A Few Random Pictures

My sister is down at the beach with her family this week.  Lucky for us, we are close to the beach so I took the kiddos and shot down there for the day.  We enjoyed hanging out at the pool all afternoon, followed by a pizza dinner.  It was a great summer day.

Check out Ariel, The Little Mermaid, aka Liza.  Recently, she has started making me leave her hair down when we go swimming so that her hair can flow through the water.  She is so silly!

And here is one of my neices, Molly.  She actually played the role of Ariel today.  Liza got demoted to Melody, Ariel's daughter.  For those of you who aren't into the Little Mermaid, Ariel had a daughter named Melody.  That is from The Little Mermaid II.  Too bad I was a little lazy about taking pictures today because I missed getting pictures of King Triton, aka, Harrison.  He even pretended to carry his trusty trident around.  We have such little actors on our hands.

And, although this picture wasn't taken today I just loved it.  Look at my big girl, Louisa!  I snapped this yesterday.  You know where she was??  In my front doorway!  For you aspiring photographers go give this a try.  Open up your front door.  Set your trusty little subject right there in the doorway and snap away.  Usually, your front doorway will have nice, pretty soft light.  It is nice, open shade- perfect for taking pictures.  This is a great example of front lighting.  See how there aren't any shadows on her face?  The light fell on it evenly.  Front lighting is also called "glamour lighting".  I learned that in Candice Stringham's portrait class.  Aren't you impressed with my learning?  Now, go off and take some pictures of your kids in your doorway.  Leave me a comment if you do and let me know where I can go and take a gander at your doorway shots.

So, there you have my completely random pictures from today.  I am still playing around with my new camera, learning all the new features I now have available to me.  I have already decided some that I will use a lot ( like back button focusing) and some that I will use in particular situations ( like changing the auto focus drive modes- pretty nifty for catching moving subjects!).  All in all I do love my camera.

And before I forget, someone asked that I post what lens I was using.  For all of these pictures I used my Tamron 28-75mm/2.8.  I leave this lens on my camera most of the time now.  I love a 2.8 aperture and I find the focal range to be pretty decent for most of what I shoot.  I do have a longer lens that I use at sporting events for my kiddos but it was demoted as my favorite lens once I got this one!