Growing up in the burbs

When my Wife and I decided not to have kids we almost by default shut out an aspect of American life that we could never live ourselves, just observe;  life in the suburbs, raising your kids.  While upon moving to WI we did live in a more suburb-type environment, there are things that I know that I missed since my parents were Immigrants and their ideas about how they wanted to raise my sister and I in that environment were more ad-hoc than anything else.  not to mention that intra-neighborhood socialization was not really a thing w/ our family.

My nephew is a different case.  he sees his world through the lenses of his friends and experiences living in that environment.  Like I said, I have hints of the ideas, but it wasn't until I sat down in front of the computer that I realized the way I was shooting was trying to capture the world through his eyes; maybe to get a better idea for myself what it must feel like.

on another level entirely, this is the first post (though not the first photos, I was just excited about this batch) shot entirely using my new 20mm 1:2.8 AFD lens.  the thing is amazingly sharp and the AF is nice and snappy, definitely worth trading in my flash and zoom lens for.  just waiting for the 50mm to arrive in the mail...

This is also the first batch of images after figuring out how to actually integrate Lightroom efficiently into my work-flow.  The program is amazing, offering a light footprint with the ability to seamlessly integrate w/ photoshop when I need more control.  The batch processing options are also great, watermarks are now placed automatically instead of my having to do each one separately, hamdulillah!

enough blather, images!

Oh animals, ever present...

some kids get all the best toys...

The next set are my nephew enjoying his slide.  I know, a departuere from what I was talking about before, but I like em.