Tradition

Part of our family tradition has been to read a book before going to bed. My kids adore reading and will often find a book and have a look through the pictures all by themselves. They have been enjoying some Christmas stories this year.

I love Vince face in this one... he was poking his head around the book and laughing at me!!

Presents under the tree...

Somehow every Christmas we end up buying so many presents!! Every year there are more people to buy for!! Its such fun. My friend Andrea has been helping me out with wrapping them all up. She is much better at it than me. Today she got the kids involved and they had fun wrapping and making cards.

8pm

Last night at our church we had our annual carol service. It was such a great service! My two girls were part of it, listening to their Poppa read them the Christmas story. It was all very cute!! I tried to take some pictures but it was pretty challenging to get them right! Lots of bright lights and moving makes it hard to get the settings right! To be honest the ones I took on my phone might have turned out better!! Maybe thats some more learning for me!

Oh Christmas Tree... and self portrait!

I have been getting a bit behind on taking these photos so decided to combine 2 today to try and catch up!! This photo is inspired by an awesome Christmas photo you might have seen floating around on pinterest of a boy holding a bauble bauble. The photo shows his gloved hands holding it and his face reflected in it. It is a really cool photo if you havent seen it! I got Evie to hold one of our bauble baubles but the only one we had, that was reflective, was really small. And she really struggled to hold it still. We were taking photos in front of the Christmas tree. So I just couldnt get the shutter speed right. The photos were either blurry because she was moving or to dark because of the lights. After she went to bed I decided to try and do it as a self portrait. I got out the tripod and got the settings as best I could then got my face in the shot and pushed the button. It took a lot of tries and this was the best I got!! Think this one might be more in the pinterest fail than anything else!!

Naughty or Nice...

I really want to get better at taking good pictures of the kids moving... pretty much because they move all the time!! I let them jump on my bed today... is that naughty or nice of me?!! 

At first my photos were way to dark so I upped the ISO. It was amazing how much of a difference it made! They came out a much better light. In these photos they are running towards me. By the last one it was starting to get blurry. I probably needed to change the setting so the camera took multiple pictures at one! Anyway we all had a bit of fun. 

Candy Canes

We did some Christmas baking today. Kids had a blast and I only got a little bit stressed out - try baking with 3 enthusiastic small kids and you will understand! Its always such a rush to take the photos but managed to use the manual setting! Woo hoo... I feel like I am getting lots more confident so thats a win!

The stockings were hung..

Today I was very naughty and went off theme. My theme is Evie drinking out of our special Christmas mugs. 

A few years ago the kids Aunty brought them some Christmas themed fluffy cups. I recently got them out and its become a morning ritual to all have a hot drink in them. This morning Evie had a fruit tea and went and sat in the window sill with it. The sun was shining down on her making her hair glow and I wanted to capture that moment.  I really like how these photos turned out even with the messy weetbix bowls and other stuff. They are probably a little bit overexposed. 

Just as I was feeling like I might be getting this manual settings thing Milly asked me to take photos of her jumping off the couch onto the bean bag.... and they all turned out a blurry mess. I can not yet do the manual thing spontaneously!!  

All of the lights...

Who loves Christmas lights!! Who hates hanging the Christmas lights!! They are always, always a big tangled mess... unless you are my brother Andy. He has Christmas light super powers. When he puts them neatly away in the box they are still neatly in the box when he gets them out the next year. For some reason he is the only person that I know that this works for... everyone else Christmas lights mysteriously become a huge tangled mess while in storage.

Anyway for this challenge I decided its time to tackle Bokeh. Which was actually really fun and not particularly difficult. I want to try it again sometime with the kids but for these photos I used Brendans feet! The trick is to have as large an aperture as possible. It is good to have something in front of the lights (eg feet!) to focus on and help create some depth of field. The further away you can get from the lights the better the effect.

This one the lights in the room were on...

This one the lights were off...

This one the lights were off with some beautiful phone light shining on the feet! These were really fun photos to take!  

8am

8am is such a fun time of the day when you have little kids!! Lucky it fell on a Saturday! We decided to put up the Christmas tree! Kids had fun unwrapping everything and playing with the decorations and I tried to get some good shots. I found it way harder than yesterday - shooting inside with bright sunshine coming in the windows and moving objects (children) is a bit advanced for me!! They either came out really dark...

Or really over exposed!

After some playing I just went back to auto! Its my comfort zone.... 

Something Red...

So my lovely friend Georgia and I have decided to do a photo challenge. We thought long and hard about when would be the easiest time to start it and decided that December was definitely the quietest month of the year - haha - why not add another job to the chaos and fun that is Christmas! Woo hoo!! 

So the challenge is a Christmas themed list but I think we will stick reasonably loosely to the theme! Christmas with a summer/kiwi feel!

My goal is to get off automatic mode and start shooting in manual.... time to learn how to use this baby more! First photo above was taken in auto so I could see the settings etc... second photo (a couple of hours later, when the flower was looking a little sad) in manual... I don't think I did too bad with the focus and lighting! Challenges were getting the child to stay still (her arms got tired!) and the wind blowing the flower around.

If anyone else wants to join in the fun let me know and I will send you the list....