This weekend, Juliette and I took Jason on his very first camping trip. Along with our friends James and Melanie (who brought their daughter along for her first camping trip, as well) we headed over to Lake Morena, in east San Diego county, for a little overnight excursion. We went on some walks, had a nice campfire, and Jason got to rub dirt all over his face. (At one point he looked like a little chimneysweep.)

It turns out that going on a camping trip with a two-year-old doesn't provide a lot of opportunities for taking pictures--most of my time was spent making sure Jason wasn't eating rocks or throwing dirt at his friend. I did finally get a chance just after sunrise on Sunday morning, while Juliette took Jason to give him his breakfast. As you can see, the lake is quite picturesque at that time of the morning.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 18-55mm DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 18mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/30 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Straightened horizon, cropped to 4x5, daylight WB preset, slight s-curve for contrast, brought the black point way up to darken the bottom of the frame, burned over the sky and the bright parts of the hills, dodged over the shadowy parts of the hills and reflection.

Thoughts for improvement: You know, I was really happy with this photo when I finished with it last night, but the more I look at it, the less happy I'm becoming. I think that this would look better in a narrower crop, probably 2x3 instead of 4x5. That would give more of a feeling of length and also cut out some of the hills on the right side, which now look unbalanced to me. Also, I shouldn't have brought up the black point quite so much. I do like the feeling of darkness at the bottom to balance the brightly-lit hills, but there's too much of it. The bottom third of the frame is entirely without detail, and it feels like wasted space. Actually, both problems could be solved with a shorter, more narrow crop, but with the camera I use, I don't have the resolution to spare.