This week is basically just photos of all the places I’m going to take photos. Plus Caroline.

Sunday:

Super happy to be swinging.

I GUESS this spot was OK for family photos. (This spot was amazing.)

Monday:

Eyeing the last apple fritter at Chowder Days.

Nicely done, Connecticut

Free boat rides are the best boat rides

Tuesday:

This is not my baby, but I kind of want to hang it up in my house anyways.

75% off wings at the craft store!

Pixie Girl

Wednesday:

Practicing his long jump skills

A pond…

…a cove…

…a park. I LOVE CONNECTICUT.

Wrinkly toes

Thursday:

Ready for school! It’s been 65 here all week, so she refuses to wear a coat.

I found the steps where we did my maternity photos! I love this park.

What does the fox say? BUY ME, I’M ADORABLE.

Someone had a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast.

That chalkboard was the train station schedule for Evan’s birthday. Repurposing!!

Editing editing editing…I really loved this session!

Saturday:

I did NOT buy this, even though I really really really really love it. I did end up buying a dresser. And a table. And a couch. And…another couch. It was an expensive weekend.

I love you, soda machine.

Project RECLAIM THIS DISASTER is underway. I’m so excited about it, especially now that it’s getting darker and colder and we’re going to be stuck inside more.

I had no photo sessions this weekend but I’m making up for it with 4 in the next 6 days and I’m crossing my fingers SO HARD that the weather stays nice. I’m hoping to get some of our personal photos sorted and (minorly) edited and shared too, since my family starts to get mad if there aren’t enough gingers on the blog. MOAR GINGERS SOON, I promise.

I keep thinking I must be getting close to my 3 year anniversary of these posts, but I am too lazy to actually do the math in my head. This week has been exhausting in a good way (work!!) and a bad way (when did my children go deaf??????) and next week looks exhausting too (NO REALLY, WHY ARE THEY DEAF????) so basic math is one of those things I can’t be bothered to care about. I really am just that lazy and stupid.

Sunday:

My very make-shift newborn set up in a client’s apartment. I’m pretty proud of my fake-studio skills.

BABY FEVER: LEVEL CODE DOUBLE RED ACHIEVED

Dancing to the band at Hot Summer Fun on the roof of the Mohegan Sun parking garage

Monday:

One of those Top 10 for Kids is probably a bad idea.

Surreptitious grilled cheese eating

For someone who BEGGED for mac and cheese, that face is not happy enough

Tuesday:

She said her first day of school sign says “Caroline goes to big girl school”

A pumpkin mocha iced latte, that’s what

Hand stamping some thank you cards to go in my fancy professional type photographer packaging

Protecting Brutus from a thunder storm

Then we went to the beach…

Then we went to the country….

Wednesday:

…so it’s not surprising Wednesday looks like this….

…and this. (They both went to school Wednesday and I went to work, there are just no iPhone photos.)

Thursday:

The definition of “partly cloudy” – and pretty good for a family session

Greek food, get in my face

Sun-streaking

Friday:

Because that’s what stickers are for.

The pavilion at Rocky Neck all opened up for a wedding

Well done Connecticut (with an assist by Long Island in the background)

Saturday:

Model poses

She would ride the carousel ALL DAY if they let her

I promised him a bouncy house but it was gone, so I finally FINALLY bought him the light up bubble gun he’s asked for at every fair and carnival and festival and parade we’ve been to for the last year.

We successfully ate ALL THE THINGS this weekend, so I’m totally stuffed and feel like I could sleep for a million years. Considering it’s 6 pm on Sunday and Caroline just put herself to bed, I think the feeling extends to the whole family. Even E, I guess, although we’ve literally only seen him for 15 minutes since Tuesday, so who knows. I’m hoping next week gives us a little more family time, even if there is less deliciousness.

This post was going to be full of sidebars and parentheticals, so I’ll try to sum them up with a general disclaimer: like I’ve said to many people and had quoted back to me by astute readers – one person’s hard does not invalidate someone else’s hard. I am not saying “Woe is me! Pity me! This is the WORST EVER!” I am saying “These are my feelings and maybe you have some feelings and we can talk about our feelings and maybe braid each others hair if you want or you can call me a spoiled douchecanoe if you want and either way I will understand.” Because, feelings.

I have been on a cleaning tear (Tear might be too strong a word. More like a cleaning small rip in the corner of a page) for a couple of weeks. My housekeeping skills are not great and in general everyone is fine with that situation. The children certainly don’t care. But things reached a point where I didn’t even want to open the door for the pizza guy. Every time I would look at the pile of mail by the door or the pile of school papers on the piano or the pile of birthday decorations on the table I would freeze. Where to START? What’s the POINT? Why should I even BOTHER?

When one thing in your life feels hopeless and out of control, it’s easy for that to reflect into other things, and in this case the mirror was clearly my house. The thing being reflected is bigger than a few stacks of paper though. I’ve been off birth control and hoping for a baby for 9 months now without success, even though it feels like everyone around me is getting pregnant and having babies. Tons of babies. Babies everywhere. You get a baby and you get a baby and YOU get THREE BABIES! (True story, a friend from high school is having spontaneous triplets.)

There’s a whole online world of trying-to-conceive message boards and secondary (tertiary?) infertility boards where people talk about this stuff, but because I never had any trouble the first two times I’m mostly unfamiliar with them. To be totally honest, until I started talking privately with some of my friends about how I’m struggling, I had no idea how much planning COULD even go into getting pregnant. Ovulation sticks and fertility apps and trying disgusting information involving mucus became things I Googled on a regular basis. The biggest surprise was how many people casually mentioned “Oh yeah, I used those OPK sticks to have my daughter”. I think a lot of people err on the side of privacy when it comes to their baby-making-attempts (because, yeah, no one wants to know ALL THAT and no one owes the internet their medical history) but it gives the impression if it takes more than 5 minutes you’re sort of a weirdo. A “Surprise! Pregnant!”-baby (which I am totally guilty of) is more blogable than endless “Not pregnant! Again!” posts, so someonr announcing it when it happens means you don’t really know what people have gone through. I’m a tiny bit concerned that the IUD I had after Caroline was born caused some sort of terrifying, permanent problem (Dr. Google totally agrees) but before we’ve been trying a year no real medical professionals (Dr. Google obviously got his degree online) want to talk to us.

I realize 9 months isn’t that long to be trying, but when your friends who said “Yes! We’re trying too!” back in November are actually giving birth to their babies it feels like forever. I also realize I have two beautiful children so complaining about not having a baby is going to sound selfish and disgusting to some people. But two was never our plan and close together is so much fun, I liked the idea of adding more sooner rather than later. I guess that “Man plans, God laughs” adage is pretty apt, although I if anyone embroiders that on a pillow for me I’ll punch them in the face.

So instead of thinking about my sad, empty uterus constantly I’ve been cleaning. CLEAN ALL THE THINGS. It’s part super-premature nesting, part feng shui and part at-least-this-is-a-problem-I-CAN-solve, but it’s helping. Sort of.

Yes, it’s definitely helping. Just looking at that room and knowing all the birthday decorations (from APRIL, good God woman, you’re so lazy) are put away makes me feel better.

I’ve got the guest room and the kids’ rooms to tackle next, including a couple of terrifying closets I haven’t fully opened in years. I even wrote a garage sale on our calendar and I’ll be running in and out of the house throwing stuff in the yard all day. Maybe space – a space, lots of space, many spaces – will leave room for more good things to come in. It’s better to think about it as space than as emptiness. I’m tired of empty.

I’m not ready to call myself a great photographer, but I think I am ready to call myself a photographer – something I didn’t think was possible less than a year ago. I know enough about my camera now to make it do what I want 90% of the time and enough about photography and editing to feel confident taking photos for other people.

I’m still not willing to charge money for my time or work. Even looking back at these sessions – which were only a few weeks ago – I think “Ugh! The color is so wrong. Why did I edit them like that?! Why isn’t the focus sharper?? Why did I think these were good???” I have so so so very much to learn I don’t know if I’ll ever actually be good at photography.

I also think pictures of my own kids are easier (MOST of the time). I have more flexibility to say “Oh, look at the light! Quick, everyone put on your shoes, we’re going out to do photos!” Plus I can boss them around, predict their smiles, and bribe the crap out of them with lollipops.

But since I’ve been asked recently what camera and lens I use, what my settings are and other general stuff about photography I thought it might be worth writing this post. It is a weird mix of technical and non-technical stuff/terms because that’s how my brain works. Let me know if I’ve got anything totally wrong or explained it really really badly and I can try to fix it.

I do shoot in Manual mode, which is not the same as manual focus. Manual on the camera just means I control the aperture and shutter speed. I also set my own ISO but I usually let the camera choose the white balance. I’m not going to explain what all of those things are in detail since there are a billion blog posts about that already (see the link to Chookooloonks below, her summary is great) but I’ll explain what I do.

Basic info: My camera is a Nikon D7000 (excellent review & info here), which is a step up from my Nikon D90 but is still a crop-sensor camera. Basically that means on my camera an 85mm lens actually shoots at the distance of a 50mm on a full-frame camera. That “crop” applies to all the different lens lengths. The full-frame cameras are significantly more expensive and although I’d love to upgrade I can’t see myself spending that kind of money anytime in the near future.

Important note! If you’re struggling and not getting the results you expect, make sure your camera WORKS CORRECTLY. When I was super frustrated with my camera last Christmas it was because my camera was broken, not because I was an idiot.

A much-too-long explanation of how I take pictures:

After I grab the camera (about 50% of the time the battery is dead, so that’s the end of the picture taking) the first thing I choose is my ISO.

(ISO was the very last thing I figured out, so I’ll elaborate a little. I read a post by Chookooloonks a long time ago (found it!) about ISO and her explanation has stuck with me better than any other – think of the ISO number as light catchers. The higher the ISO, the more light catchers you get so you can shoot in darker conditions. On a super sunny day you don’t need many light catchers but in a dark room you need a lot. And when you have a lot of light catchers they show up in your photo as “grain”. With a low ISO you need to get the light into the picture another way, either through a longer shutter speed or a wider aperture.)

I like to keep it around 200 outside and around 1000 in the house, but it’s easy to change by intervals of 100 if my photos aren’t coming out.

Second I choose my aperture, or f-stop. That’s what makes the background fuzzy or not fuzzy. A low number means less of the photo is in focus. A big number means more is in focus. Up until I got my new 35mm lens* I liked to keep the f-stop around 3 or 3.5 (5 on my kit lens/macro, since that’s as low as those go) but on the 35mm I keep it around 2 or 2.5. A small number means I’m letting lots of light into the camera so I can keep my shutter speed low, plus it gives me that nice blurry background I think of as the hallmark of fancy photos.

Ok, so my ISO and f-stop are set based on where I’m shooting. That brings me to the part I’m embarrassed about: I cannot keep track of my shutter speed. I never remember what the fractions mean. Never. Instead of choosing a shutter speed I rely on my light meter in the camera, which I have set on spot metering (Wikipedia link for technical stuff). I just spin the shutter speed dial until I hit the center mark on the meter in the viewfinder and I’m good. If it’s a really bright day or strong light I might intentionally underexpose by a stop or vice versa, but mostly I try to hit dead center.

After I think my settings look good, I focus the camera on my subject. I have my camera set on single-point focus, where I choose one of the 13 focal points manually using the little dial on the back of the camera. My camera actually has 39 possible points, but I found scrolling through all of them took too long. Choosing my focal point lets me compose the photos off-center, another thing I think makes photos feel fancy. I get my one focal point right over the most important part of the picture and then I shoot. BAM! Photo taken!

The really fancy photographers are so confident in their technical abilities that they don’t look at the screen on the back of the camera to make sure they aren’t totally screwing everything up. I am not fancy. I definitely check. As I follow the kids or my subject around I adjust my settings (most often my shutter speed, then my ISO, then my f-stop) and I’ll check the screen again, but if we’re staying in one place I just click click click until I’m sure I have a shot with everyone looking/smiling/doing something cute/whatever.

During a session I usually take around 400 photos. That’s a lot. Way too many. Especially if the session is just my own kids hanging out in a park again. It’s a bad habit but since the photos are digital I figure I can always delete them once I get them on the computer.

Once I get home I almost always immediately move the photos to my computer. Then I edit. I shoot in RAW, which means I have to at least convert the photos to JPGs before I post them anywhere. I open my photos in Lightroom, mark the ones I think are worth converting, and then adjust for things like exposure and white balance. Since I don’t adjust white balance in-camera most of the time that’s my most frequent edit. I’ve started doing some creative editing in Lightroom too, sometimes using presets from Clickin Moms or MCP Actions. Lightroom itself comes with some really nice black and white presets and I like the way RAW files convert to b&w better than the JPGs. I’ve never taken a class or read the manual so what I know about Lightroom comes from just messing around with it.

After I like the basic look of the photos I use the export function to convert the photos to JPG and automatically open them in Photoshop. In PS I do more creative editing (sometimes very, very badly – I really need to take a class). I have a lot of Photoshop Actions and I go through phases where I LOVE some of them and then HATE some of them and then LOVE some of them again. The most useful one is a web-sharpen/resize action that I got through a Clickin Moms class I took, but for creative actions the ones I won from a Marissa Gifford giveaway can’t be beat. I don’t do skin-smoothing or eye-brightening or head-swapping or anything fancier than maybe some pimple-removal, although I’m pretty decent at cloning out stains and crumbs on the kids.

My final step is saving all the files, first as a full size photo then resizing and sharpening for the web and saving again. I recorded an action that does all of that for me so it doesn’t take very long (God bless Google for showing me how to do that!) and I usually just leave the computer to do it when I go to bed at night. Very last of all I upload web-sized photos to Flikr (if they’re my photos) or Facebook and Dropbox (if they’re for a friend). I usually get the whole process done in a day, although the bridal portraits took me a whole weekend because there were SO MANY – I shot the location, the bride, her family and the bridal shower all at once.

WHEW. If you read all of that, you’re amazing. And probably confused, since it’s obvious I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I think my biggest challenge right now is finding my own style – I tend to fall in love with a new photographer every day so sometimes I want all my photos to look faded and dreamy and sometimes I want them all to be tack-sharp and brightly colored. I’m an over-editor. But like I’ve said before, I’m trying to learn and the best way to do that is practice…so if anyone wants to act as my guinea pigs let me know and I’ll drag you out to run around in an orchard for two hours and you’ll get a couple dozen photos. I’ll even bring lollipops.

*My Lenses:
Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX
Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF
Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 SLD DG Macro Lens
Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX
I also rented a fancy 85mm f/1.4 for the bridal portraits but didn’t love it.

There are no affiliate links in this post, so everything I recommend I can honestly say I truly recommend.

*Giveaway now closed*

I am blond-haired, blue-eyed, very freckled and of Swedish and English decent…but compared to the rest of my family I have a fantastic tan. E isn’t so much “pale” as “transparent” and the kids definitely take after him. With all that paleness comes the usual complaints – dry itchy skin, sensitivity to all sorts of soaps and additives and cleansers, and chapped cheeks from runny noses and cold air. On top of that, my husband has a mildish case of rosacea (I say mildish, since it doesn’t bother him much – “vain” is not a word in his vocabulary – but it is persistent.)

So when Aquaphor emailed me and was like “Hey, can we send you some Aquaphor to try?” I was like “You mean send me MORE Aquaphor? Since I already buy it in the giant tub since we ran out of the giant tub the Navy prescribed to E for his face? Yes, yes you can.”

They sent me the Aquaphor Baby Healing Ointment and the Aquaphor Baby Gentle Wash & Shampoo, both of which are favorites already in our house. The Healing Ointment is great on diaper rash, itchy spots and especially on the chapped skin on Evan’s face:

7:30 pm, right after bath. Poor baby. His nose runs and he wipes it with his right sleeve so the right side of his face is always the worst (We’re working on using tissues, I promise).

I used a teeny tiny bit of the Aquaphor Healing Ointment right before bed and…

8:00 am the next morning. Still a little dry but SO much better. Luckily a tube of Aquaphor lasts a long, long time so I just dabbed some more on throughout the day.

It even worked wonders on my thumb last night, after I burned myself lighting E’s birthday candles at 1 am (free tip: don’t play with fire when you’re really, really tired).

The Baby Gentle Wash & Shampoo is tear-free, fragrance-free and washes out really easily – all very important factors when trying to wash two squirmy kids who FREAK when you get water in their eyes or ears. Now that Caroline has hair long enough that I need to Deal With It regularly I appreciate that the Aquaphor Wash & Shampoo leaves it soft and shiny. It also took the marker right off both kids hands (and arms and knees and faces…) without drying or irritating their skin. We are Aquaphor devotees and I couldn’t imagine going through a whole winter without it.

To help YOU and your family enjoy your winter, Aquaphor wants to send one of my readers this amazing prize pack:

Bundle of Joy Package 

•  $50 Visa Gift Card
•  “Warm Buddy” to cuddle with
•  Ice Age Continental Drift (2012) DVD to watch with your family
•  A Pottery Barn kids picture frame to keep and share your memories!
• Godiva hot cocoa mix, perfect after a cold day
• Aquaphor Baby Healing Ointment  is a dermatologist and pediatrician trusted product that helps protect and relieve dry, cracked skin. It provides effective soothing relief for dry skin and its mild formula is safe for external use on your baby’s delicate, sensitive skin.
•  Aquaphor Baby Gentle Wash & Shampoo is a mild, fragrance free cleanser that gently cleanses both skin and hair. Enriched with soothing chamomile and provitamin B5, the tear-free formula is specially designed and clinically proven to be gentle for baby’s sensitive skin.

To enter, just leave me a comment on this post sharing something you’re excited about this month!  I’ll pick a winner on February 19th and notify them by email, so be sure to enter one when you comment! The giveaway is only open to US Residents who are 18 years of age or older.

p.s. The Warm Buddy in the prize pack is fantastic – it has a bean bag in the middle you can microwave and then tuck inside. Both kids love cuddling it after we’ve been playing outside and I swear it leads to extra couch naps. Exhibit A:

If you find that Aquaphor #WorksWonders, we’d love for you to take and share pictures of how your family is able to enjoy time together with us on Twitter and Facebook!

I was provided with the prize pack listed above as part of my review but no other compensation was received. All opinions are my own. 

And the winner is…Comment #1! (I love when Random.org choose #1)

Congrats to straderspiel for winning the prize pack! Watch for an email!