Christmas

We started Christmas early this week with a celebration at our friends' Tonya and Corey's house. Their daughter Lilly and our Katie get along really well. So we had a nice evening with them and did a small gift exchange. Katie got a wonderful tutu that Tonya made. She loves dancing in it!

One of the things I'm trying to learn with my photography right now is to make better use of my external flash. It is dark so early that there is hardly any natural light inside, and the on-board flash from a digital camera usually doesn't look very good. While at their house I found that pointing my Speedlite up at the ceiling and slightly behind me I got the right pictures. Now if only I could set the correct white balance before shooting, that would save me some editing. But other than that I'm pretty happy with the results. Here are some pictures of their cats and of Lilly and Katie.

Katie with a hat I made

I took this photo of Katie recently in our family room. I crocheted the hat for her friend Lilly. I like how it turned out. But this photo showed me how hard it is to not overexpose reds and underexpose the rest. I had to brighten it up quite a bit in Photoshop. Plus in these winter days there is not a lot of available light, so I had to increase the ISO to 1600. Luckily my Canon 50D can handle it pretty well.

Thanksgiving 2009

Over Thanksgiving we were at the inlaw's house. Katie got to play with their new standard poodle pup, Magic. He was only 9 weeks old. I took the opportunity to go outside in the backyard with him and try and shoot some portraits. It's definitely a lot harder than people! Dogs move around a lot. Still, I was able to get a few cute shots.



Katie was wearing a new adorable sweater dress from Gap. I caught her running in her sassy outfit when her grandma had pumpkin pie. She didn't want to miss that! Technically not the best picture, but I love how determined she looks and how grown up. I should have used a flash instead of relying on the limited available light.