Hello all.

My son Calvin Weston was born on November 15th, and I decided to start a website and post a photo a day for all our relatives to keep track of him and a funny diary type thing written by Cal. I am in no way a portrait photographer, in fact I consider myself horrible at it, so this is absolutely new ground for me. All the photos were taken in our house (except for one at Garfield Park Conservatory) and I used no lighting other than table lamps, etc... It has been fun and a challenge to say the least.

Calvin Weston

Let me know how I am doing and any pointers you can give me.

Happy Holidays!

Hello Bry, I am no photographer nor do I pretend to be one. Your work is great. The whole idea behind it provides you with an invaluable record for you and your son.
I love the pictures, their quality and composition are A++ in my book. I think you are doing a great job.

congratulations on the new addition and keep shooting.
regards,

Jim

I love the concept. I wasn't super taken with the photos, but there were definitely great ones in there. It will be interesting to see how your photography evolves through this project. Keep it up!

beautiful baby!

great site and awesome shots, keep them going...

What a great idea Cute baby

Jenna

Beautifully crafted with love. Terrific!

Paul S

Love the idea. You need more light.

Doing the type of photography you normally do, I am guessing you like low ISO settings. In this case, I'd suggest you bump up the iso to 800 or more to enable a smaller aperture and bigger DoF. You can clean up any noise after the fact.

Keep it up.

Thanks for all the kind words!

I am taking a lot of this late at night, and most definitely struggling with light. Most all the shots are with a 1ds Mark II and the 50mm f1.4 at mostly f1.4 to get as much light as possible. I am normally too tired to set up lights, and have tried bumping up the ISO, but I am no Photoshop guy, only using lightroom, and noise reduction in Lightroom is slight at best.

I added some shots that didn't make the P.A.D. shots and also added an email address to email Calvin and a Q and A page. My family is loving this!

I go back to work on Monday, so the challenge of getting a good shot will be increased!

Thanks again to all for the kind words!

Great idea Bryan. My wife is due in Feb 2 with our first and I might steal your idea of a website and pics to keep family updated...

Dec 9 is my favorite.

Thanks MK, feel free to steal away. I think it is going to turn out to be a great little gift for Cal one day. And trust me, your wife will love it. My wife cries everytime she looks through it. She still cannot believe he is here and is loving every second of it.

Well, it is 2 days away from being the half way point in my year long attempt at a photo a day of my wonderful son Calvin. This thing has grown into quite the little experiment. I think I am getting slightly better photography wise, but the big thing about this is how this is actually turning into a diary for him to read when he gets older. It was also just going to be a "for family and friends" site except for my one post here, but the Chicago Tribune was somehow notified about the site and their Chicago Baby Magazine did an article on it ( Found here http://www.chicagoparent.com/article.asp?aID=38199885.3669199.74503.6110743.411265.850&aID2=5722 ) so it has really grown into a completely different project.

He is truly an incredible gift, and boy has he been an easy subject to take. I am still doing this with all natural lighting and totally spur of the moment with absolutely nothing planned.

Please check it out and most definitely leave comments if there has been an improvement or not since my first shot.

Peace,

Bry

www.calvinweston.net

cool project! lucky kiddo

Just an update. The boy's site was hacked about a month ago and I had to lock it down to family only. Someone from an IP address in India decided to steal all the photos off it (I am an I.T. guy and had some monitoring tools on it). So unfortunately if anyone was here checking my progress, all the fun ended.

I think I am getting better, still doing only natural light, but I am most definitely mastering the use of F-Stop and ISO to get the desired effect.

Peace,

Bry

Well, I am 16 days away from finishing this "project." I have learned a bunch about photography, but more importantly, I have learned 1000x more about my son than I would have if I didn't do this. I would highly suggest this, the only downfall was I did not get to tuck him into bed as much as I would have liked. I figure I spent over 600 hours this year with this project. And I gotta tell you, it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Especially during the week when I would normally have a 2 hour window to get a shot, all the while eating dinner and giving him a bath and enjoying time with him.

As always, your input is greatly appreciated...

Peace,

Bry

Hy Bry,

It sounds like you put a lot of creative energy into this project.

And that it paid off for you and your family. No doubt your child will have something really nice and fun to learn about when he is older.

One of your last post above states that someone hacked your site and took off all the photos.

Have you identified why? Or the culprit? Or how the photos were used or misused?

Since you are IT savvy, what would you tell others about that (warnings, caution, risks, feelings when it happened)?

I ask this because the net surprises me from time to time. This surprised me and while it may not surprise others, I would like to learn what YOU think about the situation. Would you share that with us please?

For example, has it made you more cautious or reluctant to post photos of your children etc?

Sincerely,
Steady

Sure steady...

We use a few network tools at work that monitor activity on our systems and when something out of the ordinary takes place, emails are sent. I just so happened to add my site to the system. I got an email at about 2 am that my site was getting attacked with a bot trying to figure out the password and it actually got it. It is a REALLY strong password, but apparently not strong enough. I think it may have been a backdoor password that is given to new BluDomain customers. I am on BluDomain and they use the same passwords over and over again on clients, so I have a 99% feeling it was that. Strange enough, 3 days before, I was placed on BluDomain's New Clients added page. Go figure.

It was weird because my site was not downloaded, only my boys photos that were not in an embedded flash site, so they were easily downloaded. Whoever did it downloaded the entire site.

I have a feeling that it was stolen because of the BluDomain thing and stealing for clipart. I have no idea if they have been used or if they ever will, but it scared me that my boy may be in an ad someday for something. I was actually more worried about someone finding out my location from the photos and all the personal stuff on the site. But then again, it is a site that gets about 60 hits a day, so who would want to do something. I did ease up a lot on the personal stuff, that is for sure.

I had it locked down for over 2 months but opened back up.

The net is a great thing and open to the entire world. Every word or thing you do on it is documented for the life of the internet in some way or another, so I should have been a little more careful about it, but then again, it is a harmless site of my lovely boy.

hi Bry,

Thanks for telling us the stuff about the problem you had. That may help someone else in the future.

I am sorry that it happened to you and your nice project.

Best wishes for a safe and fun experience for your projects in the future.

__

I found some of my photos being used on a site that mixed them in with other photos NOT by me (and ugly ones at that). The site claims to be built to help people know about me. Seems like a nice idea right? Some might think it is "free" promotion of a professional by using a profile etc..

The tricky thing is that there is NO contact info for that site. It seems to be a SCAM where they suggest you contact another "independent" third party who (for a fee of course) can help you remove the mistakes in your "profile."

I have encountered this a few times on the net, and it is always from some bot sweeping and finding the good stuff and then throwing it into a mix. The effort and time to extract or clean that up is what make them money or allows them to continue to use it.

When they are anonymous, it becomes difficult or impossible for the average person to make any progress against it. This is like the scam where someone has written a nasty note or graffiti about someone in some place visible, then stands by and offers to help you clean it off the wall....for a price. Notice they are equipped with cleaning gear and just happen to be standing next to the problem.

Okay. I don't mean to "bump" this thread, and I am really not advertising the photography on the site...

BUT DANGIT, I PULLED THIS OFF!!!!!

One year, every day, I took a semi decent photo of my beautiful boy and posted it every night on the website. 365 straight days. With all that needs to be done to a newborn plus working a full time job and my wife working a full time job, I have no idea how I pulled this off, but I did.

22013 shots in one year of one person, over 1000 posted to the site. That is something like 1 shot ever 20 minutes of the boys life. CRAZY!!!!

All I know is I think I improved as a photographer, I most definitely saw my boy grow more than I would have, and I most certainly had the time of my life.

But I think the camera will stay off today. Day 367 of his life. It is time to rest and just enjoy his presence for a few days.

Thanks to all that checked in and emailed me about it. What a ride.

And I actually did it. Amazing!

Great photos! beautiful son!

My only suggestion is to get lower... at his level.... bring viewer into his world! :-)

bryPT wrote:
And I actually did it. Amazing!

OK?

Very cool idea and site. I will deff have to consider something like this when my first is born next july.

Good job Dad!!!!

Great work Bry. Being a father of two girls (almost 5) and (about to turn 1) I can appreciate what you have done. A very cool project with great results, I am sure your son will one day appreciate what you have done.

Awesome

Scott