Pretty Pretty in Porcelain

Today, as the sun was setting on our glorious spring day, I grabbed my baby, my camera, a blanket, a cute bonnet, and a bouncy seat and went outside. Yes, I did carry all of that at one time. It was quite comical to see. I laugh even as I think to myself of how I must have looked, with a baby on my hip, a camera around my neck, and a bouncy seat hanging onto my arm bustling out the door before the sun went down any further and I 'lost my light'. These things take a certain amount of dedication, you know? (Did you know photographers always refer to any light source as My light? We really do think somehow that we are absolutely, positively entitled to the light that is shining on, near or around our subjects. You'll often hear us say things like, 'Could you move out of My light?' Or 'I gotta get this shot before My light's gone.' I'm just admitting the issue. Listen to a photographer sometime and then ask her if the light really belongs to her. Then run. hee.hee.)


Back to today. So I finally was trying to get some decent pictures of my baby girl. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've not been satisfied with the portraits I've taken of my own daughter in the first 5 months. Yes, I've gotten a few ones that will adorn the walls of my new Old House, but not as many as I expect from myself. And she loves to smile, but not when my face is behind the camera. So today as My light was setting, I tried to capture Lydia's true essence. Here's one where the porcelain-ness of her skin just radiates. I did not alter the photo in any way except change it to a low contrast black and white. And I cropped it to feature her eyes. Okay, so technically I did alter the photo by doing those two things. But I didn't mess with anything else. Her skin really is perfect, that's all I'm trying to say!



More to come later. The color ones turned out beautifully, too!