Two weeks

I've never really been a morning person, as those around me would attest. From the early years in school right through National Service to the laid-back-while-hectic days of university education, I've always been a 'late' person. The late mister varf. Ha ha ha.

The last two weeks with Ethan has changed all of that.

Not only have I been getting up early to start the day, I've also lost track of where all the time has gone. Between feeds and nappy changes, J and I have been struggling to wash and sterilize bottles, shore up on babyware stocks which we naively thought we had plenty excess of, and maybe shovel some food down while we're at it.

I couldn't even find spare time to process and upload his delivery photos until five days after - hence the delay on the last entry announcing his arrival. Thankfully things have calmed down a bit, to the point where I actually have time to sit down and select photos for upload.

As I key this entry in on the iBook, Ethan is sleeping quietly next to me on the bed, occasionally flailing his arms in an agitated manner - possibly to ward off some monster in a bad dream - before settling back down into a peaceful slumber. If only it was always so easy.

The first two nights were the most trying. Not getting enough sustenance from the precious few drops of colostrum with each suckle, Ethan's agitation was apparent, much to our dismay and rising frustration (and sleep deprevation). We had to resort to feeding him with glucose water and bottled formula milk just to tide things over. Much to our relief, J's breast milk came in on the third day, washing away much of our breastmilk-or-formula anxiety.

On the fourth day, the pediatrician diagnosed him with jaundice, and recommended re-admitting Ethan to the nursery for photo-treatment under the UV light for two days. J was heartbroken. For two mind-numbingly exhausting days I drove J back and forth between home and hospital, alternating between nursing him in one of the rooms in the ward and delivering bottled expressed breast milk to be fed to him by the nurses. He was discharged two days later, on Sunday.

The next day I had to go back to work for a whole week. Which finally brings me back to the mornings thing - I decided to shift my schedule to start work earlier each day, in order to get home early enough to interact with my son while he'd still be alert and aware.

I guess it helps that the irregular feeding hours in the wee mornings have kicked my sleep cycle out of whack. Having to shoot straight out of deep slumber to change a badly soiled nappy on a wailing and twisting four-ish kilogram dynamo does that kind of thing to your system. I've not shot a sunrise photo (that I can remember) before the one I've put at the top of this entry; the photo was taken early yesterday morning.

Going by some of the surprises in these first two weeks, the next couple of months will probably prove to be interesting at the very least, if not frantic and downright exhausting. But for now, I'm just enjoying the momentary lull in activity - and that contented look on his cherubic face, still happily sound asleep.

And then, there was light

Ethan, the most recent member of our family, was delivered on Monday, Oct 17, 2005, after spending a full 40 weeks in his mother's womb.

We wish unto our precious son happiness and a fulfilling life ahead. Happy birthday, Ethan!

More to follow soon. It's been one heck of a week.

Overdue

Let the waiting commence.

Making frames where the sun don't shine

Shot a dinner event on Tuesday, a portrait on Wednesday, and a series of posed pictures today, all for various office-related purposes.

Recently picked up an optical slave unit for my flash, and a remote IR trigger to go along with it. Used them both to good effect for the portrait:



And also for the "six on a sofa" series:


(more)

Didn't need to do touch-up on the portrait photo at all. For the sofa series, I removed a couple of wall switches, did an auto-contrast on the photos with the even lighting, and pushed up the saturation slightly.

Going to hound the office folks for official budget for photographic equipment, wish me luck. :)

Dabbling in the dark arts

dabbling in the dark arts, originally uploaded by varf.

Experimental self-portrait with an optical flash slave, a lightsphere, a remote flash trigger borrowed from Wantunn, repeatedly rushing to pose after triggering the camera's 10-second timer, and some judicious photoshopping for the red tone.

Who moved my mouse?

Thursday night saw the team (and some cameos) in the new office, reconstructing our desktops from mover's boxes and testing cable points into the wee hours, just to make sure the network would be in some usable state come Friday morning.

Come Friday morning, the tech folks are tired and worn out, and the connection in the new office is still unstable to the point where, after setting up their personal work areas, most people pack up and head home for the comfort of their home broadband and VPN. That's what I presumed, at any rate, but it was a Friday...

We are now located in a swankier part of town (but not by much, IMHO) with a moderately nicer view (ok fine, quite a bit nicer, but could be better still). It's far less convenient than I'd like, morning/lunch/evening traffic is hellish and parking charges are almost double compared to the old place. I tagged some of my flickr photos related to the office move, you can find them here.

Still trying to figure out new food places and optimal meal timings, but I guess that will take a couple of weeks at best. So we went with an old food place for lunch instead...

bpp
Had a taste of lunch hour traffic on Friday as we drove out to Beo Crescent for Hainanese Curry Rice - affectionately referred to as bak par png (bpp), or pork chop rice, by the office gang. The drive from the new office, shorter in terms of absolute distance, definitely took much longer than from the old office - ouch.

But the trip was worth it. Good old bpp. Still satisfying after all this time.

Portraiture Workshop

Attended the BootBOX portraiture workshop last Sat, where the focus was to try and break away from the ordinary "pretty smiling face, half-body, randomly blurred background" type of shots. Had some fun trying to break my conventional style, though old habits die hard and most of my attempts fell into the "regular" bucket.





The event itself was marred by bouts of stormy weather and bad logistics planning. The prearranged transport never arrived, and those of us with vehicles had to double as ferries for the rest. We started shooting late, rushing madly to capture something interesting before the sky turned completely dark.

One thing that I'm sure of - it gets messy with a large group of shooters. There were around 20 people shooting four models, and we kept getting in each other's way. I now understand the value of smaller organized shoots.

I'm just happy that I learned a couple of new things during the session, despite all of the hiccups.