Portraits of Hope

This week at I Heart Faces everyone is posting about their experiences using photography to give back to the community to bring attention to a wonderful group of photographers that are giving back by taking photos for families of children that are ill.

Please click the image above for more information. :)

However, considering that I've just recently started shooting for people other than my family members, I didn't think I had anything to add. But I'd forgotten something.

Last year I worked with a group called Portraits of Hope in my area. Their purpose was to try to get information out to the public about children from our area in the foster care system. These are children that are either in foster homes or in group homes (sadly, all but one of the kids I photographed lived in group homes.) All these kids are ones that need homes and forever families and the hope was that getting their faces out there would help find them homes.

Now, in order for me to do this I had to sign away my rights to the pictures I took because I was working with the foster program. A small thing when you remember that these kids don't have families but I cannot share them here. I can however, link to a news report about Portraits of Hope that was on the local TV station and in it you do see one of my pictures (the girl with the pretty beads in her hair--she was so sweet but shy. She liked trying to pose for me though, and that picture was the one she liked. :) ) You can see a couple of others in the background.

Heart and Soul: Portraits of Hope

Doing this was an experience I will never forget and one I'm glad I did. Of course, I don't get updates on the kids (privacy and all) but I truly hope that they've all found families now. If I didn't already have five kids, I'd probably have been trying to bring them home with me. They were all great kids.

More Newborn pictures

I edited a few more photos yesterday and wanted to share a couple more. I've found editing baby pictures to be a learning process, also.

For this one I was inspired by a pic I'd seen previously. I think I like how it turned out. :)

I also wanted to share this collage I made using some of the pictures I took. I did this just for fun. :)

Night Sky and the Full Moon

Last night was the full moon and the clouds made the sky look really cool last night so I had to snap a quick picture. I didn't have my tripod so it's not very sharp but still wanted to share.

Newborn Photography

Last Friday, I had a chance to try some newborn photography. It wasn't until my babies were much older that I started getting serious with photography so I've never tried to take more than a snapshot of a little baby. Luckily, a girl I went to high school with was kind enough to allow me to come over and take some shots for practice.

He was the sweetest baby, and very alert. I was only able to get a couple of sleepy shots of him, mostly when I was checking my settings and the light. lol He was oh, so calm and good-natured though, and I got a few shots that I am happy with.

I also got some shots that I ended up not liking and no good full body shots. I'm not too disappointed, though because I definitely learned a lot from the experience and feel much more confident than I did at the beginning of the day. And really, learning was what it was all about. :)

I'm still editing and making decisions on the shots that I did get before he got hungry, but thought I'd share some that I've already done.

One of the shots I got while checking my settings.


This was taken when he was starting to get fussy. He had a bright turquoise pacifier in his mouth that shows a bit in the color version. The B&W hides it nicely. :)

Sports!

This week's theme at Trendy Treehouse is sports and since I promised Anakin that I would enter a picture of him next, this was an easy decision.

This is my favorite picture of Anakin from t-ball this year. I love the way he's standing next to first base, how small he looks (he was the smallest on his team), how one sock is falling down and the pants are riding up, and how his bottom is already dirty and it was the top of the first inning. But most of all I love seeing how he was proud to wear his big sister's old helmet, Rainbow Brite stickers and all.

Purple and Periwinkle Princess

This weeks theme at I Heart Faces is the color purple and you would think, having two girls (one that absolutely loves the color), that I would have more pictures featuring it. And then I started going through months and months of pictures and realized how few I really have.

I still wanted to participate though, so I decided to use a picture I took of Mia last month and shared here before.

These were taken one day when Mia was dancing around the yard in her purple and periwinkle tutu I made her. She's such a little ham; she loves to strike a pose. I have a feeling she's going to be the one to make me totally gray. She's already to a great start.

"Hi, my name is Chubby!"

This week's theme at Trendy Treehouse is faces. I love faces, especially those of my children so I started going through some of my favorites to find one to share this week and kept returning to this picture of Mia that I snapped one day when she was being her normal silly-cute self. (No prompting there! She's naturally like that! lol)

Every time I look at it I remember being a kid and smooshing my cheeks like that and saying "Hi, my name is Chubby. I'm chubby. My mom is chubby, my dad is chubby, even my goldfish is chubby." Looking online I've found a few different versions of it, so I guess it's still around even though I haven't heard or seen anyone do it in years.