While today is actually Nick’s 29th birthday, we are taking it easy and relaxing until tomorrow when Daiden has to go in for surgery to repair the break. So I will be compiling images from this weekend and posting the full story next Friday. In the meantime, please pray for my little man, he’s being super brave, but this is going to be difficult for him.

My camera is a Nikon D700. I love it, it rocks my world. The D700 is out of production, but I hear the D800 is pretty awesome too.

My favorite portrait lens is the 50mm f/1.4. I use it about 90% of the time during my newborn sessions.

The 50mm f/1.8 was my first 50mm, it’s an awesome little lens with a tiny price tag. If you’re wanting to try out a prime and don’t want to make a huge investment the Nifty Fifty is totally the way to go.

The newest addition to my bag is the Nikon 60mm f/2.8 macro. I have been dying for a macro so I finally bit the bullet and picked one up. This lens really rounded out my lens collection allowing me to take beautiful detail shots of a newborn’s tiny little lips, toes and eye lashes.

Finally, the Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 is a great walk around lens. I use this on a lot for snappies of my kiddos. Really a wonderful, inexpensive and versatile lens.

Nikon SB600 is my trusty speedlight. I can’t tell you how many times this little guy has saved my behind!

My camera is gripped with the Zeikos ZE-NBG300 Battery pack.

Of course, I need something to carry all this in….my super stylish JoTote gives me plenty of room for all of my gear plus all the extra necessities like gum, keys, wallet, iPhone, etc. I love this bag!

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Mason is a very special little boy. Really, he’s not so little anymore, he’ll be turning 9 this summer *tear* and is growing like a weed. Mason and I have a very unique relationship, he is so special to me for so many reasons. One of those reasons is that he was my first child, he made me a mommy. Before Mason I was just “Whitney”, after he was born I became “Mommy”. Not to say my other children ar not just as special, it’s just in a different way.

Here are some fun little facts about Mr. Mason :

-Mason was born on his due date.
-He is a fantastic artist.
-He was a super chubby little baby.
-Dancing is one of his favorite things to do.
-He looks a lot like his mama.
-He has the most adorable freckles all over his face.
-When he was 3 he used to call freckles “nipples” (led to some interesting comments)
-His personality is fantastic, so funny.
-Mason has ADHD, which at times is difficult, but is also quite an asset to his creativity.
-He is a terrific big brother.
-His “Love Language” is physical touch.
-It’s not unusual to find him sleeping upside-down in his bed.
-He has the sweetest heart.

Of course my goal is always to get an image as close to perfect in camera as possible, however that is not always a possibility. I have a terrible habit of moving from one lighting situation to another and forgetting to change my settings, so a couple of my images are either over or under exposed. Of course, just my luck, that happens to be the image that I had great eye contact and a beautiful smile. Like, for instance, this image of my son, Eli. I was just sitting at my computer when he walked up and started being goofy. So I grabbed my camera and snapped a few images. Naturally, my camera settings were from an outdoor session I had shot and the photo was WAY underexposed. So I adjusted my settings and took a few more. After importing them I realized that the ONLY image where he was both looking at me and smiling was the first one…the severely underexposed photo. Of course.

At first glance I thought there was no way I was going to save this photo, but I tried anyway and was pleasantly surprised. That is actually what prompted me to write this post. Not only was I able to recover almost all detail in the shadows, but my focus was spot on (thanks in part to my Nikon D700 and 50mm lens) ::happy dance:: So just for argument sake, I decided to export the image as a JPG and see if I could recover the image just using Photoshop rather than running the RAW image through Lightroom first. It was awful, there is no way that this photo could have been saved had I shot it in JPG. It was BAD.

Since the images tell the story so much better, take a look and SEE why shooting in RAW is such an asset…

Some fun facts about Mr. Eli:
-He was due on Thanksgiving, but born December 1st, 2010
-He has mom’s eyes and dad’s….everything else
-He has never had a drop of formula, total breast milk addict
-His favorite place to sleep is curled up next to mommy
-His first word was ‘balloon’
-He LOVES veggies, seriously l.o.v.e.s. them (yay!)
-He has a nasty temper and uses it pretty often
-Blowing on his belly makes him giggle uncontrollably
-His favorite thing to wear is….nothing
-He loves to have is picture taken
-He is, quite literally, the cutest baby we have ever seen