Family Portraits

After taking portraits for other families, it made me realize that I haven’t gotten any pictures of MY family.  Since… well, since Ruby was born.

So I dressed up my family, packed up the car, and we went to the pumpkin patch.  My darling mother-in-law came with and wielded the camera so I could be in a few shots too!  I’d love to share a few of my favorites with you.

Do not underestimate the difficulty of getting two children to look at the camera at the same time.

My sweet cherub.

He’s so much fun!

I probably couldn’t be happier with this picture.

Me and my sweet girl!

Every one looks great!… except… oh, Ruby.  Hahahahaha.

Oh… I die.

My favorite shot of the day.

Thanks for looking. <3.

Summer Smiles.

Trying to keep up with getting pictures off of my camera.  That is all.

Bed head, crummy face, bug bites and all… I just love this guy.

Baby Led Weaning!  BANANA FACE!!

The post-bath silly smiles. She is stunning in blue.

I love the softness of this.  I think it accurately conveys his sweet nature.  I want to kiss him!

World’s Best Hug.  That is happiness right there.

She is this happy!  All the time!  We are so lucky.

Little man.  Little man pants.  Suddenly so grown up.  Potty training at 2.5 years old.

Ruby is 6 months old, bouncing her way to crawling.  Ronan is 2 years and 6 months.

I Learned.

Just for fun, I’m participating in a link up about how much we’ve learned since we took our cameras to manual mode.

I have learned:

  • I suddenly pay a lot of attention to the light.
  • Sometimes I’d rather adjust the aperture than the shutter speed – especially when chasing!
  • I set my auto focus point to the center of the frame, and then focus on eyes… then I keep my button half pressed and frame my shot – that way, no matter how I frame my shot, the eyes are always in focus.
  • Don’t pass up good lighting!
  • Sometimes a high ISO is better than a blurry shot.
  • I keep my camera on multi-shot. I rarely use it… but sometimes, something so wonderful happens that 3-4 of the same shot turns out the one perfect one I may have missed as I stopped to check the replay of the shots.
I took this picture just over a year ago, when I purchased my camera. It was the second day I had it, and I wanted to start out in manual mode. I played with the shutter speed, aperture and ISO for hours before trying it out on Ronan. When I captured this, I couldn’t BELIEVE how good a picture it was. I just kept on improving from there.

And this is one of the pictures I took recently of Ruby. I can probably say it’s the best picture I’ve taken yet. I naturally start to frame pictures in my mind, and can imagine how the finished product might look. It’s a process!

…and I hope to keep on learning!

Click it Up a Notch

Four Months Old

Today, Ruby is four months old.

The last four months have flown by in a heart beat, and I can’t believe how much of a little person she is already.  She has the most amazing personality.  She is funny.  The pretends to be upset and then giggles.  She loves to pull things towards her face and stare at them.  She knows what she wants, and she gets it.

She is beyond precious, and I am so thankful for her.

I did a photoshoot of her yesterday.  For all of 5 minutes.  I couldn’t be happier with how the pictures turned out.

Incidentally, I’d like to start taking portraits for people – not much different than the ones I take of my own children.  I’m thinking of charging a small fee for a 1 hour portrait session, and then all the digital negatives would belong to the customer.  I would love to have the exposure, many different subjects, pictures to add to my portfolio, and also help people have inexpensive, good quality pictures.  They will by NO MEANS be professional, but the very best I can do – as I learn and improve so will the quality of my portraits.  What do you think?