New Beds, Old House

 New flower beds have been added to the grounds of the Kansas City Museum..  modeled after those that existed back when it was a residence.   Two line the front walkway on the south side of the home.

 Above, a fish-eye was used to capture the beds...the Nikon 10.5mm dx lens.  I don't like to use a fish eye when buildings are involved as it always distorts... some minimal corrections done in this case in Photoshop Camera Raw.  Below, roughly the same view using the 14-24mm lens.  Less distortion and less correction.   The fish-eye is a DX lens whereas the camera is an FX.  The D800 automatically sets itself for the smaller coverage area by cropping.  It reduces the image size from 36 megapixels to 16.

 Above, the Carriage House with its new windows and doors..  a little paint removal remains to be done where the old Hall of Nature entrance was.   Below, the caretakers house where the Museum offices are today.

 Two more new beds are in back along each side of the north side walkway.  The wisteria is done for the year.

 Above the new hvac installation on the west side...

 Above, more of the north side, Below, the east side of the house.

Thanks to Christopher Leitch, House Wizard, who allowed me to skulk around the grounds.

Captioning the Fam

 When even your Mom doesn't understand, it's time to bury your face on the steps.

 LOOK!

 Above and below, we are working diligently with Maddie to stop her from doing a Three Stooges imitation with actual poking.

 Above,  Levitation-Meditation.      Below,   TA DA!!!

 Above,  "I don't trust her."      Below,   "I don't trust him."

 Happy Hudson.

 Above,  "Please take your feet off the table."     Below,   "Thank you."

 Above,  The Attack.      Below,   Just Before The Attack.

 Below,  Expressive Kid.

 Above,  One of these three is in the Witness Protection Program.     Below,  Ralph and salad. She ate all of that too.

 Above,  practicing for I-35 rush hour.    Below,  Tree Time

 Above, the best time for children's portraits is when at least one has food smeared on his/her face.

Above,  Little Bit explains to Hudson how GIRLS RULE.
All shots taken with the Nikon D800 in Portrait Mode.   Only works when shooting jpegs.  ISO on automatic.  Nikon 24-70mm lens.

Leslie

 Every now and then I have a very nice friend who will let me take his or her picture.   This time it's a her (yeah, like I had to tell you) and it's Leslie.   Local newspaper editor(The Northeast News), Salsa Dancer Extraordinaire... and terrific person to be around.     She was game to let me try different lighting set-ups and different camera files so I could tweak my work flow.

 All shots are taken with the Nikon D800.  Studio shots ISO 100, F16-22, Nikon 105mm macro.  Outdoor, ISO 400, F5.6, Nikon 70-200mm lens.   Locations, studio, back yard, and the Colonnade over here in Northeast.

 I love the eyes in this one.  Single pan reflector around a bare tube head covered with translucent rip-stop nylon held in place by gravity and electrical tape...  high class operation over here.

 Outdoor shots available light with no fill.

 I hope to trick her into doing this again in the future.    She's also an excellent videographer in her own right and takes all the pictures for the paper....