Anticipating that a newer version will be announced shortly, I sold my trusted Canon 7D body this evening to an up-and-coming photographer. Unlike lenses which retain much of their initial value (especially when purchased second-hand), the market for cameras is quite the opposite. The rate of technological innovation is very rapid making a 3-year-old body about as desirable as an equally old computer. At this point, the next-generation camera is not going to improve my photography but I do take pleasure in using state-of-the-art tools.

I found an indoor soccer team from Acton to play with for the next session and contributed one goal and four assists in my first appearance for them. I was then recruited to play a second game with a team that was short of players. I have a lot of work to do to get in shape for the outdoor season. I played well enough but was dragging my butt by the end of the game. No injuries and another goal for the night so I have nothing to complain about.

The Mattison Field wooden stave water tower is a reminder of the days when such water tanks were characteristic of the Concord landscape and when farming was a way of life for many Concordians. As the only remaining visible mark of the dairy farm that flourished on the land for most of the past century, the water tower has become much more than a structure once used for pumping and storing water. It is a symbol of a bygone era when Concord was primarily a farming community. Located less than a half mile from our home I pass it every day on the way into town.

Jeanine and Maya returned from what is now being called the first annual New York City Girl’s Weekend. Conceived of and organized by Jeanine, the reunion included 15 female family members ranging in age from 5 to 86 coming from Chicago, North Carolina, Boston, Albany, and Long Island. The group converged on NYC for two days of culture, exercise, fine dining, and communion. One of the group meals was at La Birerria, a rooftop restaurant and brewery that features foods from the Eataly Marketplace which is currently celebrating foods from the Calabria region of Italy. Perfect synchronicity to complement what sounds like a perfect weekend.

Jeanine and Maya are in NYC for the weekend having a grand time with nearly the entire contingent of female relatives from my mother’s side of the family. Nicolai and I decided to make a father-son outing to Boston. We selected the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum as our first destination. Nicolai was there when he was in the fourth grade and I have never been.

We both enjoyed our tour thoroughly and I learned a great deal about JFK that was new to me. Our next stop was the North End where we paused for an early dinner at the Florentine Cafe. Having done some damage to our waistlines we decided to walk over to the Boston Aquarium where we were captivated by the harbor seals.

Jeanine sent this photo of Maya ice skating with her cousins Rachel, Sophia and Rose at Bryant Park before going to see Mary Poppins on Broadway.

Arguably the most notable building in North Easton, MA is the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall designed by American architect H. H. Richardson. I made the one hour journey here this morning to purchase a used lens that I have been wanting to add to my collection. The hall was built between 1879 and 1881 as a gift to the town from the children of Congressman Oakes Ames. Its first floor is constructed of native, pinkish-gray North Easton granite with Longmeadown brownstone trim. The second floor is brick and the steeply peaked roof above is finished in red tile. Having traveled this far south I decided to continue on to Providence. Pictured below is the Rhode Island State House which is built from 327,000 cubic feet of white Georgia marble, 15 million bricks, and 1,188 tons of iron floor beams. The dome of the State House is the fourth-largest self-supporting marble dome in the world, after St. Peter’s Basilica, the Minnesota State Capitol, and the Taj Mahal. On top of the dome is a 500 pound, 11 foot tall, gold-covered bronze statue of the Independent Man which represents freedom and independence and alludes to the independent spirit which led Roger Williams to settle and establish Providence and later Rhode Island.

I spent the balance of the day at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. The 20th largest museum in the country, it features a broad range of works from around the world, including Egypt, Asia, Africa, ancient Greece and Rome, Europe, and the Americas including paintings by prominent international artists such as Picasso, Monet, and Manet. Normally not my cup of tea, I enjoyed the visit more than I anticipated and learned a lot about portraiture lighting by studying the works of the masters (painting is just as much about lighting as photography). I also enjoyed seeing furniture pieces from contemporary Craft and Studio artists Tage Frid, George Nakashima, and Wharton Esherick whose work I am familiar with from my days reading Fine Woodworking magazine from cover to cover.

Mute Swans, so named because they are less vocal than other swans, nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. These guys are very territorial and show no compunction about attacking a human if it ventures too close to their nest, something I was careful to avoid doing. When this pair made eye contact with me, I decided it would be best to back up so as not to disturb them.

I was on ballet class pick-up duty this evening. Maya’s teacher routinely runs class 30 minutes beyond the scheduled end time of 6:30 PM. Bored while waiting, I ventured up to the second-floor studio and took this photograph from floor level using the wall-mounted mirror to “see” into the room. Maya is wearing the blue leotards. For the first time, there was a boy in the class and this subject was the source of much discussion on the ride home. When I was a young man I studied both ballet and jazz dance and can relate to being the only male in a dance class. I must say that I rather enjoyed the 11 to 1 ratio and can recommend such a class to both of my sons.

Although wet snow makes clearing the driveway more of a chore, the way it sticks to trees makes for fantastic photography. Unfortunately, I had my two year vision checkup this morning and only enough time to pause for a quick photo en route to the office. My ophthalmologist reported that my eyes were in good shape for someone my age. His actual words were; “the deterioration of your eyes is consistent with your age.” Call me a glass half full kind of guy but I like my version better. I pitched a new product concept to my boss over lunch and he liked the idea which put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

My indoor soccer team entered tonight’s playoffs in second place and I was unusually determined to see that we won the championship. I scored two goals in each of our two matches, both of which we won by a 4-2 margin after a bye in the first round. My teammates described me as being on fire and I have never felt quite so deeply “in the zone”. I scored from nearly impossible angles with laser-guided rockets on three of the goals and beat the last defender and keeper finishing with a fully extended, slow-motion toe-poke for the fourth. Rarely have I felt so pleased with my contribution to the team or appreciated for my role in winning a championship. It has been a great day on all fronts. I was spent when play ended at 11:30 PM but my euphoria kept me awake for another two hours. My team is disbanding (mostly to heal up for the outdoor season) and I will have to find a new one for the final indoor session of the winter.

As I was returning to my office from a meeting on the other side of our building this morning, I spotted this turkey roaming near our visitor’s entrance. I quickly went outside for a better photograph of this full-size male who was strutting around with his tail feathers on display. It became immediately apparent to me as I grew closer that this fella had me confused for a female turkey (some would argue, an easy mistake to make). As soon as I approached for a close-up, he spread his tail feathers, puffed himself up, and began his courtship dance. My every attempt to retreat thereafter was met with a counter-move designed to coral me. I eventually escaped through the revolving door of our building. Had I not stopped the door once I was safe, he would have entered the next cell to follow me inside.

It is always nice to start the day with a great morning sky. I caught this as I was headed out the door for work. Having been on the road for most of last week I will be looking at a busy week to get all caught up.

I stayed in a hotel adjacent to LAX last night which is only 15 minutes from Venice Beach where I enjoyed breakfast this morning. I had about an hour to walk around before returning to the airport for my flight back to Boston.

I am not scheduled to fly back to Boston until Sunday leaving me the day to enjoy California. My original plans to kayak the Scorpion Anchorage of Santa Cruz Island, a part of the Channel Islands National Park, fell through because the outfitter did not have enough people signed up. Instead I opted to hike the island. During the one hour catamaran transit we were fortunate to spot a pod of five grey whales swimming south to their breeding grounds in Mexico.

The park encompasses five of the eight California Channel Islands (Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara) and their ocean environment including nearly 2,500 miles of coast line. The Channel Islands are home to over 2,000 plant and animal species, of which 145 are found nowhere else in the world. Like the Galapagos Islands of South America, isolation has allowed evolution to proceed independently on the islands.

I was extremely fortunate to come across a pair of island foxes which are the smallest North American canids and occur only on the Channel Islands. The average weight for an adult male is 5-6 pounds, about the size of a house cat. Its small size is a result of insular dwarfism, an adaptation to the limited resources available in the island environment. The foxes are believed to have “rafted” to the northern islands between 10,400 and 16,000 years ago. Because the island fox is geographically isolated, it has no immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland. In addition, predation by the golden eagle and human activities devastated fox numbers on several of the Channel Islands in the 1990s. Four island fox subspecies were federally protected as an endangered species in 2004, and efforts to rebuild fox populations and restore the ecosystems of the Channel Islands are underway.

In total I spent about 6 hours hiking on Santa Cruz enjoying the perfect weather and the beautiful scenery. I am determined to return with Jeanine and explore the other islands in the park.

The drive from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo where one of iRobot’s development sites is located took three hours. Parts of the drive are rather nondescript, others are quite beautiful. I broke up the monotony by stopping briefly when I saw opportunities for nice photos.

It has been a year since I last visited our office here and it was nice to meet with the team again. I took everyone out for lunch which could not have come earlier as I had skipped breakfast. I always enjoy the feedback I get from our team here which invariably focuses me on key issues that need to be worked back at headquarters.

Two more hours of driving this evening stand between me and Ventura, my destination for the evening. Although it does not look as good scaled down, the picture below of a grape vineyard at sunset is perhaps my favorite of the day.

iRobot recently acquired a company based in Pasadena, CA called Evolution Robotics. I was here last year conducting technical due diligence for the deal but was not able to visit the facility because the negotiations were being kept under wraps. This morning I flew in from Las Vegas to visit our new team and to tour the facility. Located 12 minutes from the office is the Griffith Observatory with a nice view of the famous Hollywood sign. A quick detour en route from the airport allowed me to photograph both.

With only a single day to see one of the largest trade shows in the world, I got an early start. I spent the morning searching for and checking out the competition. Fortunately, there were not many companies showing autonomous floor care products and of those, I was not impressed with any of them. By noon, I had completed my mission and spent the afternoon wandering about the massive show. Naturally, it did not take long before I found myself visiting the major photography vendors. At the Sigma booth, visitors were invited to use one of their high-end cameras to photograph a professional model. At the end of the show, a winning photo is selected and the person who took it receives a high-end lens. I have little chance of winning but did enjoy the experience of photographing a professional model if only for three minutes.

Because I stay pretty current on the latest photography gear it did not take long before I had seen everything of interest to me. I did see a new lens from Canon that I have on my radar (200-400mm f/4 zoom) but it was inside a glass case and no one could tell me when production would begin. With another hour or two to kill before the meeting I am here to attend begins, I check out the remaining halls for anything of interest. Not clear to me why Audi was at the show with a race car inside the biggest light box I have ever seen but it made for a nice photo and they were handing out really cool Audi flashlights which charge from your cigarette lighter.

After a full day in the office, I flew to Las Vegas this evening to attend the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) where an important iRobot meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. I arrived at my hotel shortly after 3 AM EST and had little energy for photography. I have decided to travel light on this trip and have a new compact camera with me. It weighs less than 1.5 pounds and sports a fast f/2.8 25-600mm zoom lens. An equivalent setup on my DSLR would weigh more than ten times as much. I will be traveling on the west coast for the next few days and will put it through its paces. As a backup, I have my half-pound pocket camera which I used for this handheld photo.

Maya managed to obtain an extended scalp massage by moving back and forth between her parents who were happy to give her ten minutes at a time. The result of this attention was one very relaxed young lady and one very big head of hair.

It is usually about this time each year that I change up my lens collection. In this case it was motivated by a desire to acquire Canon’s latest zoom lens, a 24-70mm f/2.8L II, which is reportedly one of the sharpest zoom lenses ever designed. Given that I already have 3 lenses which cover the 24mm focal length I have decided to replace two of them to justify the purchase of the new optic. When I posted the lens for sale on Craig’s list I was completely flabbergasted when the only reply was from someone interested in trading for the very lens I was after. The chances of this happening are astronomically low and I was quick to secure the transaction.

Kyle returned to Santa Clara this afternoon and we are going to miss having him around. Jeanine borrowed several movies featuring India from the library and we watched Outsourced with Maya this evening. It was a nice comedy that left her up and dancing in Indian style at the end of the movie.

There is nothing more in the world that Nala enjoys than going on long walks. This afternoon Jeanine and I took her out for a good romp in the fields adjacent to our house. Left off leash she would extend her outdoor playtime to several hours and she is far too fast to catch if she is not of a mind to be caught. In the presence of other dogs, however, we can briefly drop the leash because she is so distracted by her playmates that we can easily reacquire her without engaging in a marathon sprint.

Shortly after dinner I took Maya to her indoor soccer game. Her intensity of play has now entered what I describe as the “meat eater” realm. It is that point where a player’s internal voice transitions from “it would be nice to score a goal” to “I am going to score a goal and no one is going to stop me.” That focus translated into three goals for Maya with some of her prettiest play to date.

On the home front, Kyle hung out with Hannah for the last time before both return to college and Jeanine had an impromptu Downton Abbey party (a review of the season two DVD in preparation for the beginning of season three) with her friends Irene and Maria.

It has been some time since we had an official family night. Joining us this evening were cousin Johnie and Nico’s friend Taylor (not yet acclimated to the pressure of daily Calabria blog photos or the posing challenges of a 1/4 second, ambient light exposure). Nicolai, on the other hand, takes advantage of the long exposure to light his index finger on fire.

After dinner we retired to the living room where the men battled the women in a game of Guesstures. The women were leading until Jeanine suggested that the winning team would have first dibs on her freshly baked pumpkin pie. Led by Kyle, the men came from behind for the decisive victory. Jeanine is seen here working clues for the word “middle”. Enlarging the image will provide insight into Jeanine’s competitive intensity.

For some time now Maya has been volunteering in a soccer program offered for mentally challenged athletes. She coaches, provides motivation, and plays in scrimmages. This evening Kyle and I dropped in on the program and it did not take long before Kyle was recruited into the action. Here he helps his sister prepare for a scrimmage.

An interesting combination of patterns that caught my eye.

Inspired by the new year, I spent the majority of the day organizing my photography and camping equipment. From Jeanine’s perspective this translates to “cleaning up our bedroom (which looks like the inside of an REI store) and my study”. In addition to organizing, I have decided to sell some of my least used equipment. Followers of this blog understand my obsession with tripods and it is with some deep reservations that I have put up for sale my last Gitzo. This model is extremely versatile and especially useful for macro photography. Alas, I use it very infrequently and it deserves to find an owner who will put it to better use. I am very pleased with the way this product photo turned out which is remarkable since I used three lights and nailed the exposure and lighting angles in just one take. I am either getting good at this stuff or just got lucky.

Meanwhile, Kyle, just back from a couple of days visiting with friends in New York City, is off with other friends for a few days of snowboarding in Vermont. He is just now fully recovering from the injuries he sustained the last time he went snowboarding some three years ago. Jeanine and I are more than a little nervous and hope he will take fewer risks this time out.

I thought I would close the year with a post featuring my favorite photo from 2012. After an hour of struggling to select a single image, I have opted to reflect on my growth as a photographer instead. As I looked through the 8713 pictures I elected to save from last year (probably shot five times that number) I concluded, perhaps with a somewhat biased perspective, that my landscapes have improved noticeably. I think I have finally got the knack of rendering a three-dimensional scene in a two-dimensional medium (hint: it is all about the foreground). 2012 was also a year where I made the effort to put myself in remote places of beauty and grandeur. As more of my life is behind me than in front, I am increasingly taking advantage of every opportunity to travel the world in search of natural wonders and cross-cultural experiences. I am so very thankful for my family, for my health, and for the means to pursue my passions. I wish all my followers the happiest New Year.

Photo credit to Kyle who captured me doing what I love.

We received our first real snow of the winter last night. I was up at 5 AM to clear the 6 inches from our driveway so that I could get out for a little sunrise photography.

Maya was in fine form this evening scoring her first hat trick during an indoor soccer match. She shot from distance, she dribbled past defenders and she went head-to-head with the goalie. I was able to sneak in with the players so I did not have to photograph from behind the dingy and scratched glass walls.

My adventure in Patagonia came at a high price. I missed seeing Maya in 4 dance and 3 acting performances in the weeks before Christmas. She is pictured here during her performance of The Shepherdess Dance in the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.

Normally prepared on Christmas Eve, this year’s batch of Zeppeli (fried dough covered in honey and sprinkles) was postponed for a few nights. Joining us this evening in the preparation were Hannah, back from Emory for winter break, and Nicolai’s friend, Taylor. The kids made short order of the work and the results were excellent.

For all the pictures I take it is surprisingly rare when I get one of all three kids together. I never did inquire as to the source of their fascination but was pleased with the formation of bodies it created.

If it is Christmas morning, then you know the Calabria’s will be enjoying popovers and lingonberries for breakfast, a tradition from Jeanine’s side of the family. Popovers can be a little tricky and if not prepared in exactly the right way then they do not rise, leaving you with something more akin to a muffin. The proper popover is hollow inside ready to be filled with any combination of butter, jam, syrup, berry, bacon, fruit, you name it. This year’s batch was prolific in size and the overflow batter which fell to the bottom of the oven created a new form of treat, which we have dubbed popovers. Rather than rushing through the process, we linger over the investigation of stockings and opening of presents. This year we completed stockings in time for lunch and presents in time for dinner. Many stockings were found to have reproduced and contained babies (regular socks) which were initially misidentified as ear warmers prompting the photo below of all who received them.

We are delighted to have both my mother and Jeanine’s sister, Susan, staying with us for Christmas this year. We attended the children’s service at First Parish in which Maya participated. It concluded with the singing of Silent Night by candle light which inspired this photo, taken after we returned from our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese dinner with the Budris family.