***Lajolla***

nbjenni

Thanks so much for the camera recs. I was able to get a Canon Rebel XS at Target last night. And now I have a few more questions:

How do you get such awesome light in your pictures? Do you have a roof in your house b/c it looks so bright all the time!

Do you edit them? With what?

What mode do you usually shoot with?

Thanks!!!!

lajolla09.30.06

Hehe... yes.  I have a roof.  It's useful for keeping the rain out

I do actually usually use a flash.  I don't like direct flash, it is very obvious and leaves a lot of yucky shadows and such (as I'm sure you've seen when you try to take flash pictures yourself).  What I do is use my external speedlite flash (like these ones  https://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=141 ) and bounce it off of a wall. 

I will put the babies somewhere near a wall... then face the camera at them, and turn the flash to point at the wall.  Then when the flash goes off it will light up the wall and bounce the light onto the babies from the side (this is what I did in my sig pic below).  I actually take most of my pictures in the evening with very little available light (because that's when I'm bored and waiting for my H to get home from work ) I find that the best light for babies is from the side because it defines their little cheeks and chubby arms so well!  You can get the same effect without a flash if you take pictures in the daytime near a bright window.  You don't want to be IN the window light, but just next to it.

I always shoot in manual, it's just something I learned to do over the years but you can definitely shoot in other modes and get good pictures.  I started out with the aperture priority mode (Av on your camera dial) because you can pick the aperture (what gives you a nice blurred background) and it will automatically set your shutter speed to make a good exposure.

I do edit, I use photoshop (once again, expensive but hey this is my job) but mostly I just use it to resize and sharpen, and if I am doing b&w I do it in photoshop.

If you ever have more questions you can definitely email me katyanna at gmail dot com or page me here... I'm happy to help!  There's also this thing called mamarazzi school for moms who want to take pictures of their kids... check it out https://mamarazzischool.blogspot.com/

Have fun with the new camera!!