How-To, Personal

How to trick your child into a good picture

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My boys think their mission in life is to prepare me for worst case scenarios of child photography.

My two year old never looks at the camera unless I say something totally crazy, make a funny noise(he is getting immune to that one), or totally surprise him.

How do I get the cute pictures of them you ask? Okay, maybe you did not ask that but you should…so I can feel like I am helping.

1. Give them something totally new to explore, play with, or eat(they love beautiful suckers or pretty much anything messy to eat)

2. Take advantage, I wait until they have to stand still(because they just got in trouble) or they are wanting to tell me something. They usually look at me while talking to me(usually, not always)

3. Most of all I work at making them laugh, I very rarely ask my children to smile for the camera. I would not get the natural smile I am wanting. Instead I talk about something goofy or praise them. My oldest loves to hear how awesome he is.

My goal is to have a picture that I can laugh at. I love to look at a picture and remember how crazy I was being to get that cute smile!

What do you do for smiles?

Sneak Peek~Pastor & Theresa Watts

PastorWatts

My Family, Personal

Never too young?

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My oldest boy is going to be four on Saturday!

He is getting to that lovely age where nap time is no longer an everyday occurrence. As a stay at home mom I have counted on nap time to have time to reflect on the sweetness of my children and recover from whatever they did pre-nap.  So to make sure I still have some alone time(they call them breaks in the workforce), I started the quiet time rule. I read about it in a homeschooling book(which I plan to do this year). I read about a mom that had all her children go to their rooms and play quietly every afternoon for a little bit and then I realized I could do THAT!!!

His little brother(2yrs old) still takes naps so I have him lay down in the library for half an hour or so…that is at least how it is supposed to go. I think he knows I am a pushover, he will call my name until I go in there. When I ask him what he wants he says, ” I have something really important to ask you. Can I get up?”

When I finally do let him come out ,his brother is still usually sleeping. Have you ever tried to keep a almost four year old quiet before? If anything they get louder.

Yesterday, I decided to take some pictures on my nice beautiful enclosed porch that my awesome, wonderful, greatest man in the whole world made for me!

I had a crazy idea that was probably born out of “no more nap time” desperation…

Mylittlenikonboy

I let him use one of my Nikon’s NikonboyfingersI love those little fingers on the buttons!

NikonboylookingLook how happy he is!

NikonboytoysI was a little nervous about the HARD tile floor

Nikonboyslooks

But I was happy that he let me take lots of pictures of him! That NEVER happens. Nikonboybw

The lens I let him use is an old manual one that was Nick’s Grandfather’s, he gave it to me last Christmas to use and I love it!

The focus is manual also though so Justin had his work cut out for him(what does that saying even mean?)

Here is one(he took over a hundred) of his shots, I kept tweaking the focus hoping one of them would not be a blur.

He keeps saying that he wants to be a diver when he grows up so I asked him if he wanted to be an underwater photographer instead.

You have to start brainwashing…I mean guiding them young.

justinspics