Meet Ryan.

I'd like to introduce Ryan Daniel Morris, all 6 pounds and 15 ounces of him. Ryan made his entrance to the outside world at 5:27 PM last evening. Mother and baby are doing fine.

Don't know much about his personality, as yet, but he seems to be fairly mellow and as curious about the world as a guy less than 24 hours old can be. This isn't the "sweetest" baby photo a grandfather could lead off with. For some reason it's the photo that appeals to me the most. It's like Ryan is torn between wanting to go back to sleep and keeping an eye on what I'm doing with the camera.

As babies do, Ryan finally succumbed to the Sandman's persuasion. Nothing like Mama's warm lap and Homer Simpson to conk a baby out!

Anyway, since I mentioned the coming event several times, I figured I'd put a few photos up and do a bit of showing off. There's a photo floating around of me holding Ryan, but I'm sparing you my face. The baby's cuter!

The birthing center room was a hard place to take photographs in. There are some weirdly yellowish colored incandescent lights in the room. Any adjustments I did to the white balance made everything turn towards the cold side of the color spectrum. In other words, it all came out looking blue. I shot in raw so eventually I can go back and do some fancy editing. To complicate the exposure issue, one whole wall of the room is open glass and the sun was streaming in. I ended up spot metering on Ryan while letting the window light overexpose. Like the photo below.

Mostly we were busy fussing over the baby so I was content getting a few decent shots with the G11. I probably could have done a bit more with a bounce flash, but decided to let it go for now. These are enough for memories. I'm hoping for a lot of time to concentrate on baby pictures coming up! My daugher's going back to work in 6 weeks and Katie will be watching Ryan a few days a week. Okay, me, too! How fun.

I know everybody says this, but you do forget how small these things are. Our baby is turning 22 in a few months. It's been a bit since we held a new one. The hands and arms remember what to do without any trouble. What an awesome experience holding Ryan for the first time!

We've already had to make a couple of prints for Katie to show around. That's a sweet advantage of digital photography. No line or waiting on Computer 2!

Miles and smiles,

Dan