The Pomranka.Net » olivia

DSAGSL at the Magic House

pomranka — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:20:23 +0000

A number of weeks ago the Magic House opened its doors just for the members of the Down Syndrome Association of Greater St. Louis. I can’t tell you how fun it was. The place was not at all crowded and I knew most of the people who were there. Olivia and Mia had an absolute blast running, playing and trying everything they could. Of course there were a number of good photographs to be made, a select few are below.

Mother’s Day at the Boathouse

pomranka — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:39:41 +0000

Being that it is Mother’s Day, we started with breakfast in bed, specially made for a real mom. But once that was over, we had to decide how to spend the rest of the day. After photographing in Forest Park last Friday evening, the idea came to us to go on a paddle boat ride in Forest Park.

The timing was great and we walked right up and got on a boat in no time at all. With ducks keeping us company, we paddled though the small lake and waterways, under bridges until we made it to the Grand Basin of Forest Park with its large fountains and view of the Art Museum.

It was a really great time and Jennifer repeatedly said she was so happy and could not think of a better way to spend her special day. I am pretty sure Olivia and Mia enjoyed themselves as well. After peddling back to the dock, we ate at the Boathouse restaurant, on the edge of the lake. Really a great day. I cannot believe we have this wonderful park only a few minutes from our home, and we rarely do anything more than stop by the zoo. If you ever get the chance to take a paddle boat ride, take it.

NOTE: Once again, all of these photos were made with the camera on my Blackberry and adjusted in Lightroom. I chose this style of post processing because the history of Forest Park, just calls for this look. See more images on my Flickr page in the Mother’s Day in Forest Park set.

St. Patrick’s Day is about t-shirts

pomranka — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:17:12 +0000

I am not sure what other families do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but apparently we wear t-shirts.

Jackson Park Chili Cook off

pomranka — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:19:02 +0000

The boy scouts of Jackson Park School, held their annual chili cook off and I was there with my camera. Mostly I was playing with the Pentax 16-50mm f/2.8 lens that I rented and wanted to see how it worked in the low light. It did a good job, but trying to add a little fill light with just the camera’s built in flash caused a nasty round shadow at the bottom of the image. Typical for a large lens with lens hood on.

Olivia’s brownie troop was there selling desserts that really hit the spot after trying to taste 20 different chili recipes.

I was then asked by Mr. Barnes to get some photos of the award winners. He sure does appear to have fun being the emcee.

All the photos from the evening are available at jeffreyphoto.com in Events.

Snow day = SLEDDING!

pomranka — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:14:37 +0000

It was a snow day for U. City schools, along with most of St. Louis, so we went sledding. Since I am loving my new Flip video camera, it came with us.

Unfortunately the bitter cold killed the battery in now time, but we did get some fun shots.

If there are problems with the embedded video, watch on YouTube.

Girls in blankets

pomranka — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:16:50 +0000

After baths, the girls will a little cold, so they snuggled on the chair under a couple blankets. so cute, I could not resist getting the camera out.

A Pomranka Christmas

pomranka — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:19:12 +0000

As is our tradition with most major holidays, we go over to Curt and Maryann’s for celebration and wonderful food. With Curt being a rehabilitated chef, you can always count on having more food than you need and great friends.

I got a few more photos from the evening that I have uploaded to my flickr page in the Christmas 2009 set.

Of course we always stay too late whenever we visit Curt & Maryann, but with it being Christmas the girls were up and ready to go at 5:43am. (I was so hoping to make it until 6.)

This year the girls went straight for their stockings and seemed pretty pleased, but the big fun came from the gifts under the tree.

This year I took a chance and gave Jennifer something she has said she wanted, but never asked for as a gift. Although many of the women I worked with advised me against it, I got Jennifer a very fancy, stainless steel, long lasting, nose hair trimmer.

Naturally I dressed it up in a fancy jewelry box and gave it to her at the very end. Only fitting for such an important gift. But I think it was a good choice, because she did excuse herself to go try it right away.

The frenzy ended within an hour and about 15 minutes after saying it was the best Christmas ever, both girls amazed me by saying they were bored. Bored at 7am on Christmas morning?!?! I just don’t get it.

Fortunately, they realized that was just silly and they started playing with some of their new toys.

(Sorry for the poor quality of the camera phone, it was what I had.)

Not too much later, Jennifer’s parents arrived and round two of gift giving commenced.

Needless to say, our house was covered with gifts and wrapping paper.

After all the gifts we opened, Jen and I made a nice dinner (although 90 minutes later than we planned) and we enjoyed the day.

I have more photos from the day posted on my Flickr page under the Christmas 2009 set. I did not get any amazing photos, but thanks to David Hobby (a.k.a. Strobist) I duplicated the lighting set up I had last year and was able to move all around the living room without worrying if the light would look good.

Now to dive into some of my gifts and see how I can make even better photos in 2010.

Olivia’s Art House

pomranka — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:20:19 +0000

Olivia brought home this wonderful piece of art that is a house decorated for Christmas. It is made up of 11 individual pieces of notebook paper and each page is a different room. She notes that most of the windows have Christmas lights on them. Starting at the top

Attic
Playroom - Office
Guest Room - Parents’ Room - Kids’ Room
Dining Room - Family Room - Living Room - Kitchen
Basement

Click the image for the original size on Flickr and see all the detail.

Lensbaby photos at Bread Co

pomranka — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:03:02 +0000

Saturday morning is a great time to go to Bread Company (a.k.a. Panera Bread) with friends. today I brought my camera and Lensbaby selective focus lens. It was pretty grey and gloomy outside and the light was not great, so I cranked up the ISO to 1600 and dropped in a f2.8 aperture ring. There is a decent amount of digital noise in many of the photos, especially the first two where I still had in a f8.0 aperture ring.

But playing around with it in Lightroom allowed me to salvage something. I kinda like the look of Maria “RealFitMama” Sparks in the photo above. There are more photos from the day, all taken with my Lensbaby at my photo site, all in the Saturday at Bread Co gallery.

After working hard to help rake up leaves, the girls get to play.

pomranka — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:16:48 +0000

Our yard is in the shade of a giant dutch Elm tree. It is great in the summer when it keeps the house at least 10 degrees cooler, but in the fall there are a ton of leaves to rake. Fortunately U. City picks up leaves for free and all we have to do is put them in the street. For us, the result is a pretty big pile of leaves. The girls have come to look forward to jumping in the pile and ask when I am going to build the giant leaf pile. The pile is pretty big this year and the girls are getting braver, so instead of just walking into the leaves, they started with falling backwards and moved up to running leaps.

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VID 00011-20091108-falling back.3GP (2207 KB)

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VID 00012-20091108-Mia runnin.3GP (1512 KB)

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VID 00013-20091108-Olivia running.3GP (1780 KB)

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VID 00014-20091108-both running.3GP (1651 KB)

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