Before my son was born we spent what we thought then was a fortune on a new camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XT. It was awesome! And I had no idea how to use it. I knew every picture I took with the flash looked terrible, so I tried to get as much light as possible and I would usually shoot in Portrait mode with the flash turned off. That is exactly how I got this shot in May 2006, when my son Niall was just two months old. I should add that to get this one shot I had to take about 20, because of camera shake, baby movement, etc. Painful!
Same thing for this one, taken in July 2006. The shutter speed was too slow, and you can see some movement in the toys. But wasn't he cute at 4 months old?
In August I made an amazing discovery, off-camera flash. I bought a Canon Speedlite 580 EX and started experimenting. Flash was bouncing everywhere, and suddenly I was getting some great shots with flash! I was still shooting in either Portrait or "green box" mode. I took this shot the night before my niece was born.
I got this shot of my niece in the hospital when she was just a few hours old.
In January 2007 I found Me Ra Koh's blog and that is when I became truly dangerous! Me Ra is an amazing photographer! I started reading her blog because she posts photography tips for moms, and she explains things in language normal humans can understand. Now I'm totally hooked and I love to keep up with what she's doing! If you want to be really dangerous she also has a DVD and workshops, which are awesome and I'll talk more about them another time. Anyway, thanks to Me Ra I learned that aperture controls how blurry your background is. So I set my camera to black & white, AV mode, with the aperture all the way down to 4.0 (I didn't even know about ISO yet) and got these shots. Niall was 11 months old and starting to run!
He was also chewing on everything! Apparently the windowsill was just the right height.
In May 2007 I got a new lens for my birthday. A fixed-length 85mm F/1.8 lens that is amazing! With this lens I was determined to take my photography to the next level. I got these shots the first time I used it!
By summer 2007 I was generally shooting everything with my 85 mm lens, usually in AV mode at F 2.8. I can go down to 1.8 if I need to, but it's very unforgiving that low and you can easily have part of a face out of focus. So generally I'm using 2.8 now most of the time. Here are some shots I took this summer.
This is my niece Asha on her first birthday.
Fun with blur! This is my husband Jude. I think he was tired of having his picture taken. . .
And last but not least, one of my favorite photos of Niall taken in August.
It's so exciting to look back and see the progress I've made, at the same time I can look forward to seeing what I'll be shooting this time next year!
