We spent the holiday at R's aunt and uncle's house in Maryland. It was similar, in a good way, to our Easter last year: delicious meal, fun hiding eggs for the kids, nice to be around family. The biggest difference is that it ended with a late night after making a traffic-filled trip up to central Jersey to bring R's grandparents home. On the positive side, we enjoyed having the extended visit with them.
The rest of the long weekend was good too. We took a hike in Brandywine Creek State Park on Friday afternoon. This was considered a moderately difficult trail with heavy emphasis on
moderately (uh-oh, hiking in New Zealand may have made us trail snobs). Friday night we went out to celebrate a postponed St. Patrick's Day. It was weird being in a bar without a camera to hide behind. The dreaded hiccups of death overtook me three hours in and we made it home in time for me to fall asleep during a movie. No offense to the movie,
Enchanted. R was glad to see a happy movie again and, having grown up on Disney princess movies, she enjoyed some of the parody aspects of it. Saturday's selection,
Gone Baby Gone, brought us back to the world of gritty violence that seems to be dominating our viewings of late (sorry, R!). Let's see... we also went out for coffee and a walk Saturday afternoon, we ate a Peruvian dinner that night, and I had some time to work on the next Bud Light video here and there. It's coming along okay but still needs more time.
My music video shoot will be happening on a Saturday night in late April or early May, depending on the actors' availability. I'm going to use the time before then to learn more about this camera. I've never taken a photography class, so many of the concepts are relatively new to me. With my old camera I never had to worry about finding the right balance between shutter speed and aperture... or how to effectively read zebra stripes... or how to use gain without noticeable grain. I want to learn this stuff. My new camera has an auto setting, and that works okay when I'm run 'n' gunning a Bud Light video, but I'm going to be more picky with the music video. I'm going to try to stay in manual mode and hopefully not screw up my intended vision too much.
Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody. No, I'm not Irish. I just listen to a lot of U2... and visit an occasional Irish pub. On Saturday afternoon we hit 5 of them during a crawl with the younger members of the local Newcomers group. I took a few pictures but lost focus (literally -- quite a few turned out blurry) and dedication after the first two beers, so the gallery isn't anything too impressive. The outing was a good time with a group of people who are still relatively new in town, like us. We probably drank too much, but that's one way to get to know each other better.
