I love the internet - where else can you catch up with someone you haven't seen since high school and pick up instantly? Well, I haven't seen my friend Courtney in *ahem* a number of years, but from her Facebook page it seems the only thing that's changed about her is the number of gorgeous children… including her latest who is 5 months old today!

So in celebration of today Courtney, here are some tips for capturing your baby boy!

First things first - find your pocket of great light.  Where are the good windows in your house?  Glass doors? No glass doors? Take advantage of this gorgeous weather we're having down south and open one up!  Windows and doors take the bright sun and diffuse it into gorgeous portrait-taking light, so find your best and brightest portal and plop that baby boy down at the edge of the light. (Or you might want to try a baby doll first so he's fresh when you get your camera settings perfect!)

What do I mean by the edge of the light?  Here…  see how my not-so-little one *sniff* is positioned just on the shadow side of the light?

Now look what happened when I put my duff down just inside the door - me sitting in the light, and her just on the other side - magic!  And since she's facing the light - look at what it did to her eyes!

Now lets talk about backgrounds.  From what I've seen on facebook, your little man should be lifting his head and pushing up.  Since we want a decluttered backdrop, use a bench, ottoman or even a chair like the one Sydney's sitting on and place it behind him. Now take a very neutral blanket (dark and heavy wools, felts, etc work nicely - but so do plain white down comforters!) and drape it over the back of the ottoman spilling onto the floor under him.  It doesn't have to be perfect, just make sure it's not distracting.  If it's large enough, you could even put a boppy or a dog pillow underneath it to give him some reinforcement. 

Next - you have a Sony DSLR-A300 camera, so rather than get into how to use your manual controls (because I'm just not familiar with your camera!), lets try and take advantage of the built-in portrait mode.  That should be your equivalent of Aperture priority mode. While you're at it - turn off your flash! You want all natural light here.  According to the Sony Website, there should be a "flash off" position on the Exposure Mode dial. 

Also, check your ISO.  If you find a really great pocket of light, you should be able to stay between 100-400.  The lower the ISO the better RAW files you have to work with on in your computer. How do you know what that number should be?  Take a test picture.  Too dark? Bump your ISO.  But be careful - go too high and you'll introduce noise. 

Speaking of Raw files, are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?  For these precious portraits, you want to be in RAW, or at the very least, RAW + jpeg so you have both on hand. Just make sure your memory card is clean so you have lots of room!

Okay - now that you're done with your menus and dials, get on your belly and shoot!  Go eye to eye with that baby boy.  Connect, laugh, tickle, sing Elmo songs!  Don't just rely on your zoom - get in close with your camera.  You don't have to see the whole blanket in every shot.  What if you just got his head?  Just some toes? Get down low with him and just see what happens!  Just make sure he stays facing the light! 

And finally - come over to the boards and show us your pictures!! 

Yesterday was my daughter's first-ever gymnastics lesson.  Gush.  I can't tell you that this post isn't a great excuse to tell you how proud I am that we may have found an outlet for our super-active chatterbox (after our *ahem* interesting experience with ballet), or how entertained I am by her fearlessness. But if I'm going down the emotional rabbit trail of my parenting experience, I need to disclose that it was a real nail-biter.

Ah, the push and pull of parenting. Let go. Stay close. Hide in the bleachers so you're there for the inevitable potty break, but

We made it! A digital photograph does not exist until your camera's image sensor is exposed to light. It's the place where all those mysterious megapixels you were sold on live. Quite literally, your image sensor is a rectangular-shaped platter of millions of little light sensitive pockets called pixels waiting for you to snap your shutter so they can collect light, divide it into red, green and blue and save it as a file on your memory card. All that to say - the image sensor is what receives the light and interprets it into an actual digital photograph.

How is it measured?

ISO is the measurement of how sensitive your camera's sensor is. Why it's called ISO isn't going to help our cause, so don't stay up at night worrying about it.

Depending on your camera, ISO numbers are typically 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, etc.

If you remember anything about film cameras, ISO is very much like film speed. Changing this setting doesn't actually change how much light your camera collects (that's up to the aperture and shutter), it just tells your camera how sensitive it needs to be in receiving it. A low ISO setting means the sensor is less sensitive, while a higher ISO setting makes your sensor more sensitive.

What does this mean to you?

When there's lots of light, there's no reason to increase the sensitivity of your image sensor. So on a bright sunny day - set ISO to it's lowest available setting.  As the light decreases (shade, evening or darker interiors) increase your ISO. That's it - easy peasy!

Your camera was optimized to make the best images when ISO is set to it's lowest setting. If the right amount of light is let through the shutter from the aperture, a low ISO setting allows the image sensor to deliver it's best work - crisp, clear, pristine digital images.  So, if you can, you want to keep it low.

Sometimes, especially indoors, there just isn't enough light available for your sensor to get a good exposure. Turning up the ISO increases your sensor's sensitivity, making more out of the light it receives.

But NOTHING comes free, right? The higher you turn up the sensitivity, the less accurate the sensor becomes.  What's referred to as "noise" is introduced to the image.

Look at the photo above.  The ISO on a beautifully lit late afternoon was accidentally left on 1250 when it probably should have been closer to 200-300 (hey, it happens to all of us!), and what would have been a gorgeous set of photos was marred with noise. But on the shots where the exposure was pretty good, the noise wasn't that big of an issue, even at full magnification. You can see some of the telltale dots, especially in her hair and in the shadows on her skin, but unless this photo was meant to be blown up, it really is fine for the family collection.

Where we run into trouble is in the photos where the exposure wasn't correct.  Normally we'd just adjust the exposure in the computer after the fact, but photos with noise resulting from high ISO settings don't respond very well to even minor adjustments in post proccessing. Below is another photo taken on the same afternoon with the same unfortunate ISO settings.  A beatiful moment was captured, but underexposed.  Look what happens to the noise when we try to correct the exposure - the noise practically jumps off the screen!

You don't want noise in your photos, but unless the only place you take pictures is in the bright outdoor light, raising the ISO is, at times, unavoidable. The good news? Camera sensors are getting more and more accurate at higher ISO levels, especially when you get the overall exposure correct. Need more good news? Even pictures with a lot of noise are fairly pleasing at smaller sizes (see the picture above on the left). So no matter what, never sacrifice missing a moment because you were afraid to turn your ISO too high! Go for it!

Bottom line?

A low ISO setting is ideal. But nothing's perfect and you'd be much better off raising it and getting some noise than missing your toddler's first sommersault because the lighting at the gym was less than ideal. (oh, trust us, lighting at the gym STINKS!)

Low ISO number = use in BRIGHT setting = lower sensitivity and less noise

High ISO number = use in less light = higher sensitivity and more noise

Photography really is THIS simple: The light bouncing off of whatever you’re looking at enters through the aperture of the lens and waits for the shutter to snap open where it’s exposed to the camera sensor.

That’s it.

Aperture ---> Shutter -----> Image Sensor (ISO).

Your job is to find the right settings combination of these three basic parts of the camera so that the amount of light landing on the sensor makes for a pleasing exposure.

So what's a good exposure?