Fionnuala started kindergarten today, and even though she’s been going to preschool for a couple of years, there’s no denying that her first day of real school is a landmark.

She’s been increasingly excited as the day approached, and was the first one down this morning, anxious not to be late.

I wanted to get a shot of her getting ready herself, to show both her growing independence and how little she still looks to us. That contrast between growing up and still being a so young seemed to be what today was about.

Wearing her new strawberry socks (held back for today) and sitting at the top of the stairs, this one gets close to what I was after.

I had the wrong lens on for this really (the 24-105mm f/4L). It’s pretty dark in the hall, so I had to push the ISO up and there’s still a little motion blur on her fingers. I also adjusted the exposure compensation down 1/3 of a stop – partly to get me a faster shutter speed, but mainly to show that it wasn’t bright in the hall (and play up some of that reflected light on the concrete from the bathroom window at the back). A ‘perfectly exposed’ shot here would have looked too bright to me, and I didn’t mind losing the shadow detail around her skort.

Hand-held at 1/10 sec is not recommended, but the image stabilization seems to have helped quite a bit. A fast lens (like one of the primes I normally use) would have been the better choice for a faster shutter speed, and blurred the background a little more, but we were just heading out the door. Sometimes you just have to get the shot with whatever you can.

Details: Canon 5D, AV mode, 1/10 sec, f/4.0, 47mm, ISO 1600, -1/3EV.
Aperture work: slight crop, noise reduction, manual white balance adjustment, vignette added, shadows and highlights tweaked.

It’s been a busy summer here, with lots of web work and a trip back to England. But we’ve had some time to relax a little.

Here’s Fionnuala on the fake grass in her golf attire. She hits a ball with a piece of PVC pipe into our rock-covered drop inlet. I’ve no idea how she learned about golf, but her version is pretty accurate.

I like the simplicity of this image’s composition, with strong angles, lots of the green offset with the splash of colour in the stripey socks. And the fact that she’s got her shoes on the wrong way round.

Image info:  Canon 5D, EF 50mm f/1.4, ISO 250, f/5.6, 1/50

My daughter on the way to the Pancakes on the Plaza event in Santa Fe. Happy 4th to all my US friends.

A few shots from today’s visit to the Rodeo de Santa Fe matinee.

The evenings are better for flattering light, but not so great for a five-year old who’d been playing soccer at 8am.

And I got to wear my cowboy hat, which is quite the big deal for an Englishy-Irishy guy like me.

Just had a few days in Southern California, which included some Disneyland time, as you can see from the above shot our our daughter at the end of a busy day.

As a confirmed Disney sceptic before I first went to the park last year, I’m now something of a zealous convert.

This is partly because the whole thing makes my daughter so happy, which is hard for a parent to argue with.

But it’s partly because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about running companies based on core passions and painstaking implementation, and few organizations do that as well as Disney.

I’ll expound on this later, but it brings to mind something Dr Phil McGraw has been heard to say (he’s another thing I thought I’d hate but actually came to value). He argues that bring up children requires two things: ‘You’ve got to love your kids, and have a really good plan.’

I think the same is true of businesses – large or small. The people at the top need to have a real passion for what they do or else there’ll never care enough about it or be able to pass on the required commitment and enthusiasm to their employees.

But they also need a well-thought out set of plans for who does what, why and when – which should obviously draw its inspiration from the original passion and vision.

Like I say, there’ll be a lot more from me on this sort of topic in the near future, but that’s it for now.

As you’re probably aware, a malicious Icelandic volcanic ash cloud has gummed up the works good and proper over here in Europe. No flights across 20 countries since Thursday. We’re supposed to leave Dublin tomorrow (Monday) but our flight’s one of the many that just never happened.

We’re rebooked on Thursday, but it’s anyone’s guess at this stage if that flight’s going anywhere either.

It sounds nice to be forced to stay longer, but it’s not a vacation if you can’t go home. Especially if you’re traveling with a four year old.

We’ve scored some accommodation for the next couple of nights, and I’ll have internet access intermittently for emergency work, but if you could send happy thoughts my way (and tell Aer Lingus to offer some actual customer service) that would be nice.

Here in Santa Fe, the snow’s finally melting (most of it off our roof and into our spare room, but anyway) and today was the first time that my daughter and I could hang out under the portal outside our living room without gloves, hats and snowboots.

I’ve been busy with web work recently, for which I’m grateful, but I’ve not been shooting as much as I should. So the camera’s been sitting there reproachfully, but today I grabbed it when we went outside.

And of course, it was taking photos of my daughter that got me excited about photography again so chatting away to her while I took some shots was nicely revivifying (which is hard to spell, but I think that’s the word I want).

I ran this shot through one of Aperture 3′s cross-processing presets for extra contrasty and saturated goodness. Now that Apple have released version 3.0.1, Aperture seems stable enough that you can actually use it without worrying about crashes all the time, and its new features are impressive.

Christmas Eve might already seem a long way away as we head into mid-January, but I’ve just had a chance to look through some of the pictures I took around Canyon Road that cold night a few weeks ago.

It’s a Santa Fe Christmas Eve tradition to light farolitos – nothing more than a night light in a brown paper bag weighed down with sand – and the area around Canyon Road hosts thousands of them, and hundreds who bundle up to come out to see them.

There’s a beautiful simplicity to them, especially if there’s snow on the ground.
So here’s a blast of good cheer for you.

Before 2009 disappears entirely from memory, there’s just time for me to follow up my pick of my 2009 personal work with these favourites from my work for my fantastic clients.

I was lucky enough to meet some great children (and their parents) over the year, and we ended up with some lovely images.

Here’s to a great 2010 to all of you.

Happy Holidays, everyone.