Baby Photography and ShootFLYShoot: How I finally Learned to Use my DSLR and You Can Too

Hey kids. I've been way too busy Christmasing to post recently, but I took some pictures this week that were just too freaking adorable to keep to myself.

Isn't that just the cutest little sock monkey hat you've ever seen? It's even cuter when the two of us where them at the same time, but I don't have that documented.

Austin really wanted to get some pictures of her with he light saber, but really good ones haven't quite happened yet. For some reason they turned out pretty well with her new paint brush toy though.

And then yesterday I took some pictures of Norie practicing her almost crawl while I was working on some other stuff. 

I am so happy I decided to take the shootFLYshoot Photography 101 course and learned how to use my camera.

It only took me 7 years. Yep, seven whole years. Not the actual learning. That only took a couple of hours thanks to Kevin and Josh, but it took me seven years to do something about the fact that I didn't know how to use my camera. Sound familiar?

My husband bought me an amazing Cannon EOS Rebel DSLR as a graduation gift circa 2005. I had never used anything but a point and shoot before, but had a lot of fun with the program settings. They worked pretty well and I liked the pictures I took on vacations of landscapes and flowers and other pretty outside stuff.

Then I started a blog and wanted to take pictures inside. It was a whole new ballgame and my pictures were okay at best. Mostly they looked like were amateur shots taken with the flash in poorish lighting. I knew they weren't great, but I didn't know how to do any better.

One day Layla over at The Lettered Cottage linked to a series of posts by Centsational Girl about blog photography. I read them and got motivated to try my hand at shooting in manual mode. I busted out my camera's manual and figured out how to adjust the settings she mentioned to the ones she used, but since I had no idea what they did I couldn't adjust them to the picture I was trying to take. I was lost.

Then Layla's husband Kevin started a photography website called ShootFLYShoot.
I liked the facebook page and added the RSS feed for their blog to my Google Reader, but I didn't actually sign up and pay for their Photography 101 course. I wasn't quite ready to commit. I mean, it was $69 whole dollars.

The conversation in my head went something like this.

$69? That's kind of a lot of money. Like more than half a week of day care. Can I really justify spending that much?


Then I realized that I wasn't able to use my several hundred dollar camera the way I wanted to because I was too cheap to spend 69 bucks.

I bit the proverbial bullet an paid for their Photography 101 course. It was totally worth it. probably the single best $69 I have ever spent. Kevin and Josh are amazing and I actually understand what all those setting do.

I feel like my own personal photo taking super hero. Not that I'm suddenly a professional photographer. I'm not, but I do know how to take a great blog or baby scrapbook pic.I''m sure it helps that my baby is ridiculously adorable, but I take credit fir that too.

Instagramming Childhood

I had this (potentially crazy) idea that I would take pictures of Norie each moth to document her babyhood. Clearly, I did not yet have a baby when I came up with this idea.

You see, the thing about taking monthly baby pictures is you have to take the time once a month to take pictures of your kid. Like, not just whip out your fun while you're doing something fun or when they do something cute, but actually set aside time to focus on taking pictures of them.

I'm not good at that. We're too busy doing stuff and snuggling. Not that you should feel bad for actually doing it. More power to you if you actually get it done. its just not our thing. I am, however, really good at whipping out my phone and Instagram-ing our adventures.

I stressed about it a bit. Then I looked at the pictures I had taken of Norie this month. 

That is totally scrapbook worthy. Four month pictures: check.

Oh, and in case you're curious last Thursday I planted the mum by friend Nancy gave me in the dark just so I could claim another day of sticking to my 25 Things plan. I didn't take a pictures (because it was dark) and I didn't find time to post about it on Friday, but I did do something. :)

1. Buy a bracket and rehang the blinds in the bedroom
2. Plant the mum by friend Nancy gave me
3. Write something on my DIY Chalkboard
4. Finish my fall mantel
5. Take Norie's four month pictures before she's five months old
6. Finish the wedding plate wall art
7. Make some bunting for my office
8. Build a pallet bar/wall art to cover up the attic fan switch
9. Make a DIY ribbon chandelier for Norie's room
10. Do something with the shutters my aunt got me last year
11. Put the label plates back on the enormous drawer thing and label the drawers
12. Finish the wall art I started for the Song print I got for donating to Love Without Boundaries
13. Finish my desk
14. Finish the table scape for Campbell Family Thanksgiving 2012
15. Hang the awesome owl latch hook my sister gave me at Norie's baby shower
16. Clean up the porch
17. Finish the October page in my pregnancy scrapbook (yes, that would be last October)
18. Fix the leg on the coffee table and finish repainting it
19. Sell the coffee and end tables
20. Make a coffee table
21. Create a gift wrapping/gift wrap organizing space
22. Start working on fun holiday decorations
23. Finish the other Dream Dollhouse from last year's Make Two Challenge
24. Make some DIY cake stands from wedding plates and candlesticks.
25. Make map mats for vacation photos

25 Things: Day 2

I did it. Again.

I know. You're shocked. Two whole days in a row is more consistency from me than you've come to expect.

Before I get to my accomplishment there are two other super awesome things I want to mention that happened yesterday.

First, our glorious new shiny refrigerator was delivered.

Isn't she pretty? Austin got her for roughly half of the MSRP and I am thrilled. It's a little big for the space, but that's about to change. I'm even more excited about that, but that project deserves its own post and really isn't going to get done in the hour between Norie and I going to sleep.

I also made Beer and Bacon Mac & Cheese for dinner. It had Halcyon in it. It was GOOD.

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I can't. It was The Beeroness. If you like craft beer and cooking you should go subscribe to her RSS feed right now. It's amazing. She has about a million recipes I want to try and she obviously blogs during the day based on the quality of her photos. Don't get me started about fall lighting and blog photography when you have a full time job.

Short version: it sucks.

Slightly longer version: it sucks more when you don't feel like you have the time to import the pictures from your real camera and quickly snap some shots with your phone.

I promise I'll replace these pictures some weekend when I can take them during the day. Well, at least the ones of things I haven't eaten.

That brings me to my 25 Things plan.

I didn't have a ton of time so instead of using the prioritization I did the thing I thought I could finish the fastest and without making too much noise. I started this page months ago and only had a couple of bits to stick down and the month label to create. 

In case you are counting and wondering why my October page is about finding out I was pregnant if Norie was born in May, I found out I was pregnant about 6 weeks after conception (a.k.a. when I was 8 weeks pregnant). There is a page for September too since I was pregnant for the whole month even though I didn't know it yet. No wonder I felt so icky at the Great American Beer Festival. By the time we found out about her she was the size of a strawberry. We were trying so it was a major relief to find out I didn't just have some freaky weird endocrine problem. The blog posts around that whole situation would have been hilarious if I had been ready to tell people.

On a photographic note, if your infant has attempted to use the corner of your phone with the camera as a chew toy the images get blurry. Lesson learned; clean the lens.

Day 2 of my 25 Things plan: check.

1. Buy a bracket and rehang the blinds in the bedroom
2. Plant the mum by friend Nancy gave me
3. Write something on my DIY Chalkboard
4. Finish my fall mantel
5. Take Norie's four month pictures before she's five months old
6. Finish the wedding plate wall art
7. Make some bunting for my office
8. Build a pallet bar/wall art to cover up the attic fan switch
9. Make a DIY ribbon chandelier for Norie's room
10. Do something with the shutters my aunt got me last year
11. Put the label plates back on the enormous drawer thing and label the drawers
12. Finish the wall art I started for the Song print I got for donating to Love Without Boundaries
13. Finish my desk
14. Finish the table scape for Campbell Family Thanksgiving 2012
15. Hang the awesome owl latch hook my sister gave me at Norie's baby shower
16. Clean up the porch
17. Finish the October page in my pregnancy scrapbook (yes, that would be last October)
18. Fix the leg on the coffee table and finish repainting it
19. Sell the coffee and end tables
20. Make a coffee table
21. Create a gift wrapping/gift wrap organizing space
22. Start working on fun holiday decorations
23. Finish the other Dream Dollhouse from last year's Make Two Challenge
24. Make some DIY cake stands from wedding plates and candlesticks.
25. Make map mats for vacation photos

Goals for 2012

Sisterhood is funny. Laugh so hard you end up in tears while driving down the road and almost have to pull over funny. At least it is for me. My sister and I have great talks about all kinds of things and they frequently make me laugh. Sometimes she's laughing too. Others not so much.

A week or so ago we talked while I drove home from visiting our grandfather. Among a number of other topics we talked about her list of goals for the year.

I laughed.

She wasn't so amused.

She listed out 45 goals for 2012. 

That works out to only one every 8 days or so, but it struck me as really, REALLY funny when she asked if I thought that was too many. Or maybe she didn't actually ask for my opinion. Maybe I just started laughing when she told me she had 45 and I felt compelled to justify my response. That may have been what sent me over the edge. It could also have been that I desperately needed some emotional release at that point and our relationship allows me the space to do that.

For the record,  I don't think it's too many or it's silly to have a 45 goal long list for the year. That's really actually a very reasonable number for a person as ambitious and accomplished as she is. The thing that's funny about it is that most people would never do it. Kind of like writing a personal Mission Statement. I laughed when she first told me she had one and then last year I realized I did too. She's a forward thinker my sister is and I love her for it.

Despite my apparent subconscious cynicism I'm working on a set of goals for the year too. I even sent a rough draft to my life coach.


Go ahead.

Laugh with impunity.

Having a rough draft of your goals is WAY funnier than having a long list of them. I bet my sister went through at least a couple drafts before she decided on the final list. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself.

Sidenote: Does it bother you that I write sentence fragments as separate sentences because when I talk it's clear that they actually are complete thoughts and I say them like whole sentences? If it does your attachment to proper grammar is clear and you should read this cartoon about using "alot" as a word.

I'm not ready to tell you exactly what all of those goals are just yet, but I will tell you that one of them involves posting more regularly to my blog.

One of my other goals is to work on taking better blog photos which has been a bit of an issue lately. My camera and computer are fighting necessitating a string of images taken with my phone. I also have this little hiccup that I have a full time job and it's the middle of winter so there isn't a ton of time available to get shots with great natural light. By "not a ton" I mean absolutely none most days. I'm going to figure it out though or the sun will stay up longer before I do. I'm also planning to get together some fabulous shots of the parsonage to share and post in the Parsonage page. Who says you can't take great pictures of unfinished projects?

Not this girl.

Or maybe I'll finish them. That would really be shocking.