Alex waiting patiently Christmas morning to open packages.

We had a good Christmas. How about you?

It snowed about an inch on Christmas Eve. It was so pretty coming down. We turned on the outside light around 8:00 p.m. and just sat in the sun room with a cup of homemade egg nog (yes, I used raw eggs) and watched it snow. Perfection! When we got up Christmas morning and opened the curtains to that covering of white it was picture perfect. The snow mostly melted during the day when it warmed up to the high 30’s.

We had a small Christmas (meaning not many gifts) but the gifts we did get and receive were not as small. I thought it was pretty funny that both Rick and I gave each other a kind of camera! I gave him a time-lapse camera because he spends his days around cameras that do the opposite (high-speed slow motion) and I thought he needed to slow down a bit.

He gave me a Lytro camera, which I had never heard of before. It’s just a tiny little thing that can be easily popped into a pocket and taken along. It takes “living” pictures. I’ll be featuring them in my blog from now on in combination with normal photos. For the Lytro pics you can click on various spots of the photo and it will come in to focus as other parts go out of focus. I have added a perspective feature to most of them which makes the photo look 3D (depending on how deep my depth of field was in that particular photo) and you can click and drag to explore the photo a bit more. Try it with this photo I took of Hailey in the foreground and Bella in the distance.

See how her head pops out of the photo? Cool, eh?

So, how does the magic happen? I’m not too up on the technical bits but here is a brief explanation from Rick.
“Called a “light field” camera or “plenoptic camera”. A digital camera that acquires images in a whole new way, then uses complex computations to render the photos. Each pixel you see in the photo is actually imaged by many different pixels with different focal distances. All this data is later used to computationally render the photo.” Hmm … clear as mud, right? All you really need to focus on (Hah, pun, get it?) it that it takes cool photos.

Here are a couple more.

We spent the day playing with our new toys, taking the dogs for a walk and cooking our Christmas meal of Duck in orange sauce, two-potato gratin and roasted brussels sprouts with homemade profiteroles for dessert.

Yesterday we ventured out of the house and into town for a few things, then took the dogs down the road to Green Turtle Pond for an off-leash run. Brrr it was cold—below freezing! Just like littlel kids, the dogs had to step on every frozen puddle and break the ice. It was a game to them.

Then yesterday afternoon it snowed again, as predicted, while we watched the movie “Inception.” I may never think the same way about my dreams again! We got about four to four and a half inches of nice snow before it turned to freezing rain, then rain. I took these two shots just as it was turning to freezing rain. The trees were coated in what looked like white cotton candy and looked very strange. I hope you appreciate these photos because I went out in my slippers and bathrobe to take them! You can see my footprints in the snow on the steps for depth.

They say we are getting more snow on Saturday. I guess winter has arrived in New Jersey!

The camera is very cool.  Did the ‘kids’ like their presents?  We got a little snow last night, but all gone with rain this morning.  So far nothing to shovel, but maybe not so lucky for Saturday.  Colder temps on the way too.

C, yes I think they did. They found their wrapped bones before they had opened all the toys so the toys were forgotten. Our snow is solid slush today and it’s been flurrying all morning long. Not sticking though. I thought for sure you’d get some measurable snow out of this last one.

That is way too cool…modern technology is…wow.  Of course I am still trying to figure out how a fax machine works…LOL
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you both!

Debra, I don’t completely understand how this camera works either but it’s easy enough to point it and shoot a photo!
Merry Christmas/Happy New Year to you too!

This Lytro thing blows my mind. I love that first photo of the dogs. I showed it to Dave and he said, “Shut up! No way!” How big are the file sizes? I wonder if it’s like recording a single photo in several layers?

Steve, it pretty much blows my mind too!! The dog photo is the best example I think I’ve managed to take a photo of so far. It’s challenging at best to search out things that will take advantage of the what the camera is capable of doing. It’s pretty much in the photographer’s hands as to how well a job the camera does!

I don’t know how big the file sizes are since the photos I think will work get uploaded to Lytro’s site and processed there, from which I copy the embed code to use on the blog. Rick says he’ll do some research and get back to you, but he says the file size is not outrageous. I know I can take oodles of photos on the camera itself before it fills up the memory.

No, it’s not like recording a single photos in several layers. It’s different. I will have Rick send you a private email to go into the technology a bit more if you’d like. It’s above my geek register I’m afraid!