A view of our unexpectedly early new arrival

Here is an image of our wonderful new baby girl, from several days ago when she was still in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), as is standard for premature babies. She has since been discharged entirely from the hospital and is at home and doing wonderfully.

The large circles here are the ports in the "isolette" incubator they use in the NICU to keep babies warm and isolated from the noises of equipment and monitors. The ports are for hand access; there are two on either side of the unit, and the view here is laterally through the incubator. The device shown attached to her little foot is an oxygen-saturation monitor, similar to the devices that you may have had clipped on to your finger in the hospital, or for dental surgery.

This image has lots of bokeh, obviously. Note in particular the vertical string of lights that have been diffused to discs in the right part of the frame. You can see that the edges of some of the discs are brighter than the centers; this is usually considered a sign of less-good bokeh. It's hard to be too picky about the lens I was using, though: Canon's EF 50mm f/1.8 Mk II lens is the fastest lens I own, and one of the sharpest, but costs all of about $75. For all that, I can live with a little sub-par bokeh from time to time.

Update: This image was entered in the Photo Friday Challenge under the theme "Baby", and was chosen as a "noteworthy" image by visitor vote. Thank you to all who voted!

Update 2: Thanks to everyone who voted in the Photo Friday Challenge. For visitors interested in this image's back-story, I just wanted to mention that our daughter recently turned four months old and is doing wonderfully, thanks in no small part to the dedicated NICU staff at the hospital where she was born. My wife and I had never given much thought to premature birth, but we came to realize that it is a sweeping issue. This year alone, nearly a half million babies will be born prematurely. Consider supporting the March of Dimes if this issue is important to you.

Please also spare a moment's thought for an even larger problem: in the United States, a premature baby can spell financial disaster for a family without health insurance. My wife and I were fortunate enough to have health insurance to cover the hospital costs, but around 15% of US households, or over 40 million Americans, are without health insurance. Please support real solutions to this problem by voting for candidates who, in your estimation, credibly promise to pursue real solutions to this crisis.