One thing about photography: it's turning me into a hypocrite.

I should explain that. See, I'm always chiding Juliette for being nosy. If we go to a restaurant, she looks around at people at other tables. If we go for a walk, she looks to see what she can see through people's windows. "Nosy Noserson," I'll say.

But, of course, if there's anything nosier than a street photographer, I don't know what it is. I'm constantly looking at other people these days, trying to see if they'll show me something I can photograph. That's got to be worse than just sneaking a peak through someone's open front door from the sidewalk.

These two kids were sitting behind us at Shamu's Christmas show when we were at SeaWorld on Saturday. (I didn't actually watch much of the show; first I was watching the crowd, then I was watching Jason.) I glanced back at them several times before the show started, and it reminded me so much of being that age and in love. They kept giggling and looking at each other, taking pictures of themselves together with his cameraphone. (OK, I guess we didn't have that last one when I was a teen.) And all I could think was "How nice."

There's a lot of doom and gloom out there these days. Terrorism, war, people losing their jobs, their homes. But, you know, there's a lot of tenderness, hope, joy, and love out there, too. I think it's worth taking the time to see it. I know it makes my life better.

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Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode (matrix metering). Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/60 sec (-1 EV), ISO 1600. Post-processing in Aperture 3: maximum recovery adjustment; curves to bring up exposure a bit; cropped to 5x7 and to remove some extra space at the top and a distracting foreground element; light dodging over the couple's faces; burned over the background and the guy on the right.

Thoughts for improvement: The lights in the background are quite bright and are a little distracting. I cropped out most of the man in the right foreground, but if I could have excluded him as I was shooting that would have been better. I also wish I could have gotten a slightly more intimate moment--I like the way she's smiling at him, but he looks a little distracted, which wasn't really representative of how they were acting at the time.