Kaitlyn in action on the swing!

Here's a mini 'action' photoshoot with Kaitlyn the other day on the swingset. I can't belive her 4th birthday is on Friday. It seems like just yesterday that Krista was turning four! I was happy with these shots. I have been working on a new focusing mode called AI Servio that is used for sports photography and for tracking fast moving objects. In these she was going full speed on the swing. So fun to be able to capture her so well in action!

Sisters

One of my favorite recent creations :) The girls in their Easter outfits and hats by the lake. I found a cute quote to go with it. Enjoy!

Front Page Explore!

Gosh..I will do two separate posts. Today was a big day for my photos. As you all know I stopped posting publicly on Flickr when a few of my photos were "borrowed"... I can't say blatently stolen, because the individuals still left my watermark on the photo, but they used them on their personal blog sites. I was also infomed that one of my photos was available as a wallpaper download (computer background). Luckily that site was shut down. Needless to say I decided to post privately. Well yesterday I uploaded one photo (the winning photo from last month's dgrin contest) and thought it was set to "Friends and Family". I was WRONG. I logged onto Flickr later in the evening only to find dozens and dozens of comments...I had it set as a public photo. Well, I didn't remove it (and I had uploaded a minimal file---only large enough for proper web viewing and not printing) so I left it. Today I was welcomed with a message that this photo has not only gone to Explore but it has hit the FRONT PAGE of Explore! This is a big deal for me as Explore photos are hard enough to get, but FP Explore, wow what an honor! I've only had one other..."The Three Little Bears". So here is the screenshot on Flickr's Front Page today :) So far in 24 hours some 75 favorites and nearly 900 views.

Happy Easter!

Had a fun outing today with the kids..the annual American Easter party for our club of local Americans in France. This year...a big treat for the little ones.. THE REAL EASTER BUNNY was there! I got some fun shots...pretty much my ideal afternoon-the kids dressed up for photos, a full battery, my nifty fifty lens and 8 gigs of memory! :) I had a blast. Luckily the rain held off for the event, but it is raining now so we'll have to see what happens for tomorrow's hunt! Evan was in his hayday today---running freely and eating chocolate. Happy Easter!

Innocence

Innocence
Originally uploaded by kidzmom2009

This will be a quick way for me to update with photos onto my blog! Hooray for convenience! I've recently joined flickr to help me progress with my photography...It is a wonderful place to share ideas and technique as well as receive commentary on photos. On my first day I had one photo placed by a group moderator into a gallery for "World"s Best Photos"... Lovin' that! I'll post that photo soon too. It was a keeper! A short session with Evan napping like a newborn. So now I have found an easy way to update the pics for blogger. I've been bad about blogging, but very very very good about taking lots of pictures (just not posting them here...now I will :)

Halloween Portraits of Evan

Some of my favs from our Halloween portrait shoot. I've been playing photog very intensively over the last month or two. I have many, many more to share. I hope I'll have some time to upload them.

A few bits of news...Toomas sister visited this past week from Sweden. We had a great time and I took some great pictures. I'll get those up soon.

Evan can stand now for a few seconds without support! He is learning so quickly. He is sleeping terribly at night still but that is not new news!!! He has also learned to wave and make a silly face at the same time. It is just ADORABLE!!!

The kids head back to school soon (Thursday) and I'm looking forward to that. For now enjoy the pics!

Erik's Portraits age 7 1/2

Well I've now switched over to shooting exclusively in RAW for my portrait work. I've been having a lot of fun working with the kids lately and luckily they still enjoy posing for me :) I've also been warned about posting these w/o copyright so if you notice the watermark you'll know why. I don't want these to end up somewhere they shouldn't be...and I'm also now only uploading very low resolution images. I was warned that on Facebook for instance, they reserve the right to use anything you upload! Well if they use my pictures they are going to be at 400 x 600 dpi so nothing serious could be done with that resolution anyway.

Here is a glimpse of my growing man at age 7 1/2 (he was officially at the halfway mark on the 6th!)

Mr. Sunshine

Crisp, clean whites....wooden clothes pins, precious baby clothes, sparkling white towels AND a smiling baby! Had fun with this!!! :) Click to enlarge!

Ballet Photo Shoot with Kaitlyn

So I did a shoot yesterday with Kaitlyn. It was FUN! I got some keepers for sure. I really loved a few of them....She wanted to try on Krista's pointe shoes so I made a little storyboard with the shoot.

Evan's 8 Month Portraits

So I was feeling inspired and decided to do a few shoots with Evan. He is so fun to take pictures of! I really got into both of these series. The fuzzy hat was really inspiring for me. I went with a cooler feel in whites and grey. In the sleeping series I was all about warming things up. Those 2 fuzzy blankets just screamed soft light! The one taken from the back of his head just melts my heart! If you click to enlarge you can literally FEEL that soft baby hair...go ahead, touch your screen! :) I got a zillion shots of him sleeping. It was a rare moment back in the newborn sleep poses. All in all a fun set! Enjoy!

Another Contestant

So I also added a photo of Krista for the contest. I didn't have one of her individually, so I took some today. If you want to make me SUPER HAPPY you can vote a 10 for all four kids every day!! The contest is a little bit political (in that it is of who and how many people you know, that makes the photo earn points). The rules state that they will take the top 100 photos with the highest points and then those will be sumitted to a jury of judges (who are both professional photographers and also in advertising). I really hope to at least place in this contest. I'd love to win some free photo books. I always take so many pictures and print so few. A year supply of photo books would be just what I need to bring my portraits to life :) THANK YOU!

So ad Krista to the competition!!!

Soliciting Votes to win a Portrait Shoot!

We decided to enter a few photos into a local photo contest so that we might win a free portrait shoot by a very well known Parisian photography studio!

You can help us win be voting for each of the kids... Just click on the links below and then click on the voting box (a 10 would be WONDERFUL). Once you click the voting box you need to confirm your email address. Once you check your email and confirm the address you can go back and vote for real! You can vote once every day (until October I believe). So definately keep the kids in mind!! 10's regularly would really increase our chances of winning this portrait package....AND YOU ALL KNOW how much I love my pictures!

The links will be posted in the most recent blog entry! :)

A BIG THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Beach photos!

So I was COMPLETELY loving the beach setting this summer and took so many fun photos. When we were in South Haven we headed to the beach one evening with Tommy for a few photos. Tommy was so kind to take some nice family pictures, and some of Toomas and myself together. I also (of course) took a million of the kids and the gorgeous sunset. I will put up just a few of my favorites up for now. There are also some great action/swimming shots from the rest of our week for a later post (with the rest of the family...Mike, Lia, Grandpa, Tommy etc).

I still don't have much news on my Uncle other than that everything went well!! Praise God!