Last week we took our girls to the beach for a staycation getaway.  The oil spill has prevented us from making use of the waves (the water's open, but momma's not allowing) - but the pool's still perfect, the restaurants are still yummy, and the sand's still open for playing!

It was my first "real" chance to take sibling portraits of my three-year-old and her 9-week-old sister. Anyone who's ever tried this is laughing at me right about now.  Even with grandma just inches outside of the frame, it wasn't easy. First, let's pretend that the three-year-old knows how to properly support the infant:

Now let's pretend that both (or even one!) might look at the camera:

Or when they do, that they aren't giving a fake smile:

For 50 or so shots, you may get one lucky one in:

So we (my mom and I) stopped and thought about it. Here's what we figured out... First, that newborn is still going to be hard to position, even moreso in the charge of an older child.  So we still have to position the infant as though it's an infant!  On land I would use a beanbag or a boppy under a blanket.  At the beach, carve out your own positioner in the sand and place a blanket over it!  Here, my mom dug out a hole in the sand while I held the newborn, the blanket while the three-year-olds ran circles around us and I tried to keep the sand out of my camera!

Once we dug the hole, we repositioned the blanket and placed the baby where she looked good on her own...

And then added the older children as observers...

Once we got them into position, a funny thing happened... we didn't have to give them any more direction.

You can emulate this look at home either in front of the window or out in the yard by placing the infant in a boppy, with a couch cushion or two behind it.  Cover with a blanket, and your kiddos will be eye to eye.

Plus, you won't have to deal with the sand :)

Life is messy.  As the mom of an 8-week-old and a three-and-a-half-year old, by this I can swear.  So if I care about documenting the little moments that really matter, I have to recognize that I can't always pick the perfect setting to make the memories in.

This week, we had a sweet moment on the office floor between sisters.  Stella was lying on her play mat and Sydney just COULD NOT keep her hands off of her.  Since we've spent our fair share of time in the hospital and doctors office with a sick wee one, usually I panic. But when I turned around to find Sydney lying inside the playgym with her sister, my heart melted.  After all, this was the very same playgym Sydney was kicking around on just three years ago.  (Someone get the tissues!)

But photographically speaking, there's a WHOLE lot going on visually inside that little mat of wonder. Wild animals, wild colors and the general awkwardness of both children being under something made it difficult to capture the intimate details of their sweet interaction.  This is one instance where a black and white conversion is particuarly useful!  If we can take away all of the color distraction, we can focus our eye on the real action!

Here's my first image straight out of the camera.  You can see it's sweet, but there's a whole lot of busy going on!  I want their hands to stand alone!

I could just crop them tighter, but I feel the arc of the playgym tells the story of where they are, so we're going to have to leave it as is.

Next I'm going to convert to black and white (I do this in Apples aperture, but any black and white conversion of your choice will work).  Normally I would adjust my exposure and contrast setting first, but I like to see the image in black and white before I start playing with those settings.

Okay, now that it's in black and white, I can see what needs adjusting.  This image is very grey to me as is - it needs more definition between black and white, otherwise known as higher contrast.  I'm going to address this two ways.

First, I'm going to adjust my black point. You can either do this in Aperture or Lightroom - or by adjusting the leftmost slider of the levels adjustment in photoshop.

See how much richer the darker tones are?  But I still want a little more definition, so now I'm going to adjust the contrast.

That feels better to me.  Finally, I want the attention on the center of the photo, so I'm going to add a vignette, darkening the edges so that your eye is naturally drawn to the bright hands in the middle.

And voila - the moment captured now focuses on what I was "seeing" when I took the photo!

So now I have this amazing memory of their precious time together...  when it's good ya'll, it's really good!!!

For more in-depth black and white tips - learn from the master... Marc Javier!  Check out his Lightroom tutorial.