Blowing in the wind

Raining all week...

I was coming home the other night, and a storm was brewing. The cloud formations were amazing and a lightning storm seemed to be taking place, seemingly, behind the clouds...the best vantage spot I could find was my roof, so that's where I went...while there and after many misses at trying to actually get the lightning, I got this shot. The white edifice is the top of the Port Colborne City Hall. Though of doing this in black and white, but there's something ominous about the colour, so I decided to leave it.

More pictures of Emerson coming...also pictures of a nest with eggs, mom and birdies, waiting for the eggs to hatch.

Anyday has come...

UPDATE! I forgot to mention that he weighed 8 pounds. Just a little more than all the rest. The midwife visited last night and mentioned that if all births were like this she wouldn't be a midwife. And I suppose we wouldn't have five kids. And lastly, he peed for the first time last night, all over dad.

Well after all the false labour and after making the last one, the hardest of all DeFreitas' births. Emerson Ayerton Willik DeFreitas is home.

Emerson was born yesterday morning, 22nd of May, 2008 at 5:15AM. Emerson was stuck for the longest time not being able to go into the birth canal. I'll spare you the story. Long story short, after a very painful night for my beautiful, although very tired wife, Emerson was born. Contractions started at 8AM the previous day.

We're all happy to have Emerson home. You can see more photos of Emerson by linking to the photo above.

Any Day Now...

Tomorrow (21st) is d-day. We'll see.

You can link from the above photo to the rest of our pregnancy shots at our flicker site.

False Alarm!

Update: If didn't read the post yet, yesterday Vania was in labour all day long. She was also throwing up along with having other movements, anyway, that along with contractions is a sure sign that the baby is coming, most of the time. Today Vania feels much better and no contractions and no baby coming. So, the best we can figure it out, she got some kind of bug. The throwing up etc, led to the contractions, but that's as far as it went. Like I said, she feels much better today. Anyway, disappointing. It'll come when it's ready though.

Vania's been saying like she's feeling like it's going to be different with this kid. Well, so far this is proving to be true. We started the day with the onset of labour. And went through the whole affair until about 6PM and then, it all just stopped. No more contractions, just stopped.

Now, false labour is not unheard of, however, it's never happened to us. So doing that for a whole day kind of brings you to a place of expectancy, and when it just stops, it leaves you, well, not knowing what to do, say, think...it leaves you wondering if baby's ok?

Anyway, baby seems to be ok, although a lot less active, but if I'd gone through what he went through today, I probably would be inactive as well. And so, now, we wait. Vania's trying to keep herself busy cleaning this and that...

It could be that we might still make it to the hospital tonight, but who knows. Okay, God does.

Another Hamilton at Night

Don't know what it is about this shot, but I really like it.

Hamilton at Night

So, the photo show is over. All in all I was pleased with the results. It was financially profitable and it's lead to two photography assignments (two family shoots)...which scare me to death, but have me excited at the same time. I'll keep you updated.

More fun with Photoshop...

Last week, Ashlee, a friend from church, threw a 70's themed party/dance/fundraiser. We all got to dress up in 70's garb, have some good food, boogie and have an all around great time. Funds raised went to bring freedom to a Dalit woman in India. The Dalit are at the very bottom of the Indian social ladder. And just so you know, it's such a long ladder, they are not even considered people in the Indian system.

We decided to have everyone take a photo with a cutout of Austin Powers and then I had some fun in photoshop. There are many different ways of extracting people away from backgrounds. I tried out as many as I could find and figure out. Only advice I'll give here, is be patient when you first start.

We're doing another one of these in the Fall, so we're going to sell the photography to raise money for whatever charity then. What I'll be doing then, is create some backgrounds people can see and choose from and I'll shoot them in front of a sheet backdrop...I'm going to have a black sheet up and a white sheet up...that'll make it really easy to extract people later in photoshop. I might need a third sheet of some weird color, just in case someone comes in black and white :)

Anyway, just thought I'd show you something else done in photoshop. Sky's the limit.