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....  

Sweet slumber

I haven't posted in awhile and am keen to get back into taking lots of pictures and a bit of blogging! I have been reading up on lifestyle photography and love it! It pretty much just means taking pictures of life as it happens - not posed and structured. Perfect for kids who don't stay still for a second let alone hold a pretty pose! Rather than getting frustrated at them for not posing how I want, I need to learn how to capture them as they are.

The pictures above are of my two year old. After a busy day out she had fallen asleep on the bean bag in her room - so cute!! I enjoyed playing around with a few different angles and liked how these 4 turned out. I am still much better at taking pictures of stationary objects so a sleeping child is a good place to start on my quest for learning how to take lifestyle photos.

Any feedback welcome!!