Robbi got a new camera. It’s one she’s been coveting for a year now, but one that we could never quite justify buying on account of it being more on the expensive side of things. And yet, with the arrival of Haywire and the need for really nice product photography for the cards and other stuff, we bit the bullet and bought it last week.

I do not understand cameras well enough to describe what this new camera does that the other camera doesn’t. But I can show you and say that the new camera captures the texture and topography of that delicious yellow contour on the giraffe’s neck.

And the other camera doesn’t.

The other camera also doesn’t take lovely low-light photos of deer bounding elegantly over the farmlands outside of Galena, where we drove Saturday evening, after we closed the studio for the night.

We arrived at Colchester Farm and loaded ourselves into the back of a pickup truck.

Our destination was a bonfire in the woods. Our mission: marshmallows.

Every person has her own technique for roasting.

And cooling.

And presenting one’s finished work to the eager onlookers, armed with a new camera capable of taking a shot worthy of the occasion.

Kato is more of a char-broiled marshmallow man, though I think the technique is born more of impatience and love of open flame than any interest in consuming hot bits of sweetened charcoal. He “roasted” marshmallow after marshmallow without eating a single one. Fortunately, his mother, who failed to eat lunch, was on hand to plow through a dozen or more.

Augie’s style is all his own. At this point, his efforts are focused mostly on getting the marshmallow to stay on the stick, which, if you don’t remember from your two-year-old years, is far easier said than done. He was the only of my children to consume an actual s’more, Alden opting to eat her marshmallows straight up and Kato preferring to produce as much carbon as possible.

It was a beautiful night. The end to a very good day. But none of it would have been documented (or at least not in photos we would care to share, without Robbi’s new camera). So here’s to Haywire for giving us an excuse to dig into the rainy day fund. And here’s to better photography in days to come.