz,” in Twitter shorthand— of followers stuck in frosty climes. (@Courtni_ROSE: “I get it already!!!!”)

And this week, as thousands of the nation’s Twitterati gathered at the annual South by Southwest technology and music festival in Austin, Tex., their exhaustive, real-time accounts of barbecue, beta tests and Jake Gyllenhaal sightings have prompted a backlash by those not in attendance.

And then this week, there was more backlash against a recent Disney Social Media Moms conference where the majority of tweets seemed to be about the swag participants were getting on an already deeply discounted trip to Disney. The article notes:

Now that the conference is over, it’s clear that what stung SXSW also stung the #DisneySMMoms conference — that is: the high prevalence of Tweets about goodie bags and private parties contributed to a culture of exclusivity at the expense of information sharing.

It’s a fine line, isn’t it? If someone is providing me with something, be it a product or a service or an experience, I feel obliged to acknowledge that online. I get it, that’s part of the deal. But when does promotion end and bragging begin? How do you write / tweet about your excellent experience without alienating the very people who made you someone worth inviting?

This is a tricky one, and I feel like I have to step carefully through the minefield every time it comes up. I love sharing our experiences with you, but I don’t want to brag. I want to offer unbiased opinions and express my gratitude without alienating my friends who didn’t get the same treatment. I think the answer lies more in tweeting about the conference or event itself — the information you gleaned, the lessons worth sharing — and less about the awesome *stuff* you got.

I’m kinda all over the place here, aren’t I? And no time to go back and edit it into coherence either, so over to you bloggy peeps. What say ye? As tweeter, have you ever been self-conscious about tweeting your swag? As a reader, have you ever rolled your eyes at the good fortune of the chosen few? Should we be striving for inclusivity and if so, how do we do it?

Happy dance for BBQ season!

Dear Ottawa friends,

I’m so very sorry. That very rude awakening you had today, where winter totally barged right back in after allowing spring to take a toe-hold, and we got a nasty dump of two fresh inches of snow after 98% of the old snow had melted away?

Totally my fault. Sorry about that.

I got a little too excited about spring this week. I bought a new BBQ. And a picnic table. And oops, I might have gone right ’round the bend and also picked up an adorable (and totally affordable) little bistro set from Ikea that will be absolutely smashing for morning coffee on the porch.

Oops. Sorry. After a whole winter of restlessly anticipating the outdoor season, I kinda forgot that the first taste of spring is not the one that stays.

Speaking of tastes of spring, though, before it got all snowy and slushy and January again, I danced and pirouetted my way through the grocery store on the weekend. Whereas I usually find meal planning to be an onerous task, I was practically skipping through the aisles as I loaded up my cart this week. Why the gleeful shopping?

It’s BBQ season, baby! *cue the heralds of chorusing angels*

Our old barbeque did not survive the transition to the new house last October. I’d already replaced the burner once and it was starting to rust through again. The grills were looking sketchy, and the move knocked the handle off. I usually barbeque well into November or December each year, and with the early end to the season I was drooling with desire for our outdoor grilled faves by the end of January.

As the snow piled high and then receded, I scrolled through pages of reviews of various barbeque configurations online, dreaming of hamburgers and grilled chicken fajitas and steak-and-veggie skewers. I think it was shortly after Christmas that I set up CanadianTire.ca’s sale alert feature on a few of the most promising models, hoping to score a good deal on one. With the milder weather this month, I was just starting to think about scrapping the sale alert and going ahead and buying one when I got the e-mail: the barbeque you’ve been watching is going on sale this week. Yay!

And that’s how I ended up with a dreamy smile on my face, dancing through the aisles of the grocery store, greeting seasonal favourites I hadn’t seen in six months like old friends. Hello hamburger buns, how I’ve missed you! Oh darling tzatziki and feta couscous salad, you’re looking delicious today! And ribs, sweet and succulent ribs, I’ve been salivating over the idea of you for months!

175:365 BBQ night

I’ve been in a terrible food rut the last little while. I’ve got maybe ten or a dozen meals that I’ve been cycling through, and while they’re good, I’m sick to death of them. Pasta and salad, chicken fingers and veggies, Tiki Masala shrimp with naan and rice, chili, tacos, meatloaf — all plenty yummy, but gah, I’m so bored with them.

Given the chance, I’ll grill dinner five nights out of seven, so the return to BBQ season is a drastic difference for us. Do you find that your grocery shopping habits change with the season?

As for me, I’ll be standing on the back patio tonight with my scarf and mitts and winter boots, grilling up some chicken breasts. It’s spring, dammit, and you can’t make me go back to winter food!

Project 365: Oh my, but I do love this new camera!

So I am head-over-heels in *love* with my new camera!

For those of you who missed it last week, I finally upgraded my trusty and well-loved Nikon D40 last week. Way back when we bought it in 2007, we waffled over the upgrade to a D80, but it seemed like more camera than I would ever need. And quite frankly, it was the right choice at that time.

Over the years, though, I started to run into a few limitations on the D40. It wouldn’t auto-focus my favourite lens, for one thing. It has a very limited ISO range for another. And not that I use flash a lot, but I was intrigued by the idea of using my pop-up flash to trigger my hot-shoe flash remotely — something the D40 could not do but the 90 could.

It was about half way through my first 365 project in 2009 that I started to actively covet the D90. I couldn’t justify the expense, though, when the D40 was doing 80% of the job I needed from it. Over the last six months, though, it has become increasingly apparent that the D40 is getting a little, um, tired. North of 30,000 shutter clicks, and I’m not sure it’s registering saturated reds and yellows anymore, and the autofocus is getting noticeably soft.

I proposed that I reinvest some of my blog and photography money into a new camera, and Beloved agreed it was time. And then I started looking around and discovered this awesome new camera that I’d been hearing about since it was released by Nikon last autumn, the D7000.

And I wanted one. Badly! In what I thought was a brilliant plan, I used Beloved’s own tactic of mentioning the idea of investing in a D7000 over a D90 every time there was a lull in the conversation for three days.

“Hi sweetie, how was your day? So, did you think about the D7000 yet?”

“Can you pass me the ketchup, please? And did you read that DP Reviews l link I sent you about the D7000?

“Wake up, you’re late for work! And hey, did you know Ken Rockwell calls the D7000 the best digital camera EVER?”

Yeah, it’s totally annoying. And it totally works. That’s how he got his laptop, and BluRay player, and flat-screen TV. He’d been annoying the snot out of me about the iPad, and so we made an unholy deal where I could get the D7000 if he could get an iPad 3 when they come out in September. Oy, what a family!

Do you speak camera? The D7000 has a 16MP sensor, while the D40 has a 6MP sensor. The D7000 has 39 focus points where the D40 has 3. And where the D40 has an ISO range of 200 to 800 (it actually goes to 3200 but I have yet to get a decent picture above 800 even using Lightroom’s noise reduction features) the D7000 has a dizzying 100 to 25,600 range. Be still my low-light-loving heart!!

It is, in short, the most! amazing! camera! ever!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, though, so all the technical specs in the world don’t matter until you take that camera for a test drive. And here’s what that beauty can do.

This is Tristan enjoying a hot chocolate on our annual pilgrimage to the Log Farm sugar shack.

81:365 Log farm (1 of 6)

And Simon, also at the Log Farm.

Log farm (2 of 6)

Here’s my tree-climbing, rope-swinging adventure boy in crisp and lovely detail.

80:365 Adventure boy

Even the best camera can’t compensate when you choose a depth of field too shallow to keep your ensemble in focus, but a good camera only goes so far! 😉 Still, I’m happy with this capture of the boys and their cousins, who spent most of March Break with us.

83:365 Lunchtime

At the other end of the generational spectrum, we also had a visit from Beloved’s family this weekend. Ron is a fisherman par excellence, and Dee cooked us up what seemed like about 10 lbs of fresh whitefish. Don’t you just love houseguests who arrive with arms laden with delicious food and take over your kitchen to cook it?

85:365 Grandparents

I love love love this next picture. I love the luminosity of it, the warmth in the pose and the background, and the sheer joy of it. All the kids love “Uncle Beloved” because they know he’s just a bigger version of them, totally a kid at heart.

82:365 Ticklefest

The weather has been mild and melty, and the Rideau River is cresting this weekend. Last weekend, the water was rushing at Watson’s Mill even with the sluice gates fully opened.

79:365 Watson's Mill and the spring melt

And to my delight, the geese have returned from their winter sojourn. It must really be spring now! Funny, I have always noticed the geese on their fall migration, but only in living so close to the river have I noticed them on their spring return.

84:365 Signs of spring

(This is a crazy-deep crop of an image I took with my camera braced on my car, standing in the road about 50m from the river. The segment you see here is probably less than 1/5 of the original capture — and I’m thrilled with the amount of detail!)

As you can see, it was a ridiculously busy week, but a perfect one to take the new camera for a test drive!

The lady on the corner

When I pulled up in front of my parents’ house with a carload of kids, she was standing more or less in the middle of the intersection, shifting back and forth in the middle of the road as I pulled the car to the curb and parked the car.

She was dressed in a dark overcoat that hung to her knees, and boots that looked more like rubber galoshes than winter boots. The day was on the mild side for late winter, but still near freezing, and I noticed right away that she had neither hat nor gloves. The wind played with her thinning hair, and I guessed her age to be somewhere on the far side of 65. From first sight of her, I had an inkling that something was Not Quite Right.
Continue reading “The lady on the corner”

On photography pricing and group deals

We had a really interesting discussion on Twitter this morning about professional portrait photography rates, and I thought it was one of those conversations that would be interesting to port over here to the blog.

You know those daily coupon deals, like Groupon and Living Social and Kahoot and the rest of them? I think I get a dozen or so of them every day, and while I’ve found some awesome deals (like a free membership to the Museum of Civilization, and half-price meals at East Side Marios) most of them I delete. A few of them I snicker first and then delete. And some just make me go “Hmmmm.” There was one today from a local photographer who was offering a $120 photo package for $40. Included in the package was “One-Hour Photo Shoot, One-8×10 Print, Two-5×7 Prints, Four-4×6 Prints and 16 Wallet Prints and a Digital CD of all Photo’s” (sic). And I thought, “Seriously?”

So I mentioned it on twitter, and all my photographer friends said, “I know, isn’t that insane?” while all my non-photographer friends said things like, “Well, it’s probably good for exposure and building a client base”. And I’m sure a few people thought, “Photography is ridiculously expensive, what nerve they have charging that much.”

454:1000 Old guard versus young whippersnapper

So let’s look at the deal from the photographer’s perspective. Those deal networks aren’t free — Groupon takes up to 50% of the fee, from what I’ve heard, and the others take in the range of 25% to 30%. For ease of counting, let’s assume they take 25% off the top, which leaves the photographer with $30.

For that $30, here’s what the photographer has to do: get in contact with the client and set up an appointment, show up with all of his/her gear (or have the available studio space, which adds huge overhead), spend an hour taking pictures and say another half hour getting there and back. That’s at bare minimum two hours, or $15 per hour.

It takes me about four hours to sort through the pictures from a session, select the best ones and polish them up. (Caveat: this is my favourite part, and I linger over it. So let’s say for the sake of argument the photographer is super-speedy and can do it in two hours.) So now we’re up to four hours, or $7.50 per hour. And then you have to contact the client again for the image selection process. You either create an online gallery, or sit in front of your computer with them, or at bare and unprofessional minimum, e-mail the low-res files to them. Another hour of work. And then the client picks their faves, and you have to prepare and submit them for printing. Even at Costco’s rates, you’re looking at $10 worth of printing. So that’s $20 divided by five hours, which is $4 per hour.

And THEN you have to think about taxes (say 30%) and equipment (say another 30%). You’re at less than $2 per hour now. Realistically, I think you’re actually at a huge loss by the time you’re done, and this doesn’t even address the opportunity cost of your time as you work with all these cheap clients when you could be drumming up business with paying clients — or working at McDonalds, for five times the hourly income. And you’ve given away the digital negatives, so that client has no reason to ever come back to you for future prints and lord knows what they’ll do to the images.

So the discount deal is obviously at the ridiculously cheap (and, IMHO, ultimately worthless) end of the spectrum. Sure, the photographer may build some clients, but they’ll likely want the $40 deal next time. And I think the photographer undervalues him or herself by setting prices too low. And I genuinely believe there’s an argument to be made that it devalues the profession of photography as a whole.

I’m very lucky. I’m not making my living at this, so I have nothing to lose except my time, and I still wouldn’t devalue myself like that. I have to admit, when I first saw the going rates for professional family photography, I balked at first too. Why would someone pay $150 just for a session fee when you can get a portrait package at Loblaws for $45? I only have to look at the packages I’ve bought from Loblaws over the years to know the answer to that one. It’s like the old $10 haircut — you only have to get one once to realize that you really do get what you pay for. Some people are totally happy with a $10 haircut and more power to them, but it’s something that’s important enough to me that I invest in it. It’s worth it to me.

Pricing photography is a minefield right now. You price yourself too high and the phone doesn’t ring, but you price yourself too low and you get plenty of calls — but find yourself working for peanuts, run ragged and barely able to pay your bills.

Of course, this issue is not limited to photography. We’ve had four contractors come through the house to give estimates the repair the drywall we pulled out of Tristan’s room. Two of the first three were plenty affordable, and they would have happily slapped up some drywall for us. But the one who quoted us the highest (by a considerable amount) price also seemed to really know what he was talking about. He offered insight and advice and opinion. And we’re going with him for exactly that reason, because his prices speak to the quality of his work.

So what do you think? On twitter, the photography crowd was unanimous in their disapproval of this kind of drastic price reduction, and agreed that while there is plenty of room for specials and promos, this cut-to-the-bone approach would ultimately be counterproductive. I’m curious as to what you think!

Edited to add: apparently this is hardly an original thought, right down to the McDonalds analogy: http://thebusinesslens.com/2010/09/15/groupon-photography-sessions-vs-working-mcdonalds/

Project 365: The arrival of a long-anticipated new toy

I‘m still catching up on my 365 pictures. I’ve been taking them every day, it’s just hard to find time to write the weekly wrap posts! This week’s photos include a trip, a party, and a most excellent new toy.

I told you about the trip already, but here’s a recap of the pictures that made the cut as the photo of the day. First, this shot from the window of the plane as we’re ascending out of Ottawa. This is the Ottawa river, just a little bit west of town.

71:365 Over Ottawa

And a few dozen pictures of Lucas as he obstinately refuses to pose for me.

72:365 Lucas's photo shoot

We rushed home from Toronto to make it in time for Tristan’s 9th birthday party the very next day.

Birthday party madness

We’ve been having some wretched late-winter weather lately. Rain, then freeze, then snow, then more rain. In fact, we had so much rain late last week that we had seepage in the basement — ironically, in the opposite corner of the house from the mold issues we had last fall. Luckily, this is not our yard — but it shows the conditions pretty well.

75:365 Icy sunrise

After a successful transition to the big boy bed, Lucas “helped” me disassemble the crib this week. I’ve managed to move it to the garage, but I just can’t bring myself to turf it entirely yet. Knowing me, I’ll probably let it sit there for another year or two before I actually have the heart to get rid of it.

76:365 Unbuilding the crib

Poor Katie. This is an old obedience-school trick we learned, back when she was still a rambunctious pup. She has to wait for permission to eat the cookie, which she does, but never without the pained and long-suffering expression you see here.

77:365 Katie dog

Between the birthday party shot above and this next one of a cut flower in my mom’s kitchen, there’s a lot of yellow going on. It was right around this point that I realized that my old D40 was having the same sort of trouble processing yellows that it was having processing saturated reds a few months ago.

74:365 Yellow flower

In the end, it’s not a bad picture, but I had such a hard time managing the colour that Beloved and I started to seriously discuss replacing the aging but well-loved D40. It’s approaching 35,000 shutter activations and is nearly four years old. I adore the camera, but it’s becoming a little, um, eccentric, especially in challenging situations with a lot of saturated colour, and I think the autofocus is starting to wander.

I’ve been coveting a D90 since I started my first 365 project back in 2009, but it seemed financially imprudent to upgrade when the D40 was satisfying almost all of our photographic needs. The D90 has really dropped in price lately, and I had a little money put aside specifically from blog and photography earnings, so Beloved and I agreed that it was time to consider an upgrade. I started doing the research, and realized that for not very much more money, I could get a D7000 instead. When I read about the incredible low-light performance, and the amazing reviews it was getting (Ken Rockwell calls it the best digital camera he’s ever used, period) I was sold.

It arrived late last week, in the midst of a day so insane with a leaking basement and arriving relatives that I barely had time to pull it out of the box. But when I did, it was love at first sight.

78:365 Hello baby!

It’s the most amazing camera I’ve ever laid my hands on, and I can’t tell you how excited I am. I can see a huge difference already, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it’s capable of.

I am very lucky, and very, very happy. Who knew? Some things *are* worth waiting for!

Our weekend in Toronto with Fisher-Price

Phew, is it just me or has someone hit the fast-forward button on life this week? Yowza! So much to tell you about, and no time to write a coherent blog post!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been selected to be one of a handful of official bloggers for Fisher-Price Canada. Last weekend, Lucas and I flew down to Toronto for a day to meet the other bloggers and the marketing team. What a riot!

While I love a good road trip, I don’t get too many chances to travel by air. I was going to say this was Lucas’s first time in a plane, but the last time I flew down to Toronto for a social media conference was back in December of 2007, and I was about eight months pregnant with him. He was a lot easier to manage in utero!

At the airport

I have to take a minute to say how much WestJet impressed me on this trip. I’ve never flown with them before, and I don’t know whether it was Lucas or me who was more delighted when the agent who checked us in invited Lucas over to his side of the baggage counter. He let Lucas attach the destination label to our suitcase and helped him push the button that sent our bag on its way to the plane. All the WestJet staff were amazingly pleasant, and we were even given a quick tour of the cockpit when we boarded.

I admit, I was a little leery of flying with a three-year-old, but he was an absolute angel. In fact, the business man whose face visibly fell when he approached his seat and realized he’d be spending his flight sitting next to Lucas even complimented me on his behaviour on the way into Pearson.

It was a gorgeous day to be flying out of Ottawa. We’re just banking over the the Ottawa River here, right around Shirley’s Bay, I think.

71:365 Over Ottawa

I’d picked up a bottle of water and some trail mix in the airport and Lucas snacked on them during ascent and descent to keep his ears clear, and he spent most of the flight happily playing Smurfs on Beloved’s iTouch. When we had to shut that off for takeoffs and landings (which, on the flight from Ottawa to Toronto, comprises nearly half the flight!) we had some stickers and crayons handy. I tell ya, I’m learning that the Boy Scouts were on to something with their preparation motto!

On the airplane

I tried to get a good picture of the driver who met us at the airport holding a card with my name on it — not likely I’ll get that experience a second time!! — but with one hand on Lucas and one hand on our suitcase, a carry-on bag and my purse slung around my neck, there were simply no hands free to snap the shutter.

I did, however, pull out my iPhone to snap baby’s first limo ride!

Baby's first limo ride - apparently now we're posh people! #playpanel

This is typical of how the weekend went, with the lovely peeps at Mom Central Canada, Spider Marketing and Fisher-Price making us feel like royalty with their thoughtfulness every step of the way.

We stayed at the downtown Marriott hotel that’s attached to the Eaton Centre, so Lucas and I dined in typical style in the Eaton Centre food court. (Man, and I thought the Rideau Centre food court was a cesspool of humanity! I was so anxious from the sheer crowdedness of the place that I couldn’t wait to get out of there!)

On Saturday, we spent an entire day on location in the photographer’s studio in downtown Toronto. Ordinarily, I’d’ve been in nirvana to spend eight hours in a studio, but all the excitement of the week had started to catch up with me and frankly, I wasn’t feeling well. Despite that, I had a great time meeting the folks from Mom Central, from the Fisher-Price marketing team, and the other bloggers.

We had our hair and makeup professionally done, and we had professional wardrobe consultants on site. We had three separate photo shoots: one with just me and Lucas, one with half of the other bloggers and their kids, and one giant group shot with all the bloggers and their kids. Here’s Nadia and her adorable little fellow taken from the loft above the studio.

Aerial view of the #playpanel shoot for Fisher-Price. Fun!

And here’s a close-up of Nadia’s son Thomas. Isn’t he a cutie?

Thomas

In between our turns in front of the camera, we chatted and played with Fisher-Price toys and chatted and snacked and chatted. Oh, and there was a lot of this going on:

When bloggers socialize

I’m pretty sure — but not positive — that they’re not talking to each other! 😉 That’s Nadia and our token pregnant blogger, Ilissa.

We ended up wrapping the day a little early. While we waited for our car to arrive and whisk us back to the airport, I noticed that nobody was using the studio with the white backdrop. The big softboxes were turned off, but I still had fun capturing a little private photo shoot in the studio with Lucas.

72:365 Lucas's photo shoot

And then we were off, back to the airport and back to Ottawa in a flash. A mere 30 hours after we’d departed, we descended the escalator at the airport to be greeted by Beloved, Tristan and Simon in the arrivals lounge.

It was a hectic but fun-filled day-and-a-half, and I can’t wait to see those photos! I should have them for you soon, and I’ll have more news about how the year-long campaign with Fisher-Price will go, too. In the interim, HUGE thanks to Mom Central Canada (especially Pam, Cora and Kathryn) and Spider Marketing and Fisher-Price for the amazing trip. We had a blast!

Project 365 – almost a week behind!

With all the craziness of last weekend, I completely forgot to put up my weekly 365 pictures! It doesn’t always matter, but the delay makes some of these seem positively ancient to me.

Speaking of positively ancient, it was my Mom’s birthday at the end of February… sorry, Mom, I couldn’t resist!! 😉 This is Granny on her birthday with my boys. (There was supposed to be a long and lovely blog post celebrating my Mom on her birthday, but every attempt I made came somewhere between a Hallmark knock-off and an obituary — I never did get a draft I liked enough to publish. Maybe for her next birthday! I don’t need fancy words to tell you, though, that my Mom is my best friend and the best mother a girl could ever hope to have.)

64:365 Happy Birthday Granny!

Because it was one of those milestone birthdays, I wanted to do something special to celebrate. Mom chose a girls’ night out at the local casino, just her and me. Isn’t she awesome? We had such a fun night with dinner and just enough luck to keep us busy on the slot machines for a couple of hours.

65:365 Girl's nite out!

You’ve already seen this one from an earlier blog post. This is the day before we put Lucas’s big-boy bed in his room.

66:365 Getting ready for the big boy bed (1 of 3)

This is my new brother, Bubba. My parents adopted him a couple of weeks ago from a shelter. He’s exactly what he looks like: big and kinda dumb but absolutely lovable. He’s also been a fantastic influence on Beau, my other dog brother — remember him, the one who was completely asocial and escaped to lead me on a barefoot chase through Barrhaven at 6:30 one June morning last year? Beau has come miles farther into being a normally socialized dog in the couple of weeks since Bubba arrived than he did in a year of love and patience with my folks.

67:365 Bubba

Snow. More on the way. I’m so very done with winter!

68:365 Snow on cedars

I like this one. This is the sun setting through the Eastern pine in our front yard.

69:365 Sunset through the pine

I like this one, too. This is the giant reflecting sphere on the NRC’s Montreal Road campus. I took a picture of it last year and had found a link describing the sphere and its purpose (it’s art) but the link is gone. Still makes a fun subject for shooting, though!

70:365 NRC reflecting ball in winter

That’s how the world looked through my viewfinder this last week!

Ottawa Public Library hosting a video contest: teens can win an iPad!

Thanks to my friends at CBC Ottawa, who tipped me off to this great new contest for teens from the Ottawa Public Library.

I may have mentioned a few (dozen) times how much I love the Ottawa library. And from their kickin’ new iPhone app to this fun contest to draw attention to Teen Tech Week, they continue to reinvent themselves as a relevant and modern institution in our social-mediated world.

Here’s the details on the contest, from the OPL site:

The Ottawa Public Library (OPL) is launching a video contest for teens 13 to 18. To participate, teens must create a one-minute video on Youtube about their favourite book. The video can be a book trailer, a parody, a review, a dramatization of their favourite scene, or anything related to their book of choice. Submissions will be accepted from March 5 to April 2. If the fun of producing a video isn’t enough, maybe the grand prize of an Apple iPad is incentive for teens to participate. The iPad is compatible with OPL e-books, and can use the wireless connections at all 33 OPL branches.

This contest draws attention to Teen Tech Week (TTW), which takes place March 5-12. It’s an initiative aimed at teens, librarians, educators and parents who are interested in the Library’s non-print resources. During this week, OPL wants to raise awareness among teens about all its digital offerings including e-Books, podcasts, OPL blogs and the new OPL iPhone app.

How fun is that? And here’s a clip of CBC reporter Chad Pawson interviewing Jane Venus, the Manager of Children and Teen Services at the OPL, about the contest.

You can visit the OPL’s site for more details about the contest or OPL’s Teen Tech Week. Even though they’re too young to enter the contest, I think I might have the boys make their own book-related video clip as a March Break project — what a fun idea!