I should video this child when I pull the camera out. She has a routine she does when she sees it. the routine begins with squeezing her eyes shut, and making a big smile. Then it proceeds to eyelash batting, and then this:

As you can see, her eye is better, and a bath did wonders for her hair. No Charlotte cosmetic dentist needed.

I just looked at the pictures I took Sunday for our church directory, and I am needing an appreciative coaching pep talk. You know what that is, right? Appreciative Coaching is using positive questions, mindfulness, and other tools to acknowledge the strengths of individuals and effect change. It’s the subject of a book written by Sarah Orem, a faculty member at Capella (where you can earn a college degree online. Just sayin’.)

See, I’m upset because I got 5 or 6 six bad shots out of 47. I mean most of them came out professional quality, and I’m all hang dog. And I know what the problem was with the bad shots. It’s the way the faces on the men look to me. I’m five feet tall, and we have several very tall men in the congregation. My eye compensates for the angle at which I typically view them, but the camera does not. I can fix this by standing on a stool. It is not a big deal. But I am majorly upset over this, and I don’t understand why. It’s not like the pictures are hideous, they just aren’t great. And for every one that’s “not great”, there’s at least one that’s phenomenal. I am my own worst critic. Still.

Oh, and when I say phenomenal, I mean shots like these:

Yeah, these are my kids. I’ve got ones of church members that are equally fine, I just haven’t asked permission to put them on the internets.

Here’s DD#5 in the computer armoire. We’ve had it together for about a week, but have not yet gotten around to putting together the computer pieces and parts to go in it. She loves to crawl into that little cubby where the tower is supposed to be. She’ll be so disappointed once the computer goes in there.

Here is DD#5 as she slept in her high chair this morning.

Technorati Tags: photo a day

I have been trying to get this photo for days. I really wanted to capture DD#5’s teeth, because they have come in so funny! I have had:

1. a baby who showed the desired teeth, but was crying
2. a shot where she was laughing, but my angle was wrong
3. dead batteries
4. recharged batteries that really weren’t so they were still dead
5. and finally, success!

Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get a shot that looks candid, even when the final shot is quick and easy, as it was today. For the keeper shot, I fixed the redeye, and cropped the pic down so only she was in it, instead of her and a large expanse of wall. The three thumbs are the rejects, but I thought they were of interest, just for showing the process. The only editing I did to them was to save them as “best for the web”.

Technorati Tags: portraits, baby teeth