The portrait below is taken at a place in my parents living room where the light is excellent for taking pictures. There are windows to the left of my niece, but also windows a little further away on the right side. She always has a smile on her face, but I caught her in a moment where she was probably looking at something.

The second picture is taken at a coffee shop downtown – even though the background doesn’t reveal that at all! I caught her walking towards me, and I like that the colors in the background are neutral while her clothes are so colorful.

Have a great week whatever you’re doing

F’s been in great shape these past weeks, and Saturday at my cousin’s house was no exception:

Frida has really enjoyed December. It only took her a couple of days of advent calendar to learn how to open presents (almost) on her own!

The first party of the month was at our place, a late 1 year birthday celebration for the 5 other November babies we’ve spent so much time with in 2009. In true Christmas spirit, Frida shared her bread with one of her little friends. (Isn’t that what it looks like on the picture? What actually happened was that she stole the bread that he was eating…)

Daddy’s birthday was celebrated with much enthusiasm – maybe not so much by thebirthday boy, but Frida didn’t even have to be asked to help opening the presents! I suspect she thought it was part of her advent calendar All the attention from four grandparents was just a bonus.

The 13th day of the month is in the name of Saint Lucia, and Frida’s kindergarden did the mandatory celebration. She was of course the most adorable in the crowd, and we all brought our cameras to take her picture.

The kindergarden also hosted a Santa party one of the last days before Christmas. Dress code: red! On the menu: Christmas rice porridge!

Aunt M and uncle Ø weren’t able to be here for Christmas, so they came for a visit the week before. Frida was very happy to see them, but missed her cousin Nanok, the giant dog. Well, to be honest I don’t think she missed him at all, the last time she saw him she started crying whenever he barked…

Aunt S and cousin Stellatronic were here all Christmas, and we got to spend a lot of time with them.

My sister and I had a challenging afternoon trying to take a picture of the two cousins… together…both facing the camera… not crying… You get the picture This is what we ended up using for the month of December in the 2010 calendar we made for our parents:

I hope you all had a great Christmas, and that the new year will bring lots of joy!

Last Friday my uncle, aunt and 2 cousins with their families surprised my mom and dad for their 60th birthday. (My dad’s birthday is this Thursday, while my mom begins a new decade in November.) Espen and I were fortunate enough to be invited for the surprise, and I took some pictures to record their surprised faces. You can see the pictures here.

Earlier this summer E brought our Canon Ixus 850 camera to a bar where somebody managed to spill beer on it. As this was a new camera (bought last December), we were hoping for the best, but a camera that only takes pictures of black nothing isn’t very useful… The Ixus is supposed to be a good quality camera, but I was never really satisfied with it. Because we needed a camera for our vacation, I decided to do something I’ve thought about for a while, namely buy a digital SLR camera. I remember liking the Canon SLR EOS 500 I bought in ‘94, so I again chose Canon over Nikon. The 400D was in my price range, but I wanted something more versatile than the cheap standard lens. After some googling and talking to a couple of photo experts at work, I decided that Canon’s EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM and Sigma’s 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC Macro would suit my needs. They’re both good all-round lenses, and more zoom could lower the quality of my pictures. I ended up buying the Sigma. Even though it lacks the image stabilization and has less zoom, I’ll be able to use lower shutter speed – and the price was considerably lower.

As the proud owner of a brand new SLR camera, I’m hoping my vacation to Italy will provide lots of opportunities to try out the features of my 400D. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to posting some pictures here. Have a great couple of weeks y’all!