When my sister announced that she was pregnant with her second I had this idea in the back of my mind.  I am not the first to do it, I’ve seen in pop up a few times on my latest obsession, pinterest.  So this is how my sister revealed that she was expecting her 2nd BOY!  I’m just happy I was able to help!

And I think Caleb got his love of snow from me!  I love it when he cooperates for a picture!

I first met this little guy when he was about 3 months old.  Now he is almost 6 months old and still so cute and happy.  I love it when I get to see my little clients grow and learn new milestones, like sitting at 6 months.  Thanks for coming to visit and I hope you love your portraits!

I’m so happy to be posting another session of my nephew.  There are no words for how cute he is!

I think one of the most popular questions after I did my first Christmas Tree tutorial was how do you get a silhouette using your Christmas tree as the back light.  Well hopefully this post answers your questions.  In this post I will focus more on the SLR cameras, however, you should be able to do this same thing using your point and shoots as long as you can move into manual mode.

So step 1:  put your camera in Manual – yes, full on manual - the “M”.  its really not that scary trust me.

My first suggestion is to crank up your ISO.  I put mine on 1600.   At first I shot ISO 400 but then I had to have my shutter speed to slow that I got camera shake when I handheld.  its easier to just crank up your ISO at first.  Oh and as I did before, these are SOOC images (well converted to jpeg and saved for web) because this isn’t a Photoshop Tutorial, this is a get it done in camera tutorial…  Did you notice I said “convert to jpeg” what does that mean?  Well it means I shoot in RAW, I definitely recommend it, even if you are a beginner but that’s a subject for another day!

Ok now meet my first model – Buzz Lightyear – I HIGHLY suggest using a stationary model first especially if your target model is under the age of 4!  From my experience kids under 4 don’t have much patience for you messing with the camera for much longer than 30 seconds, so practice first, then once you have your settings bribe, I mean get your child.

Ok this first shot is just showing what is NOT a silhouette   My settings were ISO 400 (notice the blur, yeah that’s cause I was hand holding)  SS: 1/30  Aperture:  f/1.8

Ok so there are 2 different silhouettes you can get, and it depends on your taste which one you like better.  Please let me know which you prefer in the comments!!   This one is keeping my aperture wide open:  ISO:  400  SS:  1/250  Ap: f/1.8

And here’s the version with the aperture closed down, with this version you can see more of the details in the tree, more ornaments and stuff:  ISO 1600  SS: 1/10 (tripod)  Ap: f/16

Ok now that I have my test subject done, I can move onto my 3.5 year old.  AND it took a lot of convincing, but we finally explained that good little boys help their moms’ out and santa is always watching after all (elf on the shelf helped a little too!)

ISO 1600 SS 1/640 AP f/1.8

ISO 1600  SS 1/10  Ap f/16

Oh and P.S.  The equipment I was using was my Canon 5D with the 85 f/1.8 lens.  Ideally I would have gotten the WHOLE tree in the background, but I’ve been having a couple problems with my 50 f/1.4 lens so I didn’t really want to mess around with that.

I really hope you enjoyed this follow up tutorial, please leave me a little love if you’ve found it helpful! 

Catching up (and still behind a little) on my Picture the Holidays project.

Day 5:  The View from here

Day 6:  Every Little Thing (Ok I admit this was taken back in February, but I just thought it was perfect!)

Day 7:  Express Yourself – a self portrait – this marks the time when Cullen FINALLY starts sleeping 12-13 hour nights and I got some wonderfully blissful sleep.

Day 8:  Reflecting on the Season

Day 9:  Its a Sign (this is mostly a placeholder, until I come across a sign that speaks to me more)

Day 10:  Twinkle Twinkle

These girls were just so cute, sisters, ages 1 & 2.  Their parents have their hands full!  I didn’t find out until after the session but the older girl was adopted (in fact the adoption just went through TODAY!) so congrats N family, you are all so lucky to have each other, your house will be forever filled with smiles and laughter – I can already tell!

“You hold the Key”

We all have at least one magic remedy that no matter what, will give us the perspective that we need. The key is to remember what that is and pull it out when we need it most. Because this month is about enjoying ourselves and not letting the craze out there get the best of us, use today to remind yourself of your own soul cure so you can have it at the ready for whenever you might need it. What helps you to slow down, take a deep breath and enjoy the moment? Capture it!

Day 3:  All you need is love…

I actually had a couple different ones I loved from today, it was so hard to choose, here are some of my favorites.

thanks for looking!