Messy Food Face

This last Saturday I got to watch our baby boy by myself for most of the day.  I work while my wife stays home with the little guy, so she usually handles most of the baby 'chores' each day (feeding, napping, bathing, repeat).  He's usually finished dinner by the time I get home, so I get the last bottle of the day before putting him to bed.  So, it was nice and a lot of fun hanging out with the little guy all day, getting to take part in his daily routine and just spend some good daddy/son time.

Around lunch time, I got his food out, put him in his high chair and went about feeding him.  He's not exactly the most focused eater on the planet, so if there is anything even remotely interesting going on around the house or outside, he's looking around.  He also really likes banging his hands on the table, which makes it difficulty getting a spoon in his mouth without having it knocked out of your hand all over the place.

So, needless to say, after his meals, he's usually pretty messy.  Between grabbing food with his hands, moving his head right before food insertion and not being able to keep all of the food in his mouth, we've usually got some good cleanup to do.

But, today, rather than cleaning him up immediately, I decided to get a picture of him.  We always try to capture fun, creative, 'clean' images of him, so I thought it would be really nice and fun to have a good messy picture.  Food all over his face and smiling.  I loved the picture and think that it will be a great memory to have.

It just makes me smile every time I look at this picture.  I can hear his laugh and feel his happiness.

Let me know what you think.

T.

52/52 - Sunset Silhouette

With the hot, dry weather we've been having lately, it has made for some really nice sunsets.  Without having to worry about clouds blocking the sun or gloomy weather ruining the evening hours, we have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time out back catching the sunsets.

This time, we decided to make use of an overgrown field to try to get some nice pictures of Paige and the baby against the setting sun.

I wanted to try one picture with a blown out sky and then try to get a good silhouette picture of her playing with him.  Since it was close to his bed time, we didn't have much time to get the shot taken, so we got to work quickly.

I had Paige walk about 15 feet out into the over grown field behind her parents' house and start tossing the baby up in the air.  He loves being tossed and always starts laughing when we do it.

I had my aperture set to where I wanted it, got focus locked in, then went about changing the shutter speed to get the exposure I wanted.  It's a pretty easy process and only takes a few rotations of the shutter speed dial to get both the overexposed background or under exposed foreground.

All in all, it took us about 5 minutes from the time we walked out the door...easy peasy.

I really like the way they turned out.  The underexposed picture looks like it's slightly desaturated, and sort of monotoned, but I didn't set out to make it that way...it's just kind of the way it turned out.  I think it looks pretty cool.

Let me know what you think.

T.

51/52 - Corny Sunset

This last weekend, we were out on the west side of the far west suburbs visiting some friends.  Their back yard butts right up to the adjacent corn field.  Right now, the corn is just low enough that you can still see over it and that evening, we were treated to a really nice sunset.
So, I grabbed my camera (I was planning on taking some maternity pictures that night instead) and headed out to try to capture a good shot or two.

I snapped away for a few minutes as the sun continued to go down.  I thought about trying to do an HDR shot, but didn't like the way the multiple exposures turned out, so I figured I'd just try pulling a good image out of this one.  This was my favorite shot of the set since you could still see the detail in the corn, but could also make out some of the colors of the sunset.  The only thing that could have made it better is if I could have found an old barn to try to get in the shot as well.

We never did end up getting any maternity pictures, but at least I got one good shot out of the trip!

Let me know what you think.

T.

50/52 - More Baby Pics

Since I've got my own in-house models, I figured I'd put them to use again this last weekend.

We shot some maternity pictures for a friend on Saturday and on Sunday, surprisingly, my wife asked if I wanted to shoot some more pictures of us and our son.  It's not too often that she actually asks me to shoot pictures of her, so I jumped at the chance!

It was mid-day on Sunday, so I knew if we shot outside, we needed to be in the shade.  We've got a porch on the side of our garage that actually provides some pretty good light for being completely covered.

So, she and our son went and sat on the swing and we got to shooting.  I got a few cute pictures of him sitting on her lap and playing around on the swing, but the 'magic' really started when I walked behind them and shot from the back.

Our son turned around to look at me and I immediately knew I wanted to try to get some close up pictures of his eyes and face.  He has beautiful blue eyes, much like my wife, and I really wanted to emphasize that.  With him looking up at me, the sky really lit up his eyes.  I was able to make enough funny faces for him to smile at me a few times, but I really like the ones where he's just kind of looking off into space.

Then, my wife really wanted to take a picture that she saw on Pinterest (a recurring theme) of us kissing and just holding the baby out towards the camera.  This one was slightly more difficult since we didn't have someone else there to get focus set and actually take the picture.  So, I had my wife hold the baby where we though he would be, I set focus, then using the timer, clicked the shutter and hopped in the picture.  After several pictures, we realized that the very first one I took was actually the best, so we called it quits...they baby was starting to wear out at that point, so it was best to just stop.

I was really happy with the way they turned out and think that we got some very sweet pictures of both Isaac and my wife.

Let me know what you think.

T.

49/52 - Maternity Shoot

Well, I finally shot my first 'hired' photo session.  Granted, hired is a very loose term in that they are very good friends of mine, I didn't get paid and I'm not selling them anything.

I'm not really all that keen on hiring myself out just because I do this for fun.  I don't plan on making this a business and don't really expect much money to come from my hobby.  Also, I take a long time shooting my pictures...I set up, shoot, change, shoot, change again, shoot more, until I feel like I've got what I want.  So, this little shoot, which really netted about 10 pictures took about 2.5 hours, just because I'm not very efficient with what I'm shooting.  I don't have a set schedule when I shoot and don't know exactly what I want before going into the shoot, so it takes more time.  I had an idea of several pictures I wanted to take, which we did, but then we just spent time sitting outside, shooting whatever we felt like taking.

I know most photographers have about a half hour to hour window to get everything they want, but I'm not convinced I can do that just yet and really get the photos right.  So, until I get to that point, I'll just keep doing it for fun.

The mother-to-be in this shoot really liked some of the pictures that I got of my wife when she was pregnant and wanted me to try to get some of her as well.  I explained that I had 9 months to figure out what pictures to take, so trying to get several of her in one afternoon might be a stretch, but we went with it.
I think that we got a lot of good pictures and am really happy with a few of them.  I was a little disappointed, after looking at the pictures on my computer, that several of them are kind of 'soft' and not focused properly, but we've still got a couple months left before she delivers and maybe we can get in another shoot at some point.

Let me know what you think.

T.

48/52 - Stuffed Animals

Tonight we wanted to try to get a couple of pictures of our little boy with his stuffed animals.  We wanted it to look like he was sitting there talking with them all and wanted to get a cute picture of his little butt, so we had him facing away from us...kind of like we were catching a secret moment of him playing with the animals.

We didn't realize that the air vent was really distracting until after we shot a bunch of pictures and put them on the computer.  I guess we can do it again at some point on a different wall, but for now I really like the colors and the way it turned out.

Let me know what you think.

T.

47/52 - Sitting on the couch

I found a picture similar to this when looking around on-line and really wanted to try to recreate it.  As with most of my ideas, I use a lot of internet to try to come up with inspiration for new photos...500px, Pinterest, Flickr and a slew of other websites.  But, I think that 500px and Pinterest are by far my two most used.

So, on Mother's Day morning, after eating a delicious breakfast of Chocolate Chip Pancakes, we set our baby down and got to shooting.  I really like the big windows that we have in our family room and we just got a brand new couch that I thought would look great in B&W.  So, we pushed the couch against the windows and started shooting.

I think that it came out really well!

Let me know what you think.

T.