focal length: 24 mm
shutter speed: 1/30
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 800
flash: none

Being upside down is fun! So are photos of kiddies hanging upside down from playground sets to chairs to Daddies. Try shooting your kids while they are swinging about, hanging, sliding and doing things they love to do. You’ll get genuine smiles and a cute picture!

Sophie just loves it when we do this to her. Sometimes it’s the only way to get her in position for grandparents to give her a peck on the cheek!

Laura is a Vancouver portrait photographer. Visit Dolce Life Photography.

focal length: 24 mm
shutter speed: 1/80
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 800
flash: none

I usually advise others to get in close but there are times where a larger field of view has its purpose, even when shooting portraits. For example, in the today’s daily pic, you can see someone walking by to the left of my subject. My husband took a series of photos and we liked the one with the man’s legs in the frame as if gave the image scale. By scale, I mean that we are now able to see how tall Sophie is compared to the adult as they are in close proximity to each other. Do you have any images where you framed in an object to show the scale of what you photographed?

It’s really amazing how quickly children develop their new found skills. Not long ago, she was just taking tiny baby steps. Now she’s walking so much faster that I can’t keep up with her anymore.

Laura is a Vancouver portrait photographer. Visit Dolce Life Photography.

focal length: 24 mm
shutter speed: 1/200
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 800
flash: none

For the last few years, I had been exclusively using my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens until I got my zooms. Although it took a bit of getting used to not having to zoom in and out with my legs, I’ve learned to appreciate the versatility of my new lenses. Because I’m always crouching on the floor in awkward positions, it’s difficult to move backwards quickly enough to properly frame a moving subject when using a lens with a fixed focal length. I had a lot of cut limbs and fingers back in the day due to my lack of agility. Now, I just have to rotate my lens to get a wider field of view without even moving! However, the one danger in that is objects seems farther than they appear and I have to be careful she doesn’t hit my lens!

There’s just something so sweet about a baby hug. Have you had one today?

Laura is a Vancouver portrait photographer. Visit Dolce Life Photography.

focal length: 48 mm
shutter speed: 1/200
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 640
flash: none

When shooting children, I find that I’m always crouching, slouching or totally sprawled on the floor. If I had shot this standing up (comfortably), I wouldn’t have captured her little tippy toes or the perspective of being right there in the thick of the action. By shooting at a child’s level, we can see the world in a new way. Or rather, in a renewed way, reminding us of how everything looked when we were little tots. How about you? What sort of weird body contortions do you find yourself in when shooting your kids?

When did she get this tall? Can you say “childproof time”?

Laura is a Vancouver portrait photographer. Visit Dolce Life Photography.

focal length: 32 mm
shutter speed: 1/80
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 640
flash: none

I wanted to do a detail of the hippo on this housecoat, so I framed it low and didn’t have to crop it in post processing. The colours were vibrant to start with but the colour of the floor was a bit distracting as it was also bright. I used the colour selector in Lightroom and dialed down the saturation for orange. After adding a black vignette, I was able to make the bright pink stand out even more. I also used the clarity slider to help define the edges in the robe a bit. If you’re interested in exactly how I did this, I’ll be putting up video tutorials of my post processing using Lightroom in the near future. Keep an eye out for them!

I wish I had a matching housecoat for myself!

And Yay! My 100th post!

Laura is a Vancouver portrait photographer. Visit Dolce Life Photography.