Everyone’s asleep except me. It would be the perfect time to sneak off and go shower and color my hair but if I do, the baby will wake up and Mouse will have a seizure and Kevin will have a baby diaper-related emergency (like the baby pooping in his diaper, or peeing in his diaper, or OH GOD WHERE ARE THE WIPES, or not pooping or peeing but taking off his pants and his diaper because wooooo! look at me I’m a baby and I have a weiner!, or not taking off his diaper but looking slightly uncomfortable for a second) and Nicolaus will wake up and need in the bathroom because poisonous carnivores are chasing him and you know how that is.

So I’m in bed, trying to type quietly so as not to disturb anyone. Not that I don’t adore them all – I do, so much that Dr.Phil would probably shake his head and laugh at me for being so silly – but I also adore a few quiet minutes alone with the morning light seeping through the dark unopened curtains. Well and the glow of the computer monitor obviously.

Besides, today is going to suck once it starts. We’re driving to Georgia this weekend. It’s fourteen hours away when you have no kids and no bad weather or anything. With two small children and a weather forecast like this, we should arrive sometime on Wednesday of not this week but the next.

A few quick notes before we leave…
* Nicolaus freaked out last night because I threw away some shrimp that were freezer burned. “But those are sea creatures and it’s like they died – they were killed – just so you could throw them in the trash?”

Five minutes of lecturing me later, he declared himself a vegetarian. We’ll see how long it lasts but since meat is food, which he doesn’t eat, I’m guessing he can do it.

* Kevin and Graham are awake now and are playing that game where the father steals the baby’s nose. Graham thinks it’s funny. I’m not comparing our two kids because that’s wrong and bad, but I used to have a friend who had this kid who used to freak his total baby shit if you stole his nose.

* I am not mature for how much I got out of Nicolaus teaching Graham how to score the other day. As in how to use a tool to dig a line into a piece of paper for folding… where you almost cut it but not quite. “Graham okay. I’m your big brother so I have to teach you. Scoring is very HARD to do. It’s really hard to score Graham.”

And so forth with the scoring and the taching while I giggled a Beavis giggle because huhhhh he said score.

* There was more but I can’t think with this baby clonking me in the head with a flashlight. Ow. Ow. OW. But oh my god, he’s so cute that it’s stupid. OW. It’s not funny!

Shit. Ow. Okay, I’m done.

See you all in Georgia.

He took one bite of his lunch, and let out a howl. “Owwwwww! This pizza is all like: YAY! We’re going to totally burn this boy’s throat.”

“Nicolaus…”

“And then? Graham was all, HAHA big brother, you ate something spicy and you don’t like spicy food.”

“Dude.”

“And now Mouse is saying hooray I’m going to beg and beg because all of Nicolaus’ food is really MY FOOD and as soon as he moves, I’m going to STEAL IT ALL.”

“I thought you didn’t like your food.”

“I don’t. It’s way too spicy.”

“Then why do you care if Mouse eats it?”

“Because. He’s — he’s just over there doing that thing he does.”

“What thing?”

“That thing with his eyes like this. Where he sits over there and watches us and if we drop anything he runs over and grabs it! And he’s all like -”

“Please stop telling me what everyone is all like…”

“Owww! Did you see that! My chair was all HAHA little boy, I’m going to dump you over and make you fall and hurt your leg.”

“I did see that! And the floor was all Yay, let’s be really hard so it hurts Nicolaus a lot when he falls. And gravity was all I’ll help! And your bones were all Oooh Cool this is going to be hilarious. And your skin was all Nooooo!”

“Why was my skin all like that?”

“Because it knew it was going to get hurt if you fell out of your chair. And your pizza was all! Waaaah! Nicolaus doesn’t like me! I’m so lonely and sad and no one will ever eat me. And Nicolaus was all HAHA you be sad pizza. Too bad for you, I don’t care if you cry.”

“No, no — I wasn’t all like that.”

“Yes you were. HAHA baby pizza! Go ahead and cry and cry!”

“No! I wasn’t. I wasn’t mean.”

“Oh. You weren’t?”

“No. Why do you keep telling me I’m all like things that I’m not?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged, “Are you going to eat the rest of your lunch?”

“Not right now. I’m going to save it for later.”

“Okay.”

He gathered his plastic plate and shuffled into the kitchen.
“OoooooooohhhhhAAArrrrrrrGH!! The fridge door was all like, YOU CAN’T OPEN ME. Too bad little boy, you are only like two years old or something and NOT three and a half. You’re not a bigger kid and you can never ever open me! NEVER Ev-”

“Um. Do you need some help in there?”

“Nah, I’m okay. I got it open.”

Whatever Tiffany, so you celebrated Christmas, babies are cute, Santa talks with a Texas accent, FASCINATING. But what about the photo tips? Aren’t those the real meaning of Christmas? Besides, don’t you owe us since you told us to turn off our flash and now we did and all of our holiday pictures are too dark and it’s all your fault and now all our Christmas memories have been ruined, you selfish prostitute?

Fair enough.

First, a couple of general notes:

• The internet is already full of excellent advice from people who are way smarter than me and who can tell you all about the technical side of photography, how to use your F-stop and photon settings and how to attain an ISO 9000 rating and what happens to your camera’s Flux Capacitor if you drive it 88 miles an hour. And there are good tutorials and books out there on how to use Photoshop. So I’m just going to share some of the cheater tricks refined techniques that I use to improve my own images. These are things I learned while working as a graphic designer, not necessarily while doing the work I was supposed to be doing but still.
• Don’t stress or let any of this stuff make you feel dumb. Most digital cameras are hugely complicated and Photoshop is an overwhelming thing that few professionals ever fully learn. The best way to be able to use both is to simply assign yourself a single task and try to do it. Every time you get stuck, jot down the question that is stopping you. Then dig up the answers to all your questions, and get back to it.

****
HOW TO ADJUST THE LIGHTING IN YOUR PHOTOS LIKE YOU MEAN IT
Part two of… three I think? Four tops.

STEP 0: Sucks to be a Mac user.
First, if you’re on a Mac you need to do this annoying little thing that experts call “setting your proofing mode or whatever”. If you’re planning to print the finished file, then go on to the next step and forget I said anything. The default is print. If you’re planning to share or view the finished photo on screen, you need to go to View>Proof setup> and change it to RGB yadda yadda. Everything will look brighter and less saturated.

I know that was an annoying step but it took me two motherfucking years to figure out why my images looked so washed out when I went to “save for web”.

But wait! What if you want to post your photo on your web site and then send a print out to grandma? First of all, depending on the type of web site you are operating, your grandmother doesn’t want to look at that filth! What is wrong with you?
But honestly the only way I’ve found to handle this is to use “save as” to create two copies of my file: One is set up for web, and the other for print. Sucks. This is what is known as the ultimate suburbanite problem.

STEP 1: Create several duplicate layers.
It’s easy! Everybody! Layer>duplicate layer.
Create three duplicate layers of your original image – name the bottom one: “bright as hell” and name the middle one: “light adjusted”. Name the top one Larry. Hide the top two layers (Light Adjusted and Larry). How do you hide them? To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye – click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.

STEP 2: Reveal hidden details.
All kinds of cool details can hide in the shadows. This is especially true if your photo is on the dark side, so I like to check before I get too far into editing a picture in case there’s any details or things I want to pull out of the shadows. Here’s how to do it:
2A. Click on the layer that you named “bright as hell” in step 2.

2B. Go to image>adjust>curves. If you aren’t familiar with the curves tool, there are great tutorials out there… but really all you need to know for this step is: See the diagonal line? Click somewhere towards the bottom of that diagonal line and drag it violently upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright. Click OK.

Click the diagonal line…

…and drag it upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright.

2C. Now look – there are lots of details in his hair that we couldn’t see before, and look! Pants.

2D. We’ll come back to this layer in a minute. Mentally set it aside for now.

STEP 3: Create a nice, normal light adjusted layer.
3A. Now click on your “light adjusted” layer. Here’s where that curves tutorial would really come in handy. Basically what you want to do here is make your whites look white and have everything else fall in line and look normal based on that. I usually just grab somewhere near the top of the line and tug upward, making the whole image a bit brighter. Then I tug the darks down a teeny bit, just so they don’t feel left out.

Play with the curve, watching the skin tones of your main subject or your main focal point change with the changes you’re making. A more gentle curve is going to give you more natural-looking results. Sharp weird funky things in the curve is going to make your photo appeal to my brother who, while not a stoner, does have a great appreciation for things that look totally trippy.

STEP 4. Reveal the hidden details (for real this time).
I love this step a little too much.
4A. Click on your “light adjusted” layer in your layers palette.

4B. Choose the eraser tool. Select a nice-sized airbrush, set to maybe 50% strength. Whatever’s comfortable for you.

4C. Erase away the too-dark areas, revealing! The groovy details on the too-bright layer beneath!

4D. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)

4E. Congratulate yourself on now knowing one of the true secrets of the universe. Aren’t you fancy?

STEP 5: Turn into a total obsessive nerd about your photo.
But wait! The skin tones look nice, but now we’ve lost this cool detail in the curtains. Those things weren’t cheap you know. I mean, they were, but I love them and… anyway. What do you do if different areas of your image seem to need different levels of light adjustment? You can use the same technique from steps 1-4 to pull in details that are getting lost in the highlights of your photo.
5A. Cry because you are officially a huge nerd for noticing or caring about this level of detail.

5B. Remember Larry? The darkish layer from Step 1? Click on the layer named Larry. Better, name it something relevent to your photo like Curtains or Clouds or Wet T-shirt.

5C. Adjust it, this time looking only at the cool IKEA curtains (knopp inez curtains, pieces, $14.99) or whatever area of your photo you want to bring out. Make it a little brighter or darker as needed, but not so bright that you lose the cool details. This layer will be darker than your “light adjusted” layer.

5D. Move Larry underneath “Light Adjusted”. Click on the Light Adjusted layer.

5E. Erase away the curtains from Light Adjusted, revealing the lovely adjusted Larry layer underneath.

5F. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)

STEP 6: Make the eyes stand out
When you take pictures of people, the eyes are everything. If the details of the eyes are lost in a muddy shadow, you’re throwing away much of the impact of your photo. Use the same technique described above to bring out the details in your subject’s eyes.

6A. Create three layers: 1 called “Super Freaky Bright Eyes”, 2 called “Eyes Erased”, and 3: called “Normal”.

Hide the top two layers (Eyes Erased and Normal). To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye – click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.

6B. Click on Super Freaky Bright Eyes. Go to Image>Adjust>Curves, and make this layer freaky bright. It won’t look natural at all, but that’s okay for now. You’re after as much of the detail in the iris as possible. Click OK.

6C. Sharpen the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. To do this, go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Slide the slider to 100 or so and click OK.

6D. Saturate the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. Go to Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Slide the saturation slider to the right a bit.

Here’s the resulting Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer, after curves, sharpening, and saturation:

6E. Now click on your Eyes Erased layer. Select the eraser tool, zoom in and! Erase the eyes. The result will look creepy as hell:

6F. Click on the top layer, called “Normal”. Adjust the opacity of this layer to reveal some of the freaky brightness underneath. Like this:

Slide the opacity thingy back and forth until the eyes look natural. Here’s the final result next to the original. Closer to what Nicolaus’ eyes really look like:

This trick is even more dramatic and effective when your subject has blue or green eyes.

STEP 7: Bring out textures
This will be quick because I’m being ousted from my perch on the couch. There’s a tool! Called the BURN tool. Or maybe it’s the dodge tool. Shit. It’s this one:

Click on it. Set it to burn shadows at between 8-10%.

Now brush over areas of your photo to see what it does. It should darken the creases of clothing, bring out the texture in woven fabric, leaves, grass, hair, fur, etc. It’s a subtle thing, but it can really add depth and cool professionalness to your photos.

***
My kids are pouring dry cereal all over my lap, so I’m going to stop here for now. You should have a nicely lit image, but this was written by someone who was being pelted with cereal so probably some of it doesn’t make sense. Please leave questions in the comments.

And! Coming soon! Color adjustment for emotional impact and converting to black and white. Ooooh and how to deal with graininess (short answer: add more natural light when you can. When you can’t, then use Photoshop tricks to work around the grain. Either by blurring, converting to black and white, and/or giving in to the grain and adding enough other graininess that the grain looks deliberate.)

This year was weird, but in many ways it was perfect. We begged everyone to scale back the hoopla and the gift giving, and most people did. The focus was on visiting with family and eating and watching the kids run around and argue over each other’s gifts, which is what the season is really about.

On Friday Nicolaus went to see Santa, who this year was kind of a silent cowboy Santa. He looked the part but didn’t have much to say. And Nicolaus said exactly nothing to him. No words. Nothing. Graham sat on his lap for fifteen seconds, and then started to gear up for a good “What in the fuck is wrong with you people” howl. And then we left.

Me and Nicolaus McGee leaving Santa’s Workshop at Firewheel Mall.

At the Santa place we bought a pound of fudge, which if you aren’t Christian and anyone ever asks you to explain why you bother to celebrate Christmas, I highly recommend holiday fudge as your complete answer. Although really, without the system of religious-based morality in place I’m not sure what’s stopping you from eating fudge for every single meal, every day of every year.

My brother James is in town, which is always awesome. His luggage was stolen out of the back of my mom’s car, which isn’t awesome. He’s sick over it. Favorite jeans, favorite shirts, favorite camoflauge baseball hat which I can’t figure out but whatever, two books about slums of the world and other socialistish concerns, and his journal filled with sketches, ideas, notes, and other things not easy to replace. Sucks. His special lady friend told him it was his Buddhist Christmas present because now travelling back will be easier, and posessions can be stressful. True. But even the best Buddhists like having clean underwear when they travel.

But everyone was in a pretty good mood on Christmas Eve. We ate good food and stayed up too late visiting on in front of the crackling fire DVD on my parents’ big-screen TV because like most people they are insane and do things like tear down their fireplace to put a built-in entertainment center. My grandmother gave the boys a subscription to National Geographic, Nicolaus’ dream of a perfect magazine. Lava and whales and knives all in one magazine? Oh yes. They also got a non-robotic toy horse, a set of foam blocks, a huge enormous book about the UNIVERSE, a radio flyer ride-on rocket ship that is awesomely cute, and a few books and DVDs.

Then cowboy Santa brought gifts: a wind-up lantern for Nicolaus and a bunch of little tweeting stuffed animal birds for Graham, which were all fittingly purchased at the last minute at the Bass Pro Shop which I’m positive would be the ultimate cowboy Santa headquarters. We lazed around while Kevin cooked a turkey dinner and it was all very yummy and happy and wonderful and magical because I didn’t have to cook it. The kids ate their body weight in corn on the cob and I hearby propose that in America we invent a holiday like Boxing Day but instead of Boxing Day we’ll call it Corn Poop Diaper Day.

Two other highlights I don’t want to forget to mention:
1. I never expected to receive Christmas cards from the internet! What a cool surprise. Thank you thank you!

2. Squirl sent the boys some things because she is crazy and nice in a way that I mysteriously do not find at all creepy. Nicolaus opened his bag and said, “Oh WOW! How did she know that I’m obsessed with dinosaurs? And she even knew I love cars!”

Um, gosh sweetie, I don’t know! It’s a Christmas miracle! Hush now, Mama’s trying to watch The Truman Show.

3. (Edited to add) If you have to ask yourself whether or not your child is ready to handle Night at the Museum, the answer is no. The movie will scare the holy living crap out of him, he will yell with fear AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! throughout almost every scene, and he will finally ask you to take him the hell home 45 minutes into it and then you’ll never find out what happens with Ben Stiller and that science nerd lady and whether Robin Williams gets with Sacagawea and whether the monkey character is ever fully fleshed out beyond the typical hollywood 2-dimensional depiction of a mischevious primate. And your kid will sleep with you for what I’m assuming will be many, many nights because a T.Rex is chasing him into your bed.

I hope your holidays were wonderful. Happy Corn Poop Diaper Day to you all!

Some of the questions I am most frequently asked – not counting “Did you see what your baby giraffe just did?” and “Did you? DID YOU SEE?” – are things like “Do you have some sort of special camera setting that allowed you to get that great shot?” and “Is it the camera? Is it magical? Do I need a magical camera to take pictures good?” and “Did you bribe your son to get him to pose so perfectly for that one?”

The answer is no. I didn’t see what the baby giraffe/science teacher did. The pose and the shot are almost pure dumb luck, I don’t know much about the technical side of photography. The final result for me is a mixture of photoshop and a highly discerning, almost godlike ability to throw all the crappy shots away.

COMPOSING THE PICTURE — Six easy steps to taking better shots right away
Part one of however many of these I do before I get bored and quit

1. Turn off your flash. But everything will be too dark! I know, that’s what the lord gave us Photoshop for. Most camera flashes make things look fake and weird.

2. Move closer. For pictures of kids and pets, crouch down to their level so that the camera is at their eye level. No matter what you’re shooting, getting as close as possible without having anyone spit up on your camera will improve your picture.

3. Take 100 pictures that suck. It’s a digital camera, this isn’t the mid-1930s, you aren’t my great grandmother – I promise you’re not being wasteful.

Here are a few of the sucky pictures I took the other day. As soon as I pulled out the camera, adorable window-side poses instantly turned into insane hopping and nose-picking and curtain-flapping. Graham took his pants off. Nicolaus hid, the baby found my lens cap and put it back on the camera. All of this is normal for a photo session, and should in no way diminish your chances for a getting a decent photo in the end. Just put your camera on the setting with the little running man, and click click click click like a stubborn crazy person.

4. Choose the one that doesn’t suck completely. This is subjective, but I generally look for one that isn’t all blurry or so bright that details were lost. I also like a picture that tells some sort of story or reveals something about who or what we’re looking at. Too dark is okay, fixable clutter is okay.

5. Crop out the crap. Some purists don’t ever crop a photo after the fact. That’s fine as a creative exercise to force yourself to stretch artistically, but for the purpose of this tutorial I am going to assume that you’re not trying to impress anyone with your amazing pureness. You just want to have your friends go “Oooh – did YOU take that?”
So open photoshop and crop your photo.

I like for the subject of my photo to touch at least two edges of the frame, but that’s just me. You do whatever you feel man enough to do, so long as you crop out anything that distracts or isn’t needed for the story you’re trying to tell.

6. Clone out the other crap. But that’s cheating! REAL photographers don’t clone things out! REAL photographers rearrange the world so that there is never a tree branch sticking out behind anyone’s head and never a big booger on their child’s cheek and never a laptop on the chair in the background. That’s nice. Real photographers are awesome. I clone out the crap.

You can find nice tutorials all over the internet on how to use the clone tool. Do it.

So yeah. More tomorrow! Lighting adjustment, color balance, magazine tricks, and convert your images to black and white like an artypants superstar.