The dangers of photographing your own children

I should have known better, it is never easy to photograph your own children. I know this first hand because every time I try to do it they decided to do everything in their power to defy me. It's been this way forever. Gatlin gets angry or runs away laughing when I try to photograph him. Draiman usually just gives me a very sour puss face or he refuses to look at me. They put up enough of a fight for just candid portraits but when I actually set up a scene it's always game on. That's when they decide to be their worst.

Well yesterday I decided to set up a fall scene because I really wanted some fall portraits of the boys. I knew that the odds of me getting anything good were very well stacked against me but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. It's always a challenge with these two but at least it's worth a shot.

Overall Draiman was very good, he stayed in the same spot and even looked the right direction a few times. Gatlin on the other hand wasn't having it at all. He refused to stay on the hay bales and if he did sit still for a moment he made sure he was facing backwards so that I could not get a portrait of his face at all. Most of the time he was screaming and attempting to run away. Things were so crazy that at one point I knocked my tripod around and managed to get some crazy out of focus shots. This one here depicts how the shoot was really going. I must say I love it as much as the nice portrait, got to love my boys. :)

Surgery

This past week has been somewhat odd for us. I had minor surgery so I haven't spent as much time with my babies as I usually do. The first couple days I pretty much stayed upstairs away from everyone as I recovered. After that I was able to come downstairs more but I still didn't spend a lot of time with my little ones because they tend to get too rough and I didn't want them hitting or kicking my incisions. Everything is pretty much back to normal now but it was definitely strange this week.

In some ways it was a little nice to get a break away from my boys as I usually do not get that. Once I was feeling better my husband brought my laptop up to me and I was actually able to get quite a bit of stuff done although I was not able to get any editing done. (That's a whole other story) So I can say that it was nice to get some productive time in and to be able to work for a while without constant interruptions. Thought I did enjoy my time alone, I still missed being with my boys.

No matter how crazy or chaotic it gets around here I love being with my babies. They mean the world to me. I enjoy being able to play with them whenever I want. I enjoy watching their crazy antics. I even enjoy that they are always so loud and rambunctious. They are most definitely the brothersbad, but I wouldn't change them for anything. I'm glad be able to spend my days with them again.

New pics and a freebie!

I was finally able to get a fairly good picture of the brothersbad together today. Yay!! So now the header to this blog is no longer outdated. Thank goodness for that. My munchkins love to be difficult when it comes to me taking their pictures. Today I was lucky enough that Daddy was home to help and Gatlin was more interested in his movie than me photographing him.

Here are some pics from a few weeks ago when both boys were mad at me. They were not in the mood for me to be taking the pictures but I did it anyway. I absolutely love these pictures. they show so much personality.

I love photographing my boys! Well on that note I would also like to add a freebie here for you. This one is a set of two actions that I created in Photoshop CS5. These are my go to actions for resizing images for facebook. I created two actions, one for horizontal pics and one for vertical pics. I did it this way so that I can just select the appropriate one and it resizes automatically without opening up any dialog boxes. These will resize your photos so that they are 500 pixels on the longest side at 72 ppi. I hope you find them useful. Click here to download.

Getting ladled

It's always sheer craziness around here and today was no exception. First off we needed to head to the grocery store for groceries. Those trips are always fun as we caravan through the aisles with separate carts for each of the boys. Generally all of the food or anything else that can be easily destroyed goes in Draiman's cart so that it is safe from Gatlin. Well today we learned that things are not much safer with Draiman either. Today he decided that he must pull things out of the cart and chew labels off or throw things out of the cart as we headed down the aisle. Lots of fun!

After hitting both grocery stores it was nap time for the boys. Luckily for us they both fell asleep in the car on the ride home. The good news here is that we were able to unload the van and put away the groceries with out any fuss. Then after the boys woke up and dinner was over, I decided to make a peanut butter cake. I've never had peanut butter cake before but a photographer friend gave me the recipe (yes we share more than just photography tips) so I thought I would give it a try. Of course during the prep of the cake Gatlin started freaking out because he wanted the rubber spatula. My boys are always stealing my kitchen utensils!

After I got the cake in the oven I washed off the spatula so that Gatty could play with it. Yes I let him play with my stuff because it keeps him entertained and I plan to teach my boys to cook one day anyway so the sooner he gets used to the utensils the better. As it stands one of Gatty's favorite movies right now is Ratatouille and he loves to act like he's cooking. So all was going well, Gatty was playing with the spatula and Draiman had a ladle, then the next thing I know BAM I get smacked upside the head with the ladle. It did hurt but man did my husband and I get a laugh out of that one. John told me I "got ladled!" So I sit here typing this with a mild headache from Draiman "ladling me" but I wouldn't change my life for anything in the world.