A Very Harry Summer

Harry Potter has hit the Hobby household like a Category 5 hurricane.

We knew he was coming. But my daughter Emily, 9, had been consciously avoiding him (too scary) until her friends got hooked on them this spring. She started reading the first one after school let out for summer on June 20th.

She's on the fourth book now. She won't make it through the series quickly enough to be genuinely crazed at the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which will have been her last chance to participate in the mania on a real-time basis. If they would have given her one more month, I am quite sure she would have caught up to them.

Ben, 6, has gotten swept up in it, too. But he prefers to play with his Legos while Susan enthusiastically reads to him in a variety of quasi-British accents. Pretty good deal for him, I'd say.

There's no distracting Em while she is engrossed in one of the books. (Please, dad, it's a good part...) But I wanted to grab a quick shot of her ensconced in her bed with her then book du jour, Prisoner of somethingorother.

So I asked her if daddy could stick a little light in her book for just a moment and make a photo. (I think it is a sign of the times that she now wants to think of me as "dad," while I would prefer she think of me as "daddy.") She doesn't object quickly enough and I stick a PW'd SB-800 down into the fold of the book.

Mind you, I have literally had assignments where I had about a minute to shoot a power-trippin' CEO. But this was some real time pressure. I figured I had until she got halfway down the page to where the flash blocked the words and that would be the end of the session.

So I popped a quick test frame. A little too dark. Open up. Click. Click. Click.

And then the flash was moved. Brushed aside to make room for Harry.

But I was quick enough make a nice frame to help me remember her book-filled summer. Which is about all a daddy can ask in 20 seconds' time.