Spring forward, into... Spring?

We had our first warm weekend in a long time. I feel this is our compensation for losing an hour Saturday night. Sunday was a little overcast, but pretty warm anyway. I was pretty excited to get some pictures outside for a change. How do you make kids with a winter's worth of cabin fever stand still for a picture outside?

You put them in a tree.

Kathryn hanging in the tree

These were some fun shots. They pointed out a few problems to me though. This particular camera + lens combo purple-fringes something fierce in ultra high contrast situations. Don't stare at the pictures looking for the problem though, I fixed it in post. While I was in the middle of all this "pixel-peeping" I discovered my sensor has a whee bit of dust on it. I wish I had not noticed, because now I'm going to feel awkward until I fix that too. In general, though, its not going to mess up any pictures. People get a little too bent out of shape over both of these issues.

This look is so Annie

No vignette's on these, I feel like I'm overusing them. They will return, but I'm leaving them out for a while.

Photo notes: Umbrella camera left, bare flash behind subject, exposure is about 3/4 stop under ambient.