Ben picked up my real glasses the other day, and as he put them on, he exclaimed, “Peter Parker!” You know Peter Parker as the alter ego of Spider Man. And so does Ben. Since Spidey is one of Ben’s favorite superheroes, I took the dark lenses out of an old pair of sunglasses so that he could have his own Peter Parker glasses (and so that he would not play with my real glasses).

I’m not sure why we seem to like the fact that superheroes have two looks — one rather powerless, one super powered — but we do.

So what’s your rather powerless look? And what does your super hero costume look like?

So these are kind of special — photos where he’s smiling, entertaining, tickled at himself, and maybe posing just a little for the camera too. These show some of his four-year old character. But his sweetness creeps through too.

How can you not just love this boy to death?

Both grandkids love to play with the chairs and table Nana bought a while back. Madi is still working to learn how to sit down in them, and it’s not as easy as it might sound, because they’re still a little too high for her to just back up to and sit.

Not to be deterred, however, she just climbs up in them and then tries to figure out how to get from there to sitting. In the series of photos, you see her succeed twice. (Just click on the right side of the photo to move to the next, or you can navigate from the thumbnails.)

In the first one where shes sitting, she exclaimed, “Good Job!” and clapped for herself.

In the second one, she just gives me that now famous Madi crinkled nose look.

So when’s the last time you tried something a little bit hard and when you succeeded gave yourself a “Good Job!” and applause? We all probably deserve it more than we allow it for ourselves.

I took this rather serious portrait shot of Ben Sunday night, and of course the original file is in full, beautiful color. But there’s some magic in black and white photos, and once I converted this one and saw it, I decided this is one of those.

For anyone interested, I did the conversion in Lightroom 3.2 by reducing the saturation and vibrance each to -75 to remove nearly but not quite all of the color and increasing clarity to 75 to increase the contrast. I picked up this b&w recipe from something I saw on the web, and I think it works great.

So Madi offers him a blueberry nacho — a blueberry on a chip. Who said eating dinner had to be boring?

Ben ate it, and Madi thought it would be fun to touch his hair. Before you panic, for whatever reason, the fruit on her hand did not end up in his hair, i.e., no hair was soiled in making these photos.

I love this photo where they pause for a moment to look each other in the eye. And the watermelon juice running down Madi’s chin.

But then it was time to share some Graham Crackers.

And finally to share some conversation on the goodness of blueberries.

I know that a brother and sister may not always enjoy each other’s company this much as they get older, but I really hope that they’re always able to be this playful with each other.

When photographing people or animals, we’re taught to focus on the eyes. They eyes are what show life. “You haven’t got the shot unless you have the eyes” is an often preached mantra for photographers.

So here’s a shot of Madi’s beautiful brown eyes (well okay, just one of them) as proof of the mantra.

I’ve found myself paying a lot of attention to clouds recently. At least part of the reason for that is a statement my cousin Ron made at his mom’s recent funeral. My Aunt Ruth was an artist whose talents and skills we all admired, and as Ron was talking about that facet of her life, he talked about her one frustration with painting. “Ron, I just can’t paint clouds as beautifully as God made them.”

Clouds are amazing, ever changing, with subtleties of shadow and hue that defy the paint brush, and even the camera. I can’t capture the full beauty nor the depth of clouds with the camera either, even with HDR photos. Our paintings and our photos are at best representations of the beauty God has provided.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll stop shooting clouds. In fact I’ll probably take more photos of them, because as I observe them and see their beauty, capturing even a part of it becomes more special.

And now about the Honey Buns part of the title. Ron mentioned that part of his mom’s morning routine was getting her coffee and Honey Bun and heading to the porch each morning. I haven’t had a Honey Bun in years, but ever since he talked about it, I’ve been tasting their sugary, cinnamon goodness that goes so well with a cup of coffee.

So I’m about to go buy some and sit on my back porch with my coffee and look at clouds. And remember how much I’m still being shaped by those special people who’ve blessed my life.

Photographed using an iPhone 4 and the Pro HDR app on auto mode.

Cookies!

Play Doh!

Going Outside in the Back Yard!

A Zillion Colors!

Love,

Ben and Madi

Madi  has taught me that talking on the phone is not a natural thing.

She’ll listen. But then instead of talking, she’ll look at the phone to see where the person is that’s talking to her.

It’s not that she doesn’t carry on two-way conversations when she is with others in person. She’ll go on and on, whether we understand many of her words or not.

It’s just that the whole listen and talk thing without seeing the person doesn’t make sense to her, having a conversation while imagining what the person she’s talking to looks like. It would be fun to see how she reacts to iPhone’s Facetime, where she could see and talk to the person at the same time.

But soon she’ll learn to deal with this unnatural thing just like the rest of us, and she’ll be hard to get off the phone. It’s interesting how we adapt isn’t it?