I recently had the pleasure of going to the other side of the country to visit my brother and his family and celebrate one of my niece's fourth birthday. It was a great visit. I spent time with my family, played with my two little nieces and took a bunch of photographs. I've only included the birthday girl in the photos below because watching her celebrate reminded me of how fun life can be. She has such a great imagination and general enthusiasm that it doesn't matter if she's by herself or the leader of the pack with her friends and her little sister, she's going to enjoy life. It's easy to get caught up in life and think that innocent bliss is just for little kids like my niece, but we can all let ourselves go every now and then and feel free doing different things we love, spending time away from social media and television, laughing with our friends, and actually experiencing life.

The photos I've posted below show my niece in her true form, putting everything she has into blowing out the candles on her Minnie Mouse cake. It's a bit of a family tradition for us to be weirdos, so she's right there with her face painted. My two brothers were painting the kids' faces a little bit before the cake was around. My niece wanted to be a bunny. It came out great and she looked incredibly adorable, but I won't deny that she looked like the tiniest member of the Insane Clown Posse for the afternoon. My favorite photo of the day was the last photo I've posted, which is of her hands just covered in face paint, markers, crayons, and cake ... all the signs of an honest day of work. Happy Birthday! Enjoy! -Josh

song of the moment: "In My Tree" by Pearl Jam

This winter seems more unbearably cold than I can remember recent winters being, but every now and then you get a glimmer of hope and the temperature doesn't start with a 0, 1, 2, or 3 and it hits the 40s! We had one of those days recently in Boston. It may have even hit 50 at one point in the day. Needless to say, I was excited and got to wander the city with my camera and my incredibly patient girlfriend, Angie. She knows I like to look around and see how the light is playing off of a building, or through a tree, or (her favorite ... right?) shining on her face. On this particular day we were walking midday through dusk and I was really enjoying how the harsh sun was beaming down on the city. I've included three photos below; all very different from each other. Angie proved her high level patience once again while we caused a detour on the sidewalk of Boylston Street. The sun was shining directly through the street blinding everyone walking westward and creating a silhouette of everything. Typically, one wouldn't want to be photographing a whole lot in this situation, but with using Angie's pretty head as a light shield, I was able to create a nice, heavenly, warm glow around her with the wind blowing and have a "sun star" emerge from her head. We had a lot of fun and laughs creating the shot.

The other two shots were all about shutter speed. If anybody has seen much of my work, you know I'm a bit obsessed with trees, particularly those that are dead or have lost their leaves for the winter. The sun was a bit higher (midday sun) for the second photo and shining directly through the branches of this hibernating tree. On these days, I like to experiment and even though I didn't necessarily have to be at a shallow depth of field for this shot, I wanted to be in order to shoot at very high shutter speed that I wouldn't normally have the option of shooting at. 1/6400 of a second was the resulting number and created a nice little flair from the sun and a natural framing from the branches. The final shot also came from a very fast shutter speed (1/3200 of a second). This time the shallow depth of field was important for my finished product and I wanted to create a shot to look as close to night as I could even though there was still about an hour and half of daylight remaining. Hopefully you like the result as much I did creating it. Enjoy the day! - Josh

song of the moment: "Love Like A Sunset" by Phoenix