...photographing jello

This weekend I had John for just a little while, before his mom took him to see his Nana.  It was early morning, he had a full belly, and was in a great mood.  So I grabbed Big Girl and began taking photos. 

I soon learned that taking photos of babies is like photographing jello.  John would be in a perfect position, or have a perfect expression, and I would take what I thought was the perfect shot.  I took about 1,000 of those perfect shots, or so I thought, until I started looking at them on the computer.  Most of them were blurry.  Because just as I pressed the shutter, he would move.  Just a little.  Sometimes a lot...like jello.  And it would be blurry.  I kept some of the blurry ones, simply because I loved his expression.  But I dumped about 90% of the photos I took. 

I am still learning about my camera, kind of like learning to drive a Cadillac without a driver's license.  I've borrowed a book from Wretch, and have been researching and watching many wonderful photographers on the web, but it is still a slow go.  And John was my ultimate test.

Here are some of the photos I kept:

 

You can see I had enlisted help.  Gramps is John's favorite person.  When he sees Gramps come into a room, he speed crawls to him.  So I shamelessly got Gramps to play the clown (you would NOT want to see photos of the faces he makes at John to get him to smile) and it helped tremendously.

These next two photos were shot with the sports setting, and you can see how fast a baby's expression can change in a matter of two seconds.

Then I changed to a monochrome setting and got a few good shots of John.

You will notice he is chewing on just about anything...I tried to get as many shots as I could when he wasn't chewing on something, but soon gave up.  He just got his first tooth, and chewing is his life right now.

I photo edited three of my favorite shots of John and printed and framed them and gave them to Tara.  I had a great morning with John, but learned two things that morning:

1.  Crawling around on the floor after a baby is hard work when you are middle aged with worn out knees.

2.  You couldn't pay me enough money to be a baby photographer.  I photograph mine out of love, and that it the ONLY thing that could drive me to do it.



Post script: as promised I am sharing other blogs of interest to me, and I encourage you to give them a look.  There are so many great bloggers out there!  

This is one photography blog I follow: http://www.rabinphotography.com/