Ice and Dirt

Tony skates
Originally uploaded by petemorris.

The spring sports season has arrived, and, for the first year, we're shuttling two boys around on Saturday mornings, not just one. Everett is playing t-ball for the first time, wearing the #7 shirt for the Astros. Tony, meanwhile, has chosen to spend the Southern California springtime on ice, with weekly beginning skating lessons at the Culver (City) Ice Arena. Both boys are absolutely loving their new sports, and both are also making big improvements on a weekly basis.

The new sports season is also providing a great opportunity for me to try out my new toy: a Nikon D40 digital SLR camera. My parents and in-laws were once again overly generous with their birthday presents this year, and given that this was my 40th birthday, I figured I'd actually treat myself to something fun and somewhat out of the blue. I've had an interest in photography ever since junior high, but I always stopped just short of truly making it a hobby. I don't plan to change that now, as between the bicycles and the beer my hobby plate is already too full. (Speaking of the beer, check out my brewery site for some big news that I'll be posting soon.) I went all-digital a few years back when I purchased my little 2-megapixel Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot, and it has served us quite well. But when I rather accidentally stumbled across the quite affordable but still extremely functional D40, I couldn't resistant returning to the world of interchangeable lenses and infinitely adjustable exposure controls. I've only been using the camera for a week, and it already has exceeded even the lofty expectations I had developed based on the large and unanimous chorus of reviews I read online.

To see some of the early results, visit our Flickr site, where I recently uploaded several dozen new photos. The continuous-shooting mode is especially fun to use for sports, especially when combined with the surprisingly affordable zoom-telephoto lens that I got bundled with the camera. For example, see the following sequences of Everett batting and fielding at his first game yesterday.

Here's the batting sequence (check out that weight shift and follow through!):



And here's the fielding sequence:






Finally, this is a pretty fun sequence. Move the mouse arrow back and forth over the photo below to watch the eyes of Everett and Coach Yvonne track the same play in unison.



By the way, not only do Everett's coaches Greg and Yvonne do a great job, they both went to Cal! So we're quite happy with his placement on the Astros, even if an Angels cap would have been more excitedly received by the little ballplayer.

No more news to share, as our spring breaks were rather uneventful given that Tony's ended just as Everett and mine were beginning. However, with the new camera and a rather packed calendar of events ahead, please check back regularly as I expect I'll be posting new items on a more frequent basis.