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an attempt at ‘posed’ one year shots

AshleyAnn — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:00:27 +0000

It is borderline impossible to get uninterrupted time to do ‘posed’ pictures of any of my kids. I attempted a few of FireCracker in the front yard…because we couldn’t make it to some cool location.

Here she is with her daddy in the front yard…a couple of weeks old.

The front yard session wasn’t working so well, so I thought I’d sneak away one evening to go to a park…alone with my girl.

Those pictures might seem like going to the park made things easier in regards to posed pictures, but here is the real story:

“Sweet girl. Hey baby, look this way. Moo. Ruff ruff. Achoo. B where’s mommy?”

“No, no. Those ducks will bite your little finger off. Trust me baby girl. Quack Quack. Where’s mommy? Quack Quack…look this way.”

“What does Mommy have? Do you see your brothers? Where’s daddy? Moooooooo Moooooooooo Mooooooooo. Okay lets find somewhere without ducks.”

(brothers & daddy were not there…and my animal noises weren’t working.)

“Baby girl, I promise you do not want to chase those ducks. They are not friendly. Look! AAAAA CHOOOO. Do you want mommy’s sunglasses? “

Fake sneezing not working. It always works with toddlers that don’t belong to me. Bummer…she doesn’t go for my photo tricks, but she did start coming for my sunglasses. Sorry for the fake out little girl.

“Baby girl those ducks are not your friends. Yes, they are loud and act like they want you to come play. Yes, you and the ducks have the same waddle walk, but they will just mistake your cute fingers for bread crumbs.”

“I know you don’t understand what those are, but most kids your age actually wear shoes. Crazy. I know.

Let’s put them on and pretend I am a mom doesn’t let her daughter walk around a public park barefoot.”

“Can you look at mommy’s camera one time and smile perfectly instead of trying to climb into the pond to be with the ducks? Please. I’ll make more animal noises if you want.”

“Sorry didn’t know that request would offend you. The Oklahoma humidity sure makes your curls cute. Good thing I have 100 pictures of the back of your head now.”

“Can you show me your STOMP routine? Nice.”

“It may be annoyingly hard to take pictures of you now, but I guess this is a pretty good documentation of you at one year. Maybe one day you will sit still and pose for a picture, but right now you are too excited about the freedom that comes with walking…and those crazy ducks. Let’s go home…it’s hot.”

her first year {an idea for monthly baby pictures}

AshleyAnn — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:07 +0000

I will not take credit for this idea…however I can’t remember where I first saw it either. There are a billion and two ways to do monthly pictures. I have done them differently with each kid. I think these are my favorite. They aren’t all perfectly the same. Nor were they all actually taken on the 7th of the month..eventually I was 2 weeks behind each month and just kept it that way…and I missed month 6 because I took so many other posed pics that month. Oh well. The first collage is the more of what the original idea was. The second collage is some outtakes from the process. I love them both. To top it off when I was 9 months pregnant with her I went looking for one of these big calendars -thinking I’d have to buy 2, one for 2009 and one for 2010 . Well TARGET is awesome. They had a July 2009-July 2010 calendar. Score.

Some outtakes.

I’m the proud aunt…some more pics

AshleyAnn — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:27:19 +0000

I thought I’d brighten my sister’s day at work and give her a peek at some more of the maternity photos I took. She is gorgeous.

Before….and a few months after

Climbing up the fence was Eric’s idea.

Hanging a wooden letter from his ear was also his idea. I usually avoid ‘cheesy’ pictures, but I couldn’t help doing the heart with the hands on the belly. What I love most about these two pictures is Eric and Lesley’s faces. In the first one Lesley is laughing at Eric, which I love. He makes her laugh a lot. In the second I love how Eric is looking at her. She gets that look of adoration a lot from him. They are good together. They are going to be phenomenal parents.

Now I love my sister & Eric, but I sure hope the next time they make an appearance on this blog it is with my niece in thier arms!

i’m the proud aunt

AshleyAnn — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:42:59 +0000

My sister is a gorgeous mommy to be. I got to take a few pictures of her and Eric…I haven’t had time to go through them all, but I wanted her to have a glimpse of a couple….these make me happy! I’ll post more later.

The Jones Family

AshleyAnn — Mon, 31 May 2010 03:43:06 +0000

I would like to introduce you to the Jones family. We are so thrilled to have met them this year through our son’s school. Mrs. Jones is the prinicipal and we worked out a little trade. She wanted the family pictures and I wanted to guarantee that Biggest Brother gets straight As and nothing on his discipline records. We traded.

No, we didn’t trade, there is a lot more to the story than that. I might have to try a trade in the future though! She does a tremendous job as principal and we truly feel like the school is extended family. It was an amazing experience for us. Thank you Mrs. Jones.

The Ellisons {Family Session}

AshleyAnn — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:00:52 +0000

My oldest goes to kindergarten at the most wonderful school. Last fall they did a silent auction and I donated a Family Session….I was so excited that Mrs. Ellison was the ‘winner’. Our family has loved getting to know this family – they are the kind of people that every time you are around them you want to hang out longer. We had a beautiful evening for pictures and 3 boys that made it fun.

I always do Couple pictures during Family Sessions. Too often parents only have pictures of the kids – with the exception of maybe some old wedding photos. I like to change that.

They look more like a couple getting ready to get married than one enjoying life with 3 boys.

The whole crew.

Brothers. I love brothers. I wish I had a brother. A big brother.

I love mommies and their ‘baby’ boys.

Could be my new favorite Family Portrait.

So tomorrow is a little DIY project…and it may or may not include a Reader Etsy Store giveaway….

Rebekah {senior 2010}

AshleyAnn — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:10:12 +0000

THE SIMPLY CREATE GIVEAWAY IS STILL GOING ON, SCROLL DOWN FOR THAT POST.

Yes, I am no longer doing portrait sessions…I have ‘quit’ that side of photography for the time being.

Yes, if you want to finance a large in-ground pool in my backyard, I will be happy to do whatever session you want.

Yes, you will be seeing a few portrait sessions on the blog in the coming weeks….but none of them are financing my dream of a pool.

Yes, this post is a portrait session.

Yes, I wish there was an easy way for me to trade hair with her. Jealous.

Yes, I LOVED shooting Rebekah’s senior pictures. It was fun to be ‘back in the game’ for an evening. It was wonderful not to be chasing a moving subject. She is a talented photographer - which made me nervous! Rebekah wanted a field that still had high grass. I thought, “we haven’t mowed in a year a while.” So we did the session around our house and our neighbors. It was a perfect evening. This is a LONG post. I am so used to my doing pictures of kids that I had a terribly hard time narrowing down my favorite pictures to share here…and there are still so many more!

Thank you Rebekah for spending the evening with me. It was my honor. You are stunning.

posed and smiling at the camera

AshleyAnn — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:30:17 +0000

My kids are very used to my camera. They don’t mind it. In fact, they usually have ideas of what they want me to photograph or what they want to photograph. If we do something fun and I don’t have my camera out they usually ask about it. They don’t mind the camera….unless I want “nice posed” shots. 99% of the time I don’t want the posed stuff, but there is that 1% of the time I want it. I like having a few shots that just capture what they look like. So, once a year (around their birthdays) I convince them to let me do a more traditional photo session with them. In the past I have done one kid at a time, but this year I decided to do all the boys at once.

Originally I was going to do it near the Riverwalk in OKC (I bribed them by taking them to the Lego Store – thanks Grandma for the gift certificates), but when we arrived it was crazy busy. There were sports fans everywhere – noted by the vast array of team logos and jerseys. Being the huge sports fans we are, it took us a bit to realize March Madness games were being played nearby. So we drove around and found an old (dirty and dusty) abandoned warehouse – the boys were in love.

Biggest Brother – 6 years old

Littlest Brother – 2 years old

The one on the left reminds me of someone that has had too many face lifts

I took some of Big Brother (3 years old), but will post those later. I will say this picture of him is the very first one I took of him that day. If this were your kid and you had hired a professional photographer to photograph him – you probably would have never seen this picture. If you notice the areas that are VERY white – they are overexposed. I didn’t have my camera settings correct, but as a mom this is a definite keeper to me!

Just the boys. Littlest Brother loves to mimic his oldest brother.

Can you guess which one of our boys has more personality than he knows what to do with?

This is my favorite shot of the day. If you have ever tried getting a picture of all your kids (whether it is 2 or 10) you know how unlikely it is to get them all looking and smiling. This picture makes me very happy….even in all its perfect posed goodness. I love that my girl is growing up with 3 big brothers.

UPDATE: Camera Settings are ISO 250, 1/100, f/4.0, 85mm

The kids faces are all on the same plane (about the same distance from my camera). If two were in the back my f-stop (the f/4.0) would have had to be bigger (for instance f/5.6) to get all the faces in focus. In this pictures Littlest Brother actually isn’t quite as sharp as the other 3, but it is so subtle that a little post processing can tweak it in regards to sharpness. To take a group shot with a smaller f-stop you need the faces to be an equal distance from the lens.

To counter balance all this cute posed stuff, I will post outtakes of the day tomorrow. I have a feeling you will enjoy that post more!

The day after these shorts and flipflops pics it snowed several inches….thus canceling Littlest Brother’s birthday festivities.

Thankfully he didn’t understand to be disappointed, we’ll do it later…in the sun without snow I hope.

Happy Monday!

yawning…all week

AshleyAnn — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:30:05 +0000

UPDATE: Google Reader likes me again???????? That’s the word. Thanks for letting me know it is working! Happy day to me.

This is how I feel this morning….

Why? Could it be a brain freeze from too much ice cream mixed with Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints?

Or could I be tired from the sheer number of wounds (mainly facial) that are a part of my normal day?

Nope. I’m tired because I know this is a BUSY week. This is BIRTHDAY WEEK for oldest brother! (yes, we celebrate for a week around here)

That means my house is once again taken over by primary color decorations picked out (and usually made) by my son. I’ve grown an aversion to primary colors over the years. It’s his birthday week…not mine….so I give in and let ugly his killer design sense take over!

There’s a lot of projects to be made. Desserts to be eaten. And LEGO fun to be had. I’ll share all that next week….if I’m not sleeping. Oh yea – I never get to sleep.

I have some friends that aren’t sleeping too much lately either.

They have a beautiful girly reason not to sleep a full 8 hours. Goodness do they have a cute reason! Snuggled babies make me happy.

Tiny baby girl in her daddy’s big hands makes me even happier.

Tiny baby girl sleeping…well today that just makes me jealous!

Congratulations P’s on your sweet girl…she is a treasure!

Hank {2.5 weeks}

AshleyAnn — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:30:05 +0000

Thanks for all your sweet comments on yesterday’s post. He is a pretty special little guy and I am pretty proud of him. Well I thought I’d change it up a bit and share some pictures of a baby that isn’t mine! My sweet friend just had her first baby – Hank. He is scrumptious and I had the pleasure of sneaking away from my boys to meet him and hang out with my friend for a bit. Goodness is he cute….it is impossible for me to be around a baby, without my kids and not take a few pictures. Enjoy!

I told his mom not think I am crazy when I took this one. I also told her to take his picture with this monkey again as he grows.

It cracked me up that the monkey’s head is bigger…it is not a big monkey.

The next two are very similar, I just can’t decide which one I like more. They are both so sweet, very much the same, but very different too.

Right before I left his cousin stopped by (whose mom is my college roomie and a bridesmaid in my wedding). A few brother-cousin shots.