I'm so proud of my friend Courtney!  Yesterday marked her little man's five-month birthday and we walked her through some transformational tips to taking better pictures.  As it turns out, all she needed was a starting place!  When she showed me her pictures - BEFORE 10 AM, no less - I knew I had to share them with everyone!

BEFORE - 4 Months

AFTER - 5 Months

And now she's got the bug!!!  Congrats Courtney on your beautiful pictures and I can't wait to see what you do next!

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!! 

This time last year, I was stuck in a discount store, staring in disbelief. It was my daughter's first school Valentines exchange, and, of course, I wanted to do something special. Low on time (and funds) I bought a bunch of plain cards to decorate by hand sure that I would follow through.  And then, with best intentions thrwarted, I was back in the early morning hours of Valentines day, grabbing whatever was on the shelf.  Sigh - nothing says "I love you" or "Be mine" like a perforated cartoon character in a cape.

I had no idea what I was doing.

My daughter was twelve hours old, my new camera had barely been out of the box that long, and my legs were still iffy from the epidural. But in the quiet of the evening with all visitors gone and my husband snoozing in the hospital recliner that only comes in that odd shade of mauve vinyl, we were finally alone - just she and I. Me and my baby girl.

So what is a good exposure? Simply put, it's an image that is an accurate and artistically satisfying recording of what you saw when you took the picture.

Every pixel that lives on your camera's image sensor records either red, green or blue, each measured in increments of 0-255.  0 = black and 255 = white with every shade inbetween.  It's those numbers that make up a digital photograph.

In fact, your images are natively recorded in a color mode that your computer understands as RGB, referring to - you guessed it - red, green and blue.  This will be important later when you bring your images into your computer... but for now, let's get back to exposure.

If too much light is let into your camera and allowed to land on the pixels that make up your image sensor, then you will get pictures that are a sea of white! Those tiny little pixels were slammed with more light than they could handle, so they recorded 255 (all white!) and BOOM - you lose important color information.  This is called an overexposed photo - your image sensor was over exposed to light!

Anyone wanna play spot the child in this overexposed picture on the left?

Clearly, so much light was let into the camera that the pixels were all "blown out" (that's cool speak for pushed to 255 or all white). Not all examples are this extreme - think of when a blue sky appears white instead of blue, or when just part of your little one's nose or cheek gets lost in a sea of white. There was too much light let into the camera for the sensor to give you an accurate representation of what your eye saw so the actual color information is lost!

Compare that photo to one taken just a few seconds later on the right - this time with different camera adjustments.

It's your job (and sometimes your camera's) to determine how much light is allowed in. This is done by adjusting your aperture, shutter and image sensor settings to prevent images like this from happening.  But before we get to how we determine what those settings should be, we need to look at what happens when not enough light gets into your image sensor.

So what happens when too little light is let in?  The pixels lose out on information too - just to the opposite end of the spectrum.  All the important information for your image gets lost in a sea of black!  Your picture becomes underexposed - your image sensor was under exposed to the amount of light it needed to make the picture!

We weren't going for a silhouette of a rocking chair in this photo!  There wasn't enough light let in the camera to accurately record these sweetie-pies' faces (or much else).  So most of the pixels on the camera's image sensor recorded 0 - or black.

How then, do you control how much light hits the sensor?  By finding the right combination of settings for the three most important parts of your camera.  Again  - aperture, shutter and image sensor.

Sounds simple right?  Well, it's not. There are an infinite number of combinations and finding the right one for your situation can be really daunting at first.

We'll get to the part where we walk you through how to find the right settings for you, but first, we've got some learnin' to do.  Specifically about aperture, shutter speed and your image sensor.