MomShots

This is my current favorite postcard from my postcard project. I love detail shots. Shots of cute little piggies, eyes, ears or even an adorable curl are the kinds of things that as mothers, we want to bottle so we can pull them out and remember how cute they were at that specific age. Photographing those details is a great way to do that.

Here’s another detail shot from my postcard project that I love. My Magnus’s eyes will melt my heart every time. He gets in trouble and then smiles up at me with those sweet chocolate eyes and my anger is always lessened. I love those eyes!

Summer is in full swing. Bike riding, playing in our wading pool, parades, carnivals and lots of beautiful sunshine and of course fireworks. We even managed to sneak out and take a trip up to Bear Lake (on the Utah/Idaho/Montana boarder) and have a mini vacation. We have been busy, busy, busy. It has been fun.

And busy. Did I mention that?

I have been trying to grab my camera bag every time we leave the house or venture out to do some kind of activity. My goal for this summer is to try to take more action and bright sun photos. But the catch is to try to make them look professional and not snapshottish.

Snapshottish. That’s not a real word but I’m using it anyway.

One of my goals in starting MomShots was to discuss how I am learning to take more professional photos of my kids. To me, that doesn’t always mean in a studio setting. In fact, not in a studio setting is my favorite way to view my children and other children. I enjoy photos of children that are more natural and free flowing. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that there is a place for studio photos and I do enjoy looking at them and trying to figure out how the light was set up and such. It’s just not my thing right now, but one day I am sure I’ll venture into that area of photography. I do want to. Just not today.

Anyway, summer is busy. Take lots of photos. That’s my shpeal today. My MomShots Tip of the Day, if you will.

I haven’t been very active on here recently. That’s not likely to change for a while. We’re too busy having summertime fun. I love my MomShots readers, but I’m sure you will understand if I say that I love my kids a tad bit more… So I am soaking up every moment I can with them. That may be why it’s 3am and I am writing this… If anyone has any post ideas that they would like to contribute to MomShots, I would love to put them up.

What have you been photographing this summer?
Has your photography moved outside in this nice weather?
Do you have any specific photography related goals that you are currently working on?
Are you working on any fun projects?

I would love to hear from you and find out how you are doing.

Here are a few MomShots from the last few weeks:

Does anyone else read and love the Shutter Sisters’ site? I love their blog. It has great little posts that usually inspire the heck out of me. The blog populates on FaceBook in the middle of the night and so when I wake up to feed the baby I often read their latest posts on my phone.

This morning their post was about finding hidden smiles/faces in random places and it made me think of a certain hidden smile we have knocking around our house.

My kids have a StarWars Storm Trouper mug. It looks like this (sometimes it is actually clean, today not so much):

One day I found it upside down and this is what I saw:

The goofiest looking face. I laugh every time I see it. It never gets old!

What makes you smile? Post it up on the Shutter Sisters post comments. Or here if you’d like too!

I big pink puffy heart my camera strap cover. It makes my strap so much more comfortable, helps me easily distinguish my camera from my husband’s and helps me not to be such a walking billboard for Nikon.

Many times since I made my strap cover I have wanted to put together a MomShots tutorial for anyone who may be interested in making their own. I still haven’t done that. I’m a pretty big procrastinator sometimes. Have you noticed?

So in the meantime, I thought I’d post some links to camera strap cover tutorials that I found online.

Well that’s a pretty good list of sites that can get you started and on your way quickly. If you make a camera strap cover, I am sure you will love it as much as I love mine! If you don’t want to make one and would like to purchase one already made there are some adorable ones available on Etsy at really great prices.

I’m kind of inspired and thinking that I need to keep my eyes peeled for some cute fabric this week and make a new one. Mine is starting to look a bit dingy. But really, do I need an excuse???

This is a cross post from my family blog. It was photography related so I thought I’d share it here too. Happy Valentines’ Day!!!

After much deliberating, I finally decided what to do for Uly’s Valentine cards for his kindergarten class. I was originally going to make this really yummy looking candy popcorn. I liked the idea of sending Uly with a treat instead of a traditional valentine card. However I started realizing that it was going to be a bit more work than I wanted to invest for all of his classmates.

This morning, (my sister) Olea sent me an email with a blog post to check out with a note that said, “Wish Lala was bigger so we could make these!” When I read that, before I clicked on the link, I was wondering what she was talking about. I started thinking about sewing for little girls or something like that. I wasn’t thinking Valentines’ Day. When I finally clicked on the link I was excited by what I saw because it incorporated photography, my kids and candy. I don’t think you can go wrong with that combination!

This photo of the finished product is not as good as I’d like it to be, but I think you’ll get the idea. You take a picture of your child with his hand in a position like he’s holding flowers or something. Then cut out a slit, punch a hole, or cut an “X” above and below the child’s hand. Then insert a lollypop. It looks like he’s handing you the sucker.

I loved the idea. Plus it looked easy!!!

Note from Jessica: Today I am very excited to announce that our guest DadShots post is by Brett Birdsong, of Birdsong Photography. Brett is an extremely talented photographer from Pensacola, Florida but travels all over the US shooting amazing photos. If you want some inspiration, spend a few minutes looking through Brett’s galleries on his site!
I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did!

I have two little monkeys.

Jacob, who is 5, and Kylie, who is 4.

They are bundles of personality, independence, and insanity. Basically, small versions of me. This round of photos came about during a summer’s day about a year or so ago, in an honest attempt to get some “normal” portraits of the kids. I fall into that odd category of taking thousands of photos during a weekend in wedding season, but have virtually jack squat when it comes to photos of my own kids. I’m horrible I know, but I’m working on it.

So the scene before me was a big, fenced backyard, two freshly bathed kids under the age of 5 in clean clothes. Daddy, the professional photographer, with his fancy cameras and lenses, and the two perfect children to photograph. I could handle this right? I’ve dealt with crying mothers-of-the-bride, intoxicated wedding guests, and fainting officiants…I think I can handle normal photos of my own kids. Right?

In the time it took me to look down, adjust my camera settings, and fire off a few test shots of Jake, Kylie had found dirt, which had made it’s way on to her shirt and face. Jake found this worthy of a belly laugh, which encouraged Kylie, and within 5 minutes of walking outside with calm, clean kids, I had Goofballs 1 and 2 belly laughing at each other while I sat there watching, capturing the scene unfolding before me.

Lesson #1 learned - When I photograph kids, I now have no preconceived notions or ideas of what I’m walking away from that particular session with. There are no backdrops, no lights, no ” sit here and let’s give Sears some competition” photo sessions at all. To me, photographing kids, especially my own, is completely about working with the moment. Sit back, relax, let them be kids. You’ll end up with some really fun shots.

During the the course of the next 15 minutes or so, betwixt belly laughs and smudging dirt on each other, I had each of the kids stand in front of me and make a silly face. Anything silly, I said. I’d make a face at them, they’d make a face back. And out of the silly faces that were made, this collage of photos was born. Now granted, I didn’t get exactly what I had intended to that day. But what I did get was a few photographs of a brief moment in time where my two kids and I sat in the sunshine on a warm summer’s day and made silly faces at each other, and laughed together.

It simply brings back a really great memory of spending time with my kids. And I honestly couldn’t ask more than that from a photograph.

One of my goals for 2010 is to learn Photoshop better. I am confident in my familiarity with the basics of the program but I want to be able to rock the house with it by the time the year is over. I haven’t made much progress yet. It’s still January…

So I Heart Faces’ theme this week is Texture. I think that could mean many things. I have been wanting to play with some texture overlays in Photoshop, so I tried a few out on this photo. I ended up going with this one called PaperBox 2 by ShadowHouse creations. I like it but I’m not sure I like it on this photo. The photo is already pretty textured with the grass and tree leaves all around Uly. Oh well. I can’t spend any more time on it right now. My kids are hungry and I need to go make some kind of dinner.

This will have to do.

One piece of advice I heard last year at PhotoCamp was to show less photos to people and be more discerning about the photos that you do share. It’s kind of an “I only take good photos” attitude. I don’t only take good photos. I take some pretty bad ones. I take some good ones too, but I show all kinds photos; good and bad. I don’t think this is one of my better ones. I don’t really follow that advice.

It’s been a really long time since I entered the I Heart Faces weekly contest. I thought I could probably find something in my photos that might fit the bill and I chose this one. It’s from my sister’s 5 year wedding anniversary photo shoot that we did last February. It’s about time to get them together for a 6 year anniversary photo shoot; especially since they have a new addition to their family now.

I didn’t really have any current photos that I liked enough to enter. It’s about time I got out the camera and took some pictures!!!

Did you enter? If not, maybe you should? It’s a pretty wide theme that I am sure you have something that fits.

There are so many ways to utilize your photography skills to beautify and enrich your home. This project is one I just decided I must do this year. I won’t be going to Paris anytime soon (that I know of) but I can do this exact same project in my own neck of the woods when I am out and about.

The site that originally did this project can be found here, in case you were wondering. They’ve got some cute and inspirational photography on their blog and you can purchase one of their calendars if you’d like to go that route instead.

It looks fun, huh?

I’m writing this here to officially commit myself to it. That’s how it works, right? I make my intentions public and then I have to follow through?

I sure hope so!

Do you have any photo projects that you are working on or that are rumbling around in your brain? What has caught your fancy lately?

This is a crosspost. I don’t think many people read my family blog and I wanted to share the good news with you, my fantastic MomShots readers.

Plus, I’m kind of on a posting spree. Have you noticed? This will be the third post in as many days. Maybe I am coming out of my slump and will start writing some posts with substance. I am thinking about hosting a cool contest next month too. That’s fun!

I think I totally spaced mentioning it here. I put everything on Facebook but since this is kind of my diary/journal I need to put it here too. We went in for the ultrasound on the 21st of December and are happy to report that everything looks good. Besides having a healthy baby, we are excited to report that our 4th and final baby is a girl!!!! We are beyond the moon excited about this fact. We were happy to only have boys and thankful for all of our children but there was always a little part of us that hoped we would also have a girl. Ben is finally getting his “daddy’s little girl” and I’m going to get my little dolly. We are so thankful and excited for this gift.