Sunday with my boys

We took the boys to Laumier Sculpture park since it was such a beautiful day.  I got two pictures.  Two.

I reminded them in the parking lot that they owed me a few posed shots as a mother's day gift.

::sigh::  Maybe back home we'd have better luck...

Better but no one is having fun - least of all, me.

So I drop all expectations and just capture life as it happens

A very happy Fourth of July

My very awesome mother decided to treat her kids (and their spouses and kids) to an impromptu family vacation in Kansas City.  We added an extra day on to the trip and stopped about an hour outside of KC to visit our "country" sister for the fourth of July holiday and some small town fireworks (a very nice break from the overcrowded firework displays at home where the trek to and from the car takes longer than the fireworks)

 They are well supervised (I actually cloned out my husbands toes because it messed up the shot but he's right there)

We stuck to smoke bombs (and a smoke canon), black snakes, and poppers

The kids were thrilled.

At dusk we headed on to a nearby fireworks display that put on an impressive show

Last year we were mid drought for the fourth of July and almost all the fireworks displays were cancelled.  My youngest doesn't even remember seeing fireworks.  I'm very happy we were able to remind him :)

Boys and Chicks

 I love catching the boys during quiet moments...

They don't like being caught.  Retreat! Retreat!

Maybe I'll play it safe and just stick to photographing the chickens

 Yeah... that chicken isn't safe at all...

(no animals were harmed in the making of these photos)

Wild boys. Nothing new here.

Well, something sort of new.  Did I mention we have more chickens?  Those are the 4 new additions.  That's 7 total now.  Just waiting on eggs.  By the end of summer they'll be laying (or cock-a-doodle-dooing)

Capturing the night

The witching hour... well its actually more like two hours: 4PM to 6PM.  Since the day we brought our first baby home this has always been the hardest time of the day to get through.  Everyone is cranky, it coincides with trying to prepare dinner, daddy coming home so much all at once.  The nerves get frazzled.  

But then you see the light at the end of the tunnel and here comes 7 PM, the winding down hour.  Baths and milk... preparing for bedtime... and the ever present story time.  My personal favorite.  The nighttime hours are when my kids are the sweetest.  Its when I want to capture them the most.  Its when there is the least light.

Evan is reading on the Kindle these days.  Using a slow shutter speed allows me to use the ambient light from the Kindle screen to illuminate his face.  

Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/25 | ISO 800 | 50mm lens

This is the reason I shoot in RAW.  Look how much detail that was lost in the shadows can be recovered.  It can be a real life-saver when you over expose or under expose a picture.  For this type of shot I'll stick with the above photo. While the below photo is a good example of the benefit of shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG, it was not the look I was going for.

Shooting at such a low shutter speed means you risk a lot of movement blur if your subject moves (or if you move).  Here I've got the camera pressed against the wall to stabilize myself but he heard the beep and lifted his face. Movement + slow shutter speed = blur.
Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/40 | ISO 1250 | 50mm lens

Aiden, seeing an opportunity to delay sleep, made a rare request to have his picture taken.  Without the ambient light from the kindle it was a bit more challenging however there was a small amount of light coming from the window just above him.  It was dusk so it was a very soft light. but still rather dark.  I slowed my shutter even more to 1/15, a speed I don't dare do handheld on so I stacked a game and book up and used it as a tripod.  The higher iso, underexposed picture resulted in a lot of noise (or grain) so converted it to black and white.
Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/15 | ISO 1250 | 50mm lens

Before the Kindle they boys read by flashlight, usually under a blanket.  They wiggled and giggled and moved so much it was almost impossible to get a shot of this nightly concurrence that I loved so much.  So we faked it using a little Photoshop magic.
Settings: f2.2 | ss 1/125 | ISO 500 | 35mm lens.  This is what the REAL image looked like:

After Photoshop it looks like their nightly routine that I tried so hard to capture.

Clare 1st birthday + cake smash | St. Louis Child Photography

Clare's first birthday... she is such a beautiful little girl.  And she's fast!  With a few tricks we got her to stay in one spot long enough to capture these.

Her 1st Birthday outfit

She's no fool she knows those boxes are empty; she's waiting for the cake...

 And there's the cake!  Just like my kids she was all about the frosting.

Hey Clare: is being ONE fun?

Jack | 6 Months and Growing

I swear it was just last month I was taking pictures of Jack newly born; it is so hard to believe he is six months old already.  But there he is sitting up, all smiles, determined to eat his entire fist  :)   Six months is a fun age.  It seems like they learn something new every minute

 

I'm not the only one who thinks he's adorable... his mom and dad were obviously head over heels for him.

Lots of smiles and laughs with these three...such a happy family.

Thanks for letting me photograph this milestone.  Your family rocks!  Jack is such a cutie...goodness they grow so fast, my [not so] little ones got extra cuddles when I got home.  ;)

the sweetest things | Bond Family Photo Session

As Audrey Hepburn once said "Happy girls are the prettiest."  And these two were happy... happy to lay on a blanket, happy to be silly, happy to come up with a few "creative" poses - some sweet ones too, and happy to [gasp!] look at the camera.  A small sample of what five minutes of goofing off equals with these two... happy; pretty; sweet.

And here the whole family.  Very dear, old friends (the friendship is old not the friends).  Our kids are about the age that we first started jumping the fence between our yards to play some thirty years ago.  If Audrey Hepburn was right I must have been looking rather pretty myself that morning; I sure was happy hanging out with good friends and sweet girls.

Thanks Jenny for being my friend all these years and thank you both for letting me capture your family!

~E

On a side note: I have no idea what is up with the low quality pics on the blog.  Blogger? Photoshop? User error?  Anyone else having this issue with blogger?