My Horrible Picture Taking Skills

If you look at the header on the top of the blog you'll see a stark difference. Our daughter? Super cute picture. And it's not even the best one I have of her. Our sons? Not so much.

It's not that my boys aren't super cute -- they really are. It's that I don't take very good pictures of them. There are a lot of factors that go into this.

1. My camera is not that good. I have dreams of getting a DSLR, but I know that wouldn't really fix the problem, since if the camera doesn't fit in my pocket or very tiny purse it wouldn't get taken with us, and I wouldn't get any pictures, good or otherwise. I asked some photographer friends their opinions on cameras, and one suggested this one:



I want it, but haven't felt like I could spend the money on it yet, since we're currently saving for an expensive adoption. But maybe someday.

2. My boys do not stay still at all. This means almost all my shots are candid shots. I occasionally get super cute candid shots, but those don't include close-ups of their faces, which is what I wanted for the blog header.







See, cute, right? Just no faces.

3. Apparently I don't try to get close-ups of their faces very often any more. I did when they were little, but now I spend more time trying to get pictures of all three of them together, or pictures with things in the background so we can remember places we went or things we did. While those are great pictures to have, it'd probably be good to get a few more so we can remember what they looked like.







You'd be surprised how many pictures I have of dinosaurs. Hundreds, literally. (Unless you know my boys, especially my oldest -- then you probably wouldn't be surprised at all.)

4. My oldest's current "smile for the camera" face looks like a grimace. Seriously, the kid has the greatest smile, but his pictures look like this:





And he thinks he's smiling. Sigh.

5. Also, apparently my kids just suck at looking at the camera and smiling. Not only do I have more pictures of my daughter doing this than any of my sons (which might be due to the people taking her picture having much better picture taking skills), I also have a lot more pictures of my nephew doing this than any of my sons. Just in the pictures I've taken of my nephew, which are a lot fewer than the pictures I've taken of my boys.



See the one in the middle looking straight at the camera and smiling hugely? Yeah, not one of mine.

I have a new strategy to remedy this problem, though. As a Christmas present to myself, I bought a session with a real photographer. While she won't be able to overcome all the problems, I'm hoping with a better camera and an hour dedicated to trying to get a good picture of the boys and nothing else, maybe, just maybe, I can get some cute close-ups of them again. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for some old favorites.