The gathering.

Back in March, we had a gathering of mums of bubs the same age as my daughter (and various older siblings). They were around 15 months old at the time, so it was a challenge to take a photo before their attention had already gone elsewhere.

A had been upset in the photos I took of her earlier, but then she decided to strike some very cute poses for me.








B and W also practiced their charm on us!

(Obviously they are some of the older brothers and not 15 months old!)

Summer swimming for my son.

In the warmer months we had the opportunity to give A lots of time in the pool.

He loves water, and we were excited to see him learn to float independently with the floaties.

Before we headed to the pool, managed to capture the photo on the left, I love the dreamy eyes.

A was 2 years and 11 months old in these photos.

Portraits of my daughter.

As part of the Morguefile course I was following, we covered the topic of lighting for portraits. I used my daughter as the test subject, setting her up in a room with just the one window for a light source. I took heaps of photos, testing different angles.


The photo below on the right is using a mirror to reflect the light on to her. Was also great for getting her attention.

H was almost 14 months old in these photos.

More practise.

I was running out of volunteers to photograph, so had to cast a wider net.


I found C via on online forum, she wanted some more recent photos of her daughter O.




























This was my first time taking photos of someone I had just met, so I was quite nervous! It was a good learning experience though, and we ended up with some cute photos.

Practise.

The next to let me practise on them, was S and her son B.

I also had a bit of fun putting a compilation of the photos together. It's a nice way to include some of the fun shots, which weren't necessarily "right" on their own.

J also joined us at the practise session,
with her sons O and G.

I didn't do nearly as well with these
photos unfortunately, lots of dark
and/or out of focus shots.

G was a performer though, smiling
and playing up to the camera.

It was time to photograph people.

I finally became bored with photographing the plant life in our garden, and decided to try photographing people. This is trickier, because firstly you have to find people willing to pose, and secondly they have to be patient while you play around with all the settings to work out what you are doing.





Luckily, E & T agreed to pose for me. As I said, it was my first time taking photos of people, other than my kids, so I was pleased with the result. I wasn't entirely happy with my lenses though, and ordered a 50mm 1.8 for a sharper image and to get better photos in low light situations.

I got a new camera. Well an old camera.

I had to return the Canon 400D, so I went in search of my own camera.

I ended up with a second hand Canon 350D, with the twin kit lens (wide angle 18-55 and telephoto 75-300).

Of course I had to take some more photos in the garden for comparison.

Passiflora

Weed (of some sort)

Raindrops on pawpaw leaf

And then it was Christmas. 2008 that is.

I've never been one to give Christmas cards, but everyone around me was busy making them. For the hobby photographer, that meant beautiful photos of their children, with a variety of styles of layouts, backgrounds, fancy text and sweet messages.

I decided I too could show off my children in a festive greeting card, and here's what I came up with.

Editing a photo is a lot of fun too.

Digital photography allows you to get away with less camera skills and clean up your photo later on the computer. I went a little overboard, to see what I could do with my average photos of ordinary things.

Can you guess what these are? The answers are next to each photo, highlight the text to find out.













A = A doorknob.

A = A mop.

A = An aloe-vera plant.

A = My son, playing with a toy fire truck.

DSLR takes much better photos of the kids.

By now my son was 2 years and 7 months old, and it was a struggle getting him to stay still in one place long enough to take photos. And most of the time he was looking down at what he was doing. If I tried getting down on the ground and pointing the camera up, I ended up being tackled by an enthusiastic small child.

So it was my daughter's turn to be in the photos. She is just over 10 months old in this photo. I was very impressed with the difference you get with a DSLR camera. Not just in quality, but also it adds something almost magical - the blur of the background, it all helps you to really see your child. We spend so much time running around in our busy lives, and having these photos helps to recapture those moments, possibly more so than when we experienced them the first time, and were too busy to notice or appreciate it.

Sunset from my window.

Still very much a beginner, I enjoyed the opportunity to participate in friendly photography challenges. This is the sunset view from our window.

There's so much more to it.

Entering the Photo5 competition raised my awareness that there was more to photography than just clicking a button. And I began trying to find out more.

I joined a peer-moderated group to learn more about photography. We followed the Morguefile course, completing regular assignments and giving eachother feedback on our photos.

To start with, I was still using my Olympus "point and shoot" camera. To be honest, before now I wasn't aware that there was more to it. I discovered the world of DSLR cameras, and borrowed a Canon 400D.

Here's a couple of my photos.

These are leaves of an Inga tree, using the Canon 400D.


This is a close-up of the same image, I loved being able to get so much detail.


I decided to try a similar photo using the Olympus point-and shoot... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. However there is a lot less control over what you will get. Check out that ant!


Here's a close-up of the same photo.


And here's a photo of a Passiflora - passionfruit flower. They make great subjects.

Along came... another competition.

I was surprised and pleased to have done so well in the Smile Photography Competition. I heard about another competition and decided to enter. The Canon EOS Photo5 Competition was very different. There were a limited number of registrants taken, and then each was sent 5 items to photograph. You could then submit 5 photos in total, one per item featured. This competition was run in October 2008. At the time I was quite happy with my entries, but of course looking back I am a lot more critical. One of the entries I will not upload here (crayon), but I will show the other four, as they are still interesting.

Ribbon .....................Bubbles ........................Tealight Candle

Cocktail Umbrella

How I got started.

I received my first digital camera, a 5 megapixel Olympus D-630 zoom, as a gift before the birth of my first child. It is a "point and shoot", yet to me was more advanced then any of the point and click film cameras I had previously used.

I have plenty of blurry grainy photos of my son to look back upon, from birth onwards. It also has a video feature, which we have used to document his development.

My son is by nature a happy, smiley, sociable child. To the point that people have stopped us in the street to comment on it, it is the first thing people notice when they meet him, and even those who know him well still can't help themselves from remarking upon it to us. As such, he has been the perfect subject for photos. A family member once commented to me that he couldn't take a bad photo.

In August, 2008, I entered a national competition, Centro's Smile Photography Competition. The idea was to enter a photo that made you smile.

I entered because my son made such a good photo, not because I could take a good photo.

The photo was selected as a local finalist.






This photo was taken a few days before A turned two.