So I’ve really been enjoying Erin Cobb’s Mama with a Camera series - and one thing that stuck in my mind was her lesson on Being Different. One of her examples – don’t get in front of the birthday guest when they are blowing out candles – get beside them.
I tried to put it in action at Miss Lena’s birthday the other week – and I love these two photos!
Truly you see the action happening and its a great way to document the day.
Thanks Erin for the advice!
To get Amelia to pose for some pictures this weekend, I ended up teaching her how to use the camera – kind of. She tries to aim and hit the button – hard for her to hold it up and look through the viewfinder but…. here are a couple of her photos.
Who knows – maybe she is on her way. 
I was honored to get to take pictures of Lena in honor of her turning 3 – here are just a few of my favorites. She’s just six weeks older than Amelia and Amelia’s best friend – and just so adorable and full of personality. Enjoy.
Probably one of the things I’m most fascinated about is seeing what comes Straight Out of the Camera (SOOC) and the edits that people apply – the before & after. I don’t believe in lots of edits – mostly cropping, lighting, some color adjustments. In fact, I will be primarily using Lightroom just for that reason. Some people go overboard but it really is a personal thing… here are just a few of my recent edits.
Before & After
And another:
Before & After
And yet another…
Before & After
And last one.
Before & After
We decided to celebrate Derby Day with some mint juleps – I could really use it after a wonderful, but long, day in Lightroom class (Loved it!), and Chris could use it after a long day watching the kids without me. They are fun and adorable but they can be handful.
This photo, ironically, didn’t need any editing in Lightroom – but it does look tasty don’t you think?
So my husband looked up, found a one day Lightroom class, then suggested I sign up and he’ll take the kids all day – on a Saturday! Very excited.
In the meantime, here is one edited photo of Amelia from the past weekend.
I was excited to not only get Lightroom, but we also upgraded our computer so it wouldn’t freeze everytime I tried to work on photos or video. Yeah!
Course I have no idea what I’m doing in Lightroom – yet. But I have been playing without reading what to do of course! Here are a couple of pics.
This one was one of the per-sets – it makes for more contrast, kind of cooler colors. A neat effect I thought.
And this I just did the fun treatment of fading to black all around the image.
I can tell I’m going to have lots of fun!
How do you like the title of this post? I’m just proud of some photos I got this past weekend and I wanted to share.
These two I like because of the sidewalk going off into the distance, the perspective and how it captures how cute it was with them playing chase on the sidewalk.
Amelia is at an age where she won’t smile or look at me if I’m trying to make her take pictures. So I have to capture her more ‘in nature’ or in her element – and I love these I got of her this weekend. You can really see her fun silly personality. That last picture is my favorite – I think I might have to get that one printed big.
And these last four are from a staged photo shoot -hence the bunny dress and bunnies all around. Katherine is young enough not to know I’m staging photos and was luckily in a great mood – not something we’ve seen a lot of the past few days as she fights off yet another cold/virus thing. And I just love how these came out. Also print worthy.
Just ordered Lightroom so I’m pretty excited about that! Trying to do more photography again – I ebb and flow with my hobby – right now I’m really into it even though I don’t really have the time.
I used my girls’ retreat this weekend to play with my lens baby more – here are a few of my favorites.
And then, nothing special about this next shot other than I just thought the moon looked awesome through the trees. Before we got scared by the wind making random noises with girls alone in the mountains haha.
I feel like I’m getting better – next stop – using lens baby with people! That will be hard. I still barely get inanimate objects – but fun to try.
I am not a professional – but I love my hobby. And so when of my best friends had her newest baby boy – I offered to take some newborn pictures for her. I had fun! They are no where near the quality of our good friend & photography Elizabeth (www.libbiewicket.com) – but I really think I got some good ones. My only real complaint is I didn’t take the time to do some on a black background (well that and it was bad weather – I was determined to do natural light!), but we got some really adorable ones anyway. Here is just a peak into the photo session:
