I had the pleasure of taking Addi’s 3 year pictures today.  Mom actually wanted some pictures of her two kids together and we got a few of those too.  But I am going to post each part separately.  I have been friends with Mom since middle school, and we make sure to see each other at least once per month.  Thanks for letting me play with you all this morning.  Enjoy!

Every year I do a New Years Day photo shoot of my boys in front of a black background, shirts off.  Very simple, yet very fun.  I love to get different expressions and see how they’ve grown through the year.  I normally do them each individually.  I don’t usually try to get a group shot, because it is just so hard to get a nice shot of them all together.  But this year they actually sat nice together and let me take a couple shots of them together.  I am repainting my kitchen/dining/living room this week and cannot wait to have one of these shots blown up into a huge canvas for the wall.  What do you think?  Do you have a favorite?  Which one should I use this year?  Leave your comments!

I was blessed to be able to take baby Eli’s newborn pictures almost six months ago.  Now he is back for his 6 month photo shoot!  I love this age, they can’t crawl away and are almost always smiling.  What a precious little guy!

I love having photos on my walls.  Luckily, I have very high ceilings that allow for lots of wall art and I take lots of pictures, so I always have a lot to choose from.  I have one wall in my living room that I update with new canvas prints or a gallery mount every January after my annual New Year’s Day photo shoot of my boys.  That means that I always have last years’ canvases to find a home for somewhere in the house.  Therefore, my bedroom wall is the dumping ground for old canvas and gallery mounts that move from the living room.  I also love to make up large canvas prints for my living room and kitchen area from photos taken throughout the year, steering away from my kids and using nature.  I’m always asked where I get good canvas prints made.  For my clients, I use a professional lab here in Grand Rapids.  Their work is awesome and I love their product.  But for my personal home canvas prints, I will use Costco or the professional lab.  While the quality of the Costco canvas is not the same as Prolab Express, I feel like the look is just fine for my personal use.  The following are some canvas I have up in my home.  I will follow each pic with the lab I used to print it.  Leave me a comment if you have any questions!  Happy Saturday!

my bathroom canvas.  i need this to remind me daily that God’s compassions are new every morning and His faithfulness is great!  this was done at Costco 20×30

three canvas across top of window, these were done at Prolab Express, Grand Rapids

the boys done at Prolab Express, Grand Rapids.

the boys done at Costco.

my kitchen up above the cabinets, done at Costco 20×30

I love my camera.  It’s like another child to me.  I talk to it, sing to it, take it everywhere with me and spend a lot of money on it.  Just like a member of the family.  My current pro camera has no flash.  It has a hot shoe mount, but no flash that pops up.  And I love this.  It forces me to think before pressing the shutter button and taking the picture.  And believe me, it has taken me a long time to be able to do this almost second nature, without looking at the dials, to do it subconsciously, manually.  And let me just say that I am in no way a camera genius, I definitely have a ton to learn about manual shooting and flash.  I’m just hoping everything I write today makes sense, it’s early and I’m still drinking my first cup of coffee as I write.

Last week at the cottage, the boys were sitting on the couch so nicely all together.  And let me tell you, that very rarely happens.  When it does, I like to grab my camera and try to get a shot.  Usually I’ll grab my little point-n-shoot (which I have to tell you I hate) because it is close to hand at home and my big pro camera is usually out of reach.  But last week at the cottage I only brought my pro gear.  As I sat in the chair opposite them, I looked at the light.  Being inside, I automatically change my ISO setting up from 100.  If I’m outdoors, I normally always have my ISO at 100.  To put it in layman’s terms, ISO determines how much noise shows up in your pic.  The lower the ISO number, say 100, the less noise there will be in your shots.  Think back to film days, when I shot film there was a great film made that had a really high ISO.  Somewhere around 2400, I can’t remember the exact number now.  But it would give you a very grainy, almost antique look.  But the higher the number, the slower the shot happens, letting in more light.  You will also get more blur if you don’t have a tripod or if you are moving too much.  Because of this, I like to keep the ISO at 100 if at all possible.  But sometimes I need to change that.  Most receptions I photograph are indoors in a dark reception hall.  I can tell you I normally shoot my receptions at an ISO of 400 or 800.  I’ve even done a few at 1600.  Not all cameras have an ISO feature that goes that high, and you have to watch the graininess of your shots when shooting at high ISOs.  Anyway, sitting in the chair opposite the boys I dialed the ISO up to 400.

I also almost always shoot with a wide open aperture.  My go-to lens is my 85mm fixed focus lens that can be dialed down to an F 1.8 aperture.  I would love to upgrade to the 85mm 1.4, even the 50mm 1.2, but let’s stay in reality here.  The lower the aperture number, the more light being let in.  This took me a long time to understand, it always seemed backward to me.  But 1.8 lets in more light than 5.6.  It also narrows down the focus considerably.  You just have to hold steady and make sure that everything you want in focus is on the same focal plane.  The boys were all sitting next to each other on the same level and therefore, all stayed in focus.  So I kept the aperture at 1.8.  This will also give you a creamy, out-of-focus background.  Camera guru’s call this bokeh.  The lower your aperture setting, the more bokeh you will get.  Another rule of thumb for aperture that I use, if i have one child in the shot, I know I can keep the aperture at 1.8.  If I have a couple, I like to dial it up to 2.2.  If I have a family of five, I’ll move it up to 5.6.  I try to keep the number of people corresponding to the F-stop number.  Not an exact science, but it helps me.

Next, I looked through the view-finder and focused on the boys.  I use my in-camera light metering system.  For my camera, this is great.  I trust the results and they seem to be right on.  I almost always shoot hand-held, very rarely using a tripod.  When hand holding my camera, I never want to be under 1/60 for my shutter speed.  If I can stay around 1/125, I’m happy.  When I’m out in the sun, that number could be all the way up to 1/8000.  The light coming in the slider door to the left of the boys was beautiful and allowed me to set my shutter speed at 1/80.  This was fine, as I was sitting in a chair and could balance the camera on my knees.  (I should have taken a picture of me doing this, I looked like a total professional…yeah.)

Now, the reason I love these shots is because of the lighting here.  There was only one light source, the big slider doors to the left of me.  The light seems to skim across their faces and is very creamy in color.  The tan skin and the brown couch help with that too.  This style is a departure for me, as I normally like a lot of light and get nervous about shadows or dark areas.  I love the depth of these shots and even though they are just candids, I love them.  Wow, that was a long post.  These shots are all straight-out-of-camera with no editing.  All taken at F1.8, 1/80, ISO 400.  Hopefully you made it this far and will enjoy these shots as much as I do.

When I was thinking about starting this blog, I was trying to come up with one direction to move in.  Then I realized I wanted to move in A LOT of directions, just like my daily life.  So while I might blog about food one day, I might blog about my photography business or my favorite books the next.  Today I thought we could take a look at outdoor children’s photography.  Here are some tips and tricks for getting some good pics of your little ones.

1.  Take them outside.  As we all know, outdoor natural lighting is the best.  And if you can get an overcast day instead of a bright sunny one, you’ll be really happy with the nice, soft light.  My niece is 2 years old and not one to sit in front of a backdrop (at least not willingly).  I found this great outfit at the local farmer’s market, bought it, got home and dressed her in it.  I fluffed her hair and then said “Let’s go outside and play.”

2.  Key word here: PLAY.  Take them out and let them run around.  The trick is to follow them around with your camera in hand.  Some of my best shots from this photo shoot were the spontaneous ones.

3.  Interact with them.  Right now, my twins are 4 and are also not as into getting their photo taken as I am of taking them.  Being 4, they are starting to think certain words are quite funny.  Just say the word “fart” and they crack up. (What can I say, I have 3 boys).   Another big trick we are using right now is saying “Now don’t smile, no giggling allowed…no, no, I said no laughing.”  My 4 year olds fall for this every time.

4.  Sometimes the “grumpy” shots are the cutest ones.  No photo shoot is complete for me without a few crabby faces or grumpy eyes.  And don’t be afraid to get right in their face, sometimes filling the whole frame with just face is fun.  (But let me warn you, great grandma will not like this one, it won’t be traditional enough for her.  Mine always complains, “But his head is cut off, I just don’t like these so close up.)

5.  Have fun!  Because we all know they grow up fast and we’ll look back at these photo shoots and wonder where the time went.  At least that’s what everyone says to me, I say a prayer every day thanking God that my twins are another day older and we’re one day closer to school.  But I still have fun taking pics of my boys.