This is what it's all about - being with good friends who are like family!

New Year's Eve seems to come and go faster and faster every year. We all enjoy the company of good friends, I consider many of them to be more like family, as we ring in the New Year, together, brothers and sisters in the gospel.

Some traditions established in my life is to visit the Doreys for NYE festivities, they are great hosts and not bad crokinole players.=) Another one I have taken on as my duty is to get a group photo just before the clock ticks down to yet another 365-day period of mortality to live, with all its hopes and faith of being a better year than the previous one.

The shots were easy to get, thanks to Self Timer, but I almost blew it - I had mistakenly set the SB-800 for manual firing at 1/8th power with bounce! I was lucky enough to be using a wide aperture (f/6.3) on my Nikon 16-85mm zoom and ISO 400, and, of course, shooting RAW - the "forgiveness and repentance" file mode - the images were still about 1-1/2 stops underexposed but no big deal to fix with Capture NX2, they look fine.

Some people can get very silly without much provocation.

I hope everyone has a great 2010!