If you are one tired, hungry mama you might strap your toddler in his high chair with a cookie* while you snack on a banana.

And if you snack on a banana you might notice that the banana sticker not only has a cute saying on it, but it also is the same blue as your toddler’s eyes so you decide to snap a photo.

You grab your camera and take a couple of shots but his face is coming out too dark so you decide to turn his highchair around to face the window.

If you turn his face to the window you are happier with the shot, but you realize it would be better if you drag his highchair closer to the door to get more light.

You drag his chair closer to the door, but now it is so close that you can barely fit in between so you have to pull over a chair to kneel on.

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The eventual “photo shoot” set up. Notice he is about two feet from the light. I got up on the chair there at an angle so as not to block the light and to shoot slightly from above. There is a covered porch outside the door. This was morning and this is an east-facing window so the light was pretty strong. The porch helped block it.

You pull over a chair to kneel on and snap about 50 pictures while your knees give out. Sure that you have something to work with, you download the photos from your camera to your computer.

When you get the photos on your computer you scroll through and delete all but six of them for some reason or another.

Now that you’ve deleted all but six of the photos you choose one that you think looks really cute.

If you have a photo that looks really cute you are sure that it can look a little better with some post-processing help. So you open PSE and tweak the white balance, exposure, clarity, saturation, applied a defog filter  and crop it because you (doh!) centered his eyes too low in the original.

Now that you have post-processed the photo (but not too much) you are pretty happy with the results and can post it to your blog. You also realize you are really tired for some reason and might be a little hungry, so you grab a banana for a snack.

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I am not a professional photographer — just a mom with a camera. I could also nitpick this photo to death (say like the fact the dead center of focus is on his dirty nose and not his eyes). What I am trying to illustrate here is something I wish someone had told me during those first frustrated days with my digital SLR. Only one photo in a billion is an accidentally great shot. Professional photographers work hard to get the shots they do. Check out this here.  Moms who take lovely shots for their blogs work hard to get the shots they do. Lots of elements are controlled, tweaked and tweaked some more.

It’s hard. It’s fun. It never happens overnight. Play, move your kids, bribe them to sit still, purposefully move activities to rooms with better light, lay things on the floor, you lay on the floor, learn to post-process a bit. Enjoy the process.


* This was three years ago (John!) I do not remember why he was eating a cookie, and I was eating a banana. I’m not even sure it was a cookie — maybe a teething biscuit or a cracker. Please don’t throw rotten food at me.

Just a note: I have been chatting with a friend about photography which is good and bad. The good is that I want to help. The bad is I am not a professional so I hope I am giving good advice.  I feel like I abandoned photography about the time T was born and haven’t picked it up since. The light in our new house stinks. I am not happy with my current lens. Blah, blah, blah. But all this talk is making me itch to start practicing again. That’s got to be a good thing.

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