Remember our article about Cloudy Days - how they're a Momtographer's best friend?  Well, yesterday's school Easter Egg Hunt was a quick refresher in how sometimes you just can't escape circumstance.

I arrived at school at 12:20, to make sure that I would be there in time to catch the little bunnies hop out of their classroom towards the egg hunt.  I even brought the Spydercube that I'm testing out to help calibrate my photos. But before I saw the first sign of my bunny - I knew the photos would be less than wonderful.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sun was shining directly overhead.

In case you haven't experienced this yet - or made the connection - bright overhead sunlight is THE MOST CHALLENGING kind of light in which to photograph your child.  The brights are REALLY BRIGHT and the darks are REALLY DARK, creating contrast and shadows that are hard for your camera to properly interpret.  Plus, there's the whole squinty eyes thing.

Can I be real with you guys for just a minute?  This week stunk. No, it didn't stink in any sort of life-altering tragedy sort of way, but in that "I really have no idea which end is up on this whole motherhood thing" kind of way.  If I had a paper calendar, I would have written in red sharpie "FAIL" on every square this week. Actually, it was so pitiful and emotionally draining, that shoud I have been the sort of organized person that could commit to a paper calendar, I would have invested in a self-inking stamp of the word "FAIL", just so I would have it around (and so that little hands couldn't get to the red sharpie I'd inevitably leave out on the counter.)

For those of you who didn't know me prior to the launch of this site 7 weeks ago, I suppose this means we're past our first date and I should let you in on a little something.  I don't love photography for the pretty pictures. I guess that's a fringe benefit, but it's not why I'm here.

Photography saves me. Truly.

When I'm having weeks like the one I'm having, it's like the reassuring voice of a girlfriend who's been there. It's an objective, yet gentle friend that helps me keep perspective. The stories it shares are a reminder as real to me as the banana stting in my bathroom trash can (after my 3-year-old decided Girl Scout cookies is the true breakfast of champions) that I have to remember the whole journey, not just the ditches.

When, after a year without a single bedwetting, we've puddled the floor three days in a row, I can look back and see her tiny tush in diapers and remember how far we've come.

When her gymnastics coach has to leave five children against the wall doing handstands so that she can retrieve her from the foam pit, I can recover from the horror by remember from which genepool she emerged.

When a morning-long battle over running a brush through her hair ends with "I don't like you anymore", I can be reminded of what she would actually look like if I let her go to school as though she'd just rolled out of a pop-up tent.

And finally, if my red-streak continues long after this transition from being an only child to a big sister settles out... if I somehow fail to let her know in the day to day just how much I love her... she will someday be able to look back and realize that her mother was in awe of her every moment.

Keep twirling sweet child. You will always be my first baby.

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!! 

The holy grail of post processing. A program the simultaneously organizes your images, keeping your from accidental deletion, ridiculous file renames, and general photo anarchy while allowing you to do nearly everything you need to do clean up, punch up, and export your images. That's what I keep hoping for in a photography workflow… one program that lets me make simple non-destructive adjustments to settings like white balance, exposure and crop, roundtrip to Photoshop when I need to, and let me prep and print, even upload to Facebook, all without leaving the interface. Something simple like iPhoto - but packed with options for serious photographers. And something that doesn't jam up my computer more than once a lunar cycle.

It's probably just coincidence that I was home recovering from childbirth when Apple's Aperture was first released, but faced with our first ever glut of pictures, it was the RAW editor/archiving solution that my husband and I were looking for.  Seriously, who knew you could take 1000 shots of one little face in just a couple of weeks?  The interface was intuitive, it worked relatively well, and years later my photog friends who live through the chug chug chug of Lightroom are still jealous of the gorgeous gamma vignette I can apply with a single click.  At the end of the 30-day free trial in early 2007, I was hooked!

It hasn't been perfect, but I've enjoyed it.  So when I saw the jaw-dropping features were announced for Aperture 3, I knew this was going to be the version that made all of my Lightroom buddies sit up and take notice. With over 200 improvements (many of them slight but thoughtful functionality tweaks) there's lots to be excited about. All effects now have built-in brushes so you can paint them on or off of the photo, much like a Photoshop layer mask without having to think about the mask.  There are now programmable presets (with 36 built in) and curve adjustments.  There's built-in facial recognition, facebook and flicker export. It'll even let you archive and edit your videos!  MOMMY GOLD! 

It's all GREAT! Except for this tiny little thing… it's not quite functioning yet.  As much as the owner of three macs hates to break this to you, this should have been a beta release. There are some pretty serious bugs that need working out before I would dare recommend this program. I started out with a fresh, empty library on the fastest Mac made with more RAM than you even wanna know about, and it ran slower than my previous version. There's a workaround by taking it out of 64-bit mode and just running it in 32-bit mode, but even then I get the spinning beach ball of death more than I care to admit. Search around on some message boards and read the horror stories of the people who've tried to import their existing libraries (some of them well into the terrabyte range) and you'll see that clearly there are some 3.0.x.x updates in Aperture's future. 

The good news is… what I have been able to play with is very promising. The presets are nice starting places and I still think they've got the market cornered on the gorgeous gamma vignettes. They've even allowed us to paint out parts of the images from the vignettes, which was my only previous complaint about that shining feature. But I need to be able to see my brush strokes in real time, or I might as well just erase with my eyes closed.  And it would be great if I could do it without the random program crash.

So am I working in it? Yes. I'm an Apple believer and I'm determined to uncover the good. But because I edit video and motion graphics for a living, I have a beast of a workstation - complete overkill for simple photography work. With the trouble I'm having with 16 GB of Ram and 8 processors, I can't even begin to imagine how this program would perform on my laptop or even a screaming iMac.  Let's let those with iron stomachs fight this one out with tech support first.  After all, we do have sippy cups to tend to.

In the mean time, we must put our Indiana Jones fedoras back on and wait for the next promise - either a real update fix from Apple or a homerun from Adobe and the spring release of Lightroom.  In the meantime, there are still too many giant boulders rolling around threatening to smash my workflow.

Challenge Yourself!

When we created this site - we had two main goals.  The first was to create a fun, warm, safe place for moms to show off pictures of their kids.  Done - check!  The second was to create a place where moms are continually challenged to learn how to take better pictures.  Almost done- half check! :)

I (all bias aside!) think we are off to a GREAT start! The information is here and available to you, but I really want to to challenge you to take it a step further and start the process of taking better pictures! Don't worry, we are going to help! :)

So here's what I want you to do:

1) Participate in the monthly challenges! It's fun and there are cool prizes!

2) We are starting a thread called M&M (Momtographers Mentoring)- On this thread you post a picture with your settings and as MUCH information as you can about

your set up. Myself and/or Adrienne will critique and give suggestions for improvement for every picture posted, from composition, to post processing, to focus, we will get down and dirty with SPECIFIC suggestions. We ask that you follow up our suggestions with another picture attempting to put them into action! It's going to be a conversation, give AND take to help you improve.

This thread will be in the same vein as "Critique Me", but will be much more in-depth and focused. Other members are welcome to jump in if they have something to add or a question about anything posted, but we promise to do the heavy lifting here. The goal is to have at least one thread strictly dedicated to helping you take better pictures! :)

SNAP TO IT!