Shortly after dinner last night I was informed that tonight was my nephew’s birthday party. After eating, we drove over to my sister-in-law’s house for cake, ice cream and festivities. My sister-in-law has both a pool and a trampoline in her backyard, so all the kids had a blast.

I’ve always been “sort of” into photography. I took a photography class in college, and with all my journalism/newspaper/yearbook experience I spent a lot of time in our school’s darkroom. Lately I’ve really been wanting to improve my photography skills. Coincidently, my wife has started taking photos with our digital camera, and she also expressed an interest in improving her photography skills. This past weekend at a bookstore I ran across a book called (I kid you not) “How to Improve Your Photography Skills.” Susan got a kick out of it when I brought it home. Hopefully, some of the hints and tips can be seen in the birthday photos I took tonight.

Not all of the pictures turned out. My cheap digital camera didn’t do so well with my attempts at silhouettes and some of the trampoline motion shots ended up blurry, but I think overall a lot of them turned out pretty well.