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10 Sep

Let’s Get Vertical

Posted by Jason.

People are vertical. Tall buildings are vertical. Vases full of flowers are vertical.

And yet, 90% of your photos are horizontal. Sure, I just made that statistic up, but if you’re anything like every other person with a point-and-shoot camera, you’re taught that horizontal is just about the only way to take a picture.

If you’re only shooting horizontally, you’re missing half the great photos you should be taking. Shooting vertically gives you a whole different perspective on things. It forces you to think creatively by not putting every single part that landscape in the shot. It challenges you to crop faces when taking a picture of a person. All you need to do is turn your camera and watch the magic unfold.

9 Sep

The Story’s The Thing. Also, The Story App.

Jasper, as I have noted previously in this space, loves the iPad. Like, loves loves it. He loves it with a passion that is rivaled only by his passion for trains. Which means, of course, that he usually brings the two together, in some cases for a little multimedia train play (set iPad on train table, queue Thomas tribute videos on YouTube, commence play), in others for a little interactive reading. Yes, reading. He’s only three, but he’s gotten pretty good at working the virtual storybook apps. The ones that feature trains, especially.

Kyle and I discuss Jasper’s ‘reading’ habits quite a bit, because we worry, sometimes, about whether Jasper spends too much time with the iPad, and then we worry about the worrying. Because, really, should we worry? He doesn’t watch television, like, at all, unless it’s Thomas on Netflix, and even then, he much prefers Thomas mash-ups and tribute videos on YouTube and Thomas games and Thomas stories. The iPad, in Jasper’s hands, is truly an interactive device: he lines up his trains next to it and works them alongside the story and adds to that story with his own exclamations and proclamations and variations on plot. He flips through the pages of a storybook app and really just gets into it.

8 Sep

The Road, Taken

Before I became a mom, I was an academic. During my pregnancy with Emilia, I was scrambling to finish my PhD – and teaching, and preparing papers for conferences, and applying for jobs – but even though I was acting as though I was preparing for my future as a Tenured Professor and Professional Smartypants, I was really pretty certain that once the baby came, I was going to slow my pace on that path. I was maybe going to circle right off of that path. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was, I didn’t see myself in the future that had been laid out for me at that point. I loved my research, but I didn’t see myself on departmental committees, I didn’t see myself teaching massive undergraduate seminars, I didn’t see myself dragging my husband and children around to the remote liberal arts colleges that would be the only places hiring professors of political philosophy, and probably not even tenure-track professors at that. I was headed elsewhere. I knew that much.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was headed for social media. I was also headed for New York.

7 Sep

What All The Cool Moms Are Carrying This Fall

Posted by Shalini.

Hi everyone!

What do you use as a camera bag? I have never found a camera bag that was both useful and pretty. It has always been black, ugly but functional. Once we had The Boy, I hated the camera bag even more. It became one more thing for me to schlep around but I always wanted to take pictures and video so I sucked it up and carried it around.

The heavier The Boy got, the worse it became until I had an epiphany. Our cousin was visiting with her little boy and she had a massive diaper bag, it was made for twins. I went right out and bought one for myself. It held everything, toys, clothes, diapers, snacks and I could put my DSLR into it. Yay for massive diaper bags!

So this brings me to my big questing (sorry, we have been watching a little too much Guess With Jess). Do you use both a diaper bag and a camera bag? Do you use a diaper bag that also holds your camera? Do you use a camera bag that also holds diapers?