And of course he’s already had to endure a camera in his face for his whole short life. Stephanie from i speak film came over this week for a newborn photo session. I sprang at the chance to get in there with all her fun props and take some shots of my own. It’s amazing what you can do with the right light (and a lighting guru’s coaching)!

Here are some of my favorites I took that day. Stephanie has posted some shots of the day at her site, too.

Read on for tips . . . (more…)

I’ll probably write up more later, but now I need to get back to Keeping Track of it All.

I’ve not been around the blog lately. But not because I haven’t had any photos to post. I think it’s quite the opposite. I jumped into a personal challenge for 2008 with A Year Of Pictures over at Flickr, and I’m up to my ears in photos lately.

You might remember, I got a cool new camera last summer and some fun photo accessories for Christmas, and as of January I still only had a handful of good pictures to show for it. So I decided it was time to take this little hobby of mine up a notch and improve my skills. The only way I have ever been able to see any kind of improvement in my photography (or in any area of my life where I’m trying to gain ground) is through consistency. And the only way I’ve ever been able to be consistent is to publicly commit to something.

Read on for more photos from my challenge! (more…)

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that digital cameras these days are basically supercomputers generating huge amounts of data that our poor little human brains couldn’t keep up with. The fact that we try to keep track of our photos like they were old-fashioned prints just doesn’t make sense and ends up overwhelming us. What we need to do is get our geek on. We need to get smart and use all of that data that’s being created to make our lives easier instead of harder. It’s time to begin thinking of your photos as records in a… gulp… database. (Click here to keep reading) (more…)

The one thing people cite when talking about why they prefer digital photography over film is the fact that you can shoot as much as you want without having to worry about the expense of film. This is true, but back when digital cameras first became available, digital media was expensive enough that when you were out on the road, it was likely you still had to keep track of how much space was left on your card, avoiding extra shots and deleting photos you knew were bad. You’d get your camera home after a day out, download the photos onto your desktop, lovingly rename and date the files, sorting them into well-thought-out folders. It was a labor of love, but one that you’d do gladly because it never took that long.

These days it’s a different story. (Click here to keep reading) (more…)

So I’m going to have to post an old photo from before the Year in Pictures challenge. One of these days I’m going to remember to download my shots and get them up, but for now I’ll have to hold on to sweet memories.

And for you readers who have stuck it out, thanks! You help make this happen too, keeping us going each time we check out how many people are still reading. Because you’ve all been so wonderful, I’m going to throw a little teaser out there: we’ve been talking about cranking DPBlogs up a notch and we might have a few new surprised in our third year. Keep checking in and I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Anyone have any ideas for a two-year photo challenge?