Confessions of a Photographer That Has No Clue

My obsession began September 29th, 1999 at 3:26 a.m. when my first little man entered into the world. The camera came out and the madness ensued. I've always enjoyed taking pictures, but until my first itsy-bitsy was born, I would not say it was a hobby. Now 9 years and nearly (and, I'm not kidding) 75,000 photographs later I can't seem to put the camera down. I know!! I can't help it!

Someone once told me I would take hundred of shots of my first child and then the second child I would take only shots of the important "milestones" followed by having a completely empty photo album of all children there after. HA!! WRONG! One thing I am really glad I did and am doing is photo documenting all of my children's lives. I LOVE to take their pictures.

I have graduated some in the world of photography. I started out with a basic 35mm camera with 400 speed film and most of my pictures were fine. I actually took some great black and whites back in the baby years of Daylor. My sweetie-pie hubby urged me to start using a digital point and shoot when that became the thing. (I can't tell you how much we saved in film and developing when we did that.) I liked my little SONY Cyber-Shot. I had a few good shots, but I began to become a little unsettled with my pictures and just wasn't getting what I really wanted. Most of my pictures were just average. A lot turned out like this...

Yikes! Not pretty.

Here we had a little family picture time with all the kids, but it definitely lacked again - I know they were so cute (still are)!!

About that time, I had a tragic mishap with my little memory capturer and my Cyber-Shot had to be shot. I seriously went through photographers withdraw!!!! Once again, Dewayne (da hubby) cam to my rescue! He surprised me one day with a digital SLR camera WAAAAAYY beyond what I had ever used. Not to say it is one of those multi-thousand dollar cameras, but it was way more than I had ever experienced before. I realized that day I really knew NOTHING about photography. There were big, scary words like white balance, ISO, aperture, & bokeh that I had never even heard of much less used. (I still am, to this day, trying to figure out what some of those terms mean!) So I just took what I did know like that I preferred photos that were from different angles and perspectives and candid "in the moment shots" and began snapping a way.

I proceeded to embark on my first "photo shoot" with the kids a week after I got my new camera named (yes, she has a name), "Pictoria." Oh, that's something I could have added to my list a few posts back that I name everything. All my cars, my camera, my Vaseline - even my kids I really never call by their birth names, but that's another post for another day. I know - it's bizarre. I have never claimed to be normal though! ANYWAY, here are a few of the resulting shots:

Now, I am sharing these with you not to beg for compliments, but to say I have absolutely no idea how they turned out this way! I laughed because I really had no clue as to how I did them.

Fast forward 2 years later, to today and I can still say I am winging it most of the time. In fact, here's one I just recently took that shows I still have a loooooooooong way to go.

I figured out what I did wrong, but like usual, it's always after the moment is over. (Probably, one of my biggest frustrations about photography.)

A few minutes later, I captured this moment with Perri. So, how can one image turn out so bad and then 5 minutes later the other turn out so good? Something about aperture settings and lighting? What specifically? WHO KNOWS! Well, probably lots-o-people, just not me!

My kids have gotten so used to me toting around the camera and saying, "Just one more guys," that they hardly complain anymore! (I said hardly, not never.) (Note to someone who is interested in documenting their kids lives in photos - Your kids may grow up to hate you. At least you will have pictures of the times that they didn't! :)

I have also discovered that beach pictures are fun, too! Your best shots are either in the morning or at dusk. I chose dusk because I love the golden tone everything takes on when the sun starts to disappear into the gulf. Here are a few of my fav.'s from Destin last year.

Much to my delight, I also discovered Photoshop where you can do cool stuff like this:

And this:

So, on I will continue my little photo journey. Truly though, it's not really about the pictures, the quality of light, or if the depth of field in "just right." It's my beautiful and sweet subjects I adore. I am grateful that the memories of their precious childhood's will always be in encaptured (is that a word?) in photographs of yester-years. It's those fleeting and quick moments that I long to keep tucked away in my heart (and my hard drive :).