a year

Not quite a year ago, Tyler bought me my Christmas present early.  It's been my most favorite present ever...a DSLR camera.  It's forever changed our family photos.  DSLR's, even the most basic ones, are just so very, very nice.  Especially if you know a few basic things with them!  (Like how to shoot in manual mode and not use a flash, unless you need to).  I've had several people ask me about it, so I'll post the info again.  We have a Canon EOS 60D.  It's not the most basic dslr, but it almost is.  It's a great camera.  If you're wanting a dslr, you'd probably be happy with a Canon Rebel of some sort, which is slightly less expensive.

This is a photo from a day or two after I got the camera.  (It's been the header for our blog until now.)

Yesterday, it was a nice & cloudy day, and I realized it had been a little while since we had a group shot of the kids, so we went back to the same place to take more pictures. We're in the same location, just off to the side on the sidewalk.  It was muddy, and the grass was long, so we couldn't take it in the exact same spot.

All day long it had been cloudy.  I thought it was going to be perfect weather for photos - nice, soft sunlight.  But then literally the moment we started getting ready to go outside, the sun broke through the clouds!  So, it's a little brighter than I had wanted.  (Of course, I probably should have matched their clothes better, both the season and the colors!)

Photo ONE:

Photo TWO

I liked the expressions, some more than others, in the photos above.  So, I thought I'd practice swapping faces with some to see if I could get better expressions all in ONE photo, instead of two.

Photo 1&2 combined:



TS & Vi's faces are from Photo 1.  The other three girls are from Photo 2.  It's surprisingly easy to do it too!

In case you want to see what it looked like prior to any editing (and why I'm a fan of editing), here it is:

If you're not into photography, skip this paragraph:

I had shot in manual mode, which normally I get better pictures straight out of the camera by using the light meter (if you don't know how to do this, and you have a dslr, you need to learn this!  it's so helpful!  let me know if you want info).  I actually had my settings right at first, then the kids were suddenly posing much faster & easier than I expected, so I rushed.  I missed that the sun was breaking through the clouds, changing the lighting, and I ended up over exposing it.  Plus, I hadn't realized my kelvin setting was set really cool (helps for to keep indoor shots from being too yellow!).  Anyway, at least I shot in raw and it lets you edit easily and warm it back up.

I have several shots like this where Violet was being a goofball.  The other kids stood pretty still.  Violet would change positions drastically each time like she was putting on a show.  She was so silly.

Not sure why she's doing this...

This one is my favorite photo, just because it is (and they look better the larger they are!  It's so tiny on the blog.)

Ella just reached back and grabbed her face.  haha.  Clearly I'm easily amused.

It makes it funnier when she then immediately attacks Rhys' flower.

 Ella's beginning to get the attitude that she's the one in charge between her and Rhys.  It's kind of funny.  I remember similar dynamics between TS and Violet.

This was probably 15 photos later, and they were done.  Emma's arms were apparently about to fall off.