We went for our portrait photography field trip today at Newlin Grist Mill Park.  It was an overcast day, but at least it stayed dry out and we had plenty of soft light to work with.  The park itself was beautiful, and was an excellent place to take portraits at with many photogenic scenes and locations.

Here are a few ducks that I got pictures of:

I’m sure I’ll have some of my portraits posted over at www.kelleherphoto.com shortly.

Bridget and I had a wonderful time at Ava’s second birthday party. She is just adorable and getting so big.

Here are some pictures from the party:

You can see all of the pictures here.

Bridget and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show after work on Wednesday. It was nice because it was much, much less crowded going on a weeknight this year… last year we went on the opening day, Sunday, and it was packed with wall to wall people.

Unfortunately the displays this year didn’t seem anywhere near as beautiful or impressive as they were last year.

I did get plenty of pictures though, here are a few:

   

   

You can see all of the pictures here.

We met up with Jenn and Madeline yesterday at the Smith Memorial Playhouse in Fairmount Park. It is a really need place to visit with kids, and Madeline sure had a great time playing there.

Here are some of the pictures that I took:

   

You can see all of the pictures here.

Here are some new pictures that I took of Halley, Ben and Mia too!

Bridget and I had a wonderful time my our niece Carly’s second birthday party. She is just adorable and getting so big.

Here are some pictures from the party:
You can see all of the pictures here.

I went to Longwood Gardens on Saturday for a Lensbaby workshop given by Mike Hagan with some other members of the Chester County Camera Club. Lensbabies are a special selective focus SLR camera lens. They allow you to tilt and shift the front lens element, which will move the focal plane around so you can put one thing into focus and blur other parts of the image around it. Now you could do the same thing using Photoshop, but using a real lens is lots of fun. Some people like the effect (I think it adds a neat artsy flair to pictures, especially flowers), while other people don’t like it (Bridget doesn’t like the effect much).

Here are some of the pictures that I took:

You can see all of the pictures here.

Merry Christmas to all of our family and freinds.

We had a bit of a scare right before Christmas, because Halley got very sick. He wasn’t eating at all, and anytime he would drink something he would throw it up right away. We called the emergency line at the vet that night, and the next morning took Halley in. Turns out he is diabetic and he had a very high blood glucose level. He stayed overnight to get IV fluids and insulin to stabilize him, and the vet sent him home the next day (Christmas Eve) because he wouldn’t eat for the vet, but would start eating for us.

Thankfully he is doing better now and eating and drinking normally. We are giving him insulin every 12 hours, and will take him in again next week so the vet can monitor his blood glucose levels and get the exact dose that he will need.

Anyway, here are some pictures from our Christmas day:

You can see all of the pictures here.

I finally got caught up with everything and now have all of our pictures posted from our vacation in Maui, Hawaii.

The first day it was overcast… it was raining very heavily with strong winds for almost a week the day we arrived. Most hotels were even without power for 24+ hour periods, it was so bad… we met many people that were very upset since they had been there a week and stuck inside the whole time. Thankfully the weather was very nice for us, with just scattered showers here and there but never all day, and the temps stayed in the 80’s.

We went to the Maui Ocean Center for our first outing, here are some fish pictures:

We also took advantage of the ocean, which was perfect for swimming, snokeling cruises (we went on 2 different ones!), and whale watching:

The view from our oceanfront room at the Maui Prince was beautiful, we were treated to sunset views every evening:

We also throughly explored the island, including some places you aren’t allowed to drive a rental car to, and we very impressed with the beauty of Maui:

And beaches:

Here’s a lava flow on the one side of Maui:

And here’s a large Green Sea Turtle, about 3 feet long and at least 100 pounds, that I was able to get very close to:

And more sights:

And for our last night, we switched hotels to stay at the Grand Wailea. This hotel has one of the largest and most beautiful pools in the world, including all kinds of slides, rivers, and even the world’s only water elevator (which was lots of fun to ride!):

You can see all of the pictures here.