This year, I am SO excited about a blog circle I am doing with some amazingly talented photographers. Each month, we will be exploring a different kind of light. Last month, it was window light. You can see those images right here!  And this month, we are exploring un-natural light, or artificial light… pretty much, any kind of light that doesn’t come from the sun! I was really excited about this month and also excited about another little thing that has been brewing in my head, so I figured I would combine both of those ideas into one, which brings me to my first image!

I’ve been wanting to miniaturize my kids for a while and finally got around to completing one of my ideas! I’m super happy with how it turned out! I shot the soap, bubbles, and my son with strobes and then manipulated the images in Photoshop to create my little baby boy sliding down a bar of soap!

I have other ideas but wasn’t sure that I wanted to do them with artificial light, so this is the only miniaturized kid for now!

And here are some other images shot with artificial light:

My daughter lit from the bedside lamp at night:

My daughter’s hands lit by a candle and my phone (Brightest Flashlight ap) held by my son, camera right:

And then a bunch of pictures shot in the rain and lit by my car’s headlights! This was short, but fun!

I’m pretty sure my daughter is attacking my son with the umbrella here.These were a challenge but SO fun! I seriously am just loving the idea behind this project and hope you do too! I hope to learn how to use light in new ways and was especially excited to play more with artificial light!

So, how this works is you get to go check out another amazing photographer who has also used artificial light this month! Go check out the wonderfully talented Bethesda, MD newborn, baby, and family photographer, Tonya Teran of Tonya Teran Photography! I love her work and if she’s sharing pictures of her kiddos, watch out. They’re ADORABLE.

If you like what you see, you can follow me on Facebook! …

My baby turned eight last week….

Eight.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for me, it is. He’s halfway on his way to being 16. He’s twice as old as 4. He’s getting big.

I can’t really explain the feelings I have for him. Sometimes I find that I am just staring at him and smiling with this expectant look on my face, like, “what awesome thing is he gonna do next?”

There was a time that he was incredibly agreeable to having his picture taken. I could go anywhere with him, pull out my camera, and the angels sang while he cooperatively played where I asked him to play and looked at me when I asked him to do so. That has changed. He’s not a fan of my camera lately, so I feel like all of these pictures are sort of extra-magical. Somehow the planets aligned perfectly for this shoot.

The night before, I had him try on some clothes that I had bought him. He put on this entire outfit, and I ooooohed and ahhhhed and then had him put them away, quietly thinking that I had to figure out a way to convince him to do an eight year old photo shoot with me. The next day, he put this whole outfit on without me even asking him to. I knew I had to strike when the iron was hot and take pictures of him THAT DAY. I didn’t think it would go well. I really didn’t. But for some reason, the stars aligned and these pictures happened.

I am smitten. I really am.

We’ll start with a picture shot the week before he turned 8. He cracks me up, and I love this because he still looks like a little boy to me.

But then a week later, I swear he just grew up.

The trees are confused here in California. We’ve had such sunny weather for January, they decided to just go ahead and bloom. Oh my.I may or may not have given him a piece of chocolate to keep him interested in taking pictures. Here he is licking the last bits off his finger.

If there’s one thing I can say about my son, he is expressive. As I was taking his picture, he saw a bee. And this is how he let me know about it. Good gracious, I love him.Mick Jagger meets Austin Powers. Lol. Love it. Did I ask him to do this? No. He just did because, well, because he’s awesome.Looking for something in his pocket.I seriously love this one. Just something about it.

I love this one…. There he is marching up to his future as….

…King of the World.

I swear, he’s such a beautiful boy. Full of adventure. Full of love. I adore this child. And if anyone was wondering, the sky was added in Photoshop. I like it better this way. He was yelling at some friends way down the hill. I hope his jugular doesn’t pop from doing that. Sheesh.And because the stars had totally aligned, I got my blue skies with clouds. Perfect.Whenever he gets hot, he starts to strip down. Luckily, I was able to convince him to just air out for a little bit. Lol.Mr. Personality.JUMP, dude. JUMP!He was getting to the end of his rope by this time. Fake smile, anyone?And, just like that, he’s DONE.Poor guy being forced to stand in the pretty light.Still can’t believe we have trees blooming in California right now. I’m sure the rain we just started having will knock these blooms away. Glad I was able to get a picture of them before that happened.

That’s all for now. Happy Birthday, my sweet baby. I love you.…

I’m so excited to be starting a new blog circle adventure with this fabulously talented group of photographers! We want to push ourselves this year with exploring light. Each month, we will pick a different type of light, and post images that we have shot using that type of light! This month, our theme is window light! We chose window light this month since for many people across the United States, the weather has been less than sunny and warm, so shooting indoors seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately for me, I was busy shooting outside since the weather has been fabulous. So, alas, I didn’t have too many window light images. Thankfully I had a cooperative cat.

Let’s get started!

These were actually shot on Christmas day, but seeing I didn’t have too many of my kids in window light, I’m including it.

I visited my sweet friend who just so happens to have a darling son and a gorgeous kitchen with lovely window light. Score.

This cat spends most nights outside all night, and then sleeps on our bed all day. Silly kitty.

And I think these count as window light? A couple of quick shots of my little dude after picking him up from school. He’s in the car with the window up. I liked the hazy look of them.

Next up is the multi-talented photographer, designer, illustrator, editing genius, Lynn Nalty of Square Balloon!

Go check it out!

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