I’m slowly sifting through the Christmas pictures, many of which were rendered blurry by SteelyKid’s constant motion, but there are some good shots in there:
This one shows her playing with the wooden train set she got from Grandma and Grandpa (the same gauge as the Thomas branded ones they have set up at Barnes & Noble stores, though without the price-doubling connection to a tv show, which is fine by us). She spent a bunch of time running the train around and over and under the bridge, which was really cute, as you can tell.
(This was taken before I got the fancy flash unit, if you’re closely monitoring my photo quality. We spread her gifts out over a few days, so as to reduce the overstimulation on Christmas morning. We’ve actually still got a couple from me and Kate that we’re saving for this weekend…)
That’s about the age my guys got into trains. We kept them away from Thomas videos to encourage a true appreciation of train culture for as long as possible. Brio tracks are better quality, but for the basic stuff quality isn’t much of a concern.
We were lucky enough to inherit a collection of Brio from a friend whose kids had outgrown them, and we then passed them on to more friends when our daughter outgrew them. The things are really sturdy.
Did she engineer the track layout? Lots of creative play in that aspect of trains. Encourage it.
Two photo observations:
1) The warm colors in that photo are often superior to what you get with a bigger flash unless you explore using the various diffuser and filter options for something like a Speedflash.
2) Blurring can be good. It makes for great race photography, for example. You have two choices: hold your shot on the train track and get blurry kid in action (probably the best choice here) or track the kid and let the background blur. You can put your d = vt skillz to work figuring out what your shutter speed means for a given shot.
There are also interesting effects when the flash freezes one instant of the photo but ambient light shows before and after as a blur. Experiment with a flash while using an exposure time long enough so a flash is not really needed (shutter priority on the camera).
Ah, Brio… I haven’t played with that for at least fifteen years now. It was always excellent quality and very durable. I remember being bribed with some of the fancier connecting pieces (such as a one-in, 3-out piece) by my parents for various things. I’m glad to see that Brio lives on!