ABC Challenge : Week 6

I'm loving the beautiful weather because we've been outside so much and I've been getting lots of great photos. I hope you have too! Let's get together

I am hoping that we can combine a bit of business with pleasure! I would love to meet many of you, and also learn from you.  Kids in the Capital also needs more photos of kids on Parliament Hill for promotional materials. So, is anyone interested in a meet-up on Parliament Hill on a Saturday or Sunday in June? Leave a comment here or I've also started a discussion thread in our flickr group.

Photography tip

Rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is one of the basic things you learn in photography classes.

According to wikipedia the rule is "The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections."

So you try to make the focus of your photo land on one of the intersections in a grid like this one:

I don't often think about the rule of thirds when I'm taking photos, but I realize that lot of the photos that I really like do tend to more or less follow the rule:

Try shifting your focus this week and see if you get any shots you like better that way. Or you can even try cropping your photo to see if it can adhere to the rule.

My two picks this week

F is for friends

These boys had such fun together.

Q is for quiet

I adore this photo of my daughter with my mother in law

Participants’ photos

We love going to feed the ducks and geese. G if for green by Dani.

Look at that hair! X if for xcited by Stella.

Z is for Zooooooooooom by Eisangel

I want to be in this moment. Q is for quiet by lilypilly.

As always, it’s never to late too join the challenge. We hope you’ll play along!

Lara is the mom to 3.5 year old Kiernan and 1 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can find her at her blog Gliding Through Motherhood.

ABC Challenge : Week 5

Last week we had our first Kids in the Capital meet up and I got to meet some of the lovely participants of the ABC Challenge.  I hope to meet more of you at upcoming meet ups! Keep your eyes open for one in June.

Photography tip - losing the cheese

I think Kiernan was barely two when he started saying cheese whenever I pulled out the camera. Except, "cheese" smiles, they aren't very nice smiles.

The trick is to get their natural smiles out. I generally act like a goof - and this article fully supports that strategy! And sometimes you just need to be patient.  This shot of Kiernan was him grinning in amusement right before telling me he'd been drinking water out of the water table....  ah well, whatever works right? I LOVE this photo!

Do you have any great methods for getting great smiles? And, are there any topics you'd like me try to cover? Let me know!

My two picks for this week

D is for discovery

Juliette, enthralled by the beautiful tulip. Quinn by.... his shoe.

E is for eating

She might be smaller, but she's the boss around here. "you. eat this. now."

Participants' photos

I love this photo by Dani. It screams brotherly love :) R is for riding by Danigirl

I love the lighting here. Sometimes we forget the subject doesn't need to be looking at the camera for a great photo I think.

G is for green by jhscrapmom

Helloooo down there! I is for inside by stella0017

I really like the angles on this shot. P is for playing by eisangel

I love how people are interpreting the themes! Check out R is for riding and V is for vehicles and how different everyone's takes are!

As always, it’s never to late too join the challenge. We hope you’ll play along!

Lara is the mom to 3.5 year old Kiernan and 1 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can find her at her blog Gliding Through Motherhood.

Anna Epp Photography : a Mother's Day giveway!

I'm a photo person. I take a lot of photos (I even start photo challenges ;)) and I prefer to put up photograph after photograph on my walls instead of buying art. But there is a distinct lack of "mommy" in our photos.... she's generally behind the camera.  And to be honest, daddy is often playing wrangler so he doesn't make it into that many photos either.  So every once in awhile I feel it's important to schedule a time to see a professional photographer to take some nice family shots of all of us together. I met Anna from Anna Epp Photography last year when I was pregnant with my twins. I wanted to do something special to commemorate the pregnancy and also get some photos of our family in the last weeks that we were still a family of three. The photos we got are not only beautiful but I will treasure them forever.

"Anna Epp Photography offers on location, natural light, custom photography.  We will come to your home or to one of Ottawa's fabulous parks or urban areas, the choice is yours. We like your family to be relaxed and enjoy the experience of being photographed. With each session we try to tell a story, your story, capturing that moment in time."

Here are some samples of some of Anna's amazing work (that's Kiernan kissing my belly in the first collage!)

If you're still looking for a mother's day gift I highly recommend booking a portrait session for you and your family. Or win one here!!

The giveaway

Anna has donated a mini- photo session for our fabulous Kids in the Capital readers! It's our first giveaway and we're very excited about it!

The photo session will be at 11:30am on May 15 at Andrew Hayden Park (raindate May 29.) The mini-session consists of a 30 minute time slot, with at least 10 unique poses, two 5x7s, and 25% off studio products (prints, canvases, cds and albums.)

If you are free on May 15 at 11:30 am and are interested in winning, simply leave us a comment and tell us what your favourite thing to do for mother's day. For an extra entry, visit Anna's Facebook Group, become a fan and then leave us a comment to let us know you've done it. Deadline to enter is Tuesday May 11 at 5pm.

Good luck and happy Mother's day!!

ABC Challenge : Week 4

This week was a bit crazy and I didn't have a chance to pick up my camera as often as I would have liked. Luckily one gorgeous afternoon in the backyard while my husband and father in law built the best playstructure ever, I got some fabulous shots and was able to fit them in to some of the categories.  :) Photography tip

Last week I talked about avoiding using your flash for better photos.  But it's obviously not always possible to not use your flash. There are a couple of ways to improve flash photography.

After a long discussion with a very helpful attendant at Henry's around Christmastime last year I ended up buying a Gary Fong puffer which is a diffuser and softens the light from your flash.  It was a relatively inexpensive way to improve the flash that came with my dslr.  Another option is to get an external flash, and then you can do all kinds of fancy things like bounce the light so it isn't hitting your subject directly.

And if you just want to have fun, you can experiment with your flash.  This hack from photojojo (a very cool photography newsletter you can sign up for) suggests using something like a paper towel tube to focus the light like a spot light, something that might be fun to try!

My two picks for this week

X is for Xcited

I'm still kind of embarrassed I didn't come up with something better for X. But there you have it ;)

W is for wet

I love this photo. He was having the time of his life splashing.

Participant photos

It's always hard to pick just four every week.  Check out the flickr pool to see everyone's photos!

I love the hanging water drops in this "W is for wet" photo by wannabemomerin

This Z is for zoom by Maryinbriargreen makes me smile and think of my youth. I miss rollerskating. In the house. My mom probably doesn't miss that though ;)

This baby by bluebeanz is delicious. (E is for eating)

I practically squealed when I saw this photo it was so much fun! J is for jumping by muddybootsblog.

As always, it's never to late too join the challenge. We hope you'll play along!

Lara is the mom to 3.5 year old Kiernan and 11 month old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can find her at her blog Gliding Through Motherhood.

The Canadian Tulip Festival - the plan

by Shawna With the early warmth this spring, we may be in danger of having an almost tulip-less Canadian Tulip Festival (which runs from May 7th - 24th). While this may put a crimp in my role as one of the "Artists in the Tulips" (this will be my second year my images can be found in the Tulip Art gallery in Commissioner's Park by Dow's lake), it in no way means I won't go to the festival with my kids.  Sure, it's nice for me to see the tulips and use them as a colourful backdrop for pictures of my nearest-and-dearest, but let's not lose sight of the main reason to go: to let the kids exhaust themselves by hopping them up on sugar at the Fudge Shack and tear around like mad things, all the better to sleep that night!

I kid.

Sort of.

In truth, there are tons of kid-friendly activities at the Tulip Festival and they almost all come with the bonus of getting out in the fresh air and maybe even learning a little history along the way.  To kick off the festival, there's an open air Liberation Street Party planned this year on Sparks St., which is being held in celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands and Canada's role in it.  Throughout the festival there will be children's activities at Major's Hill Park, and a lot of the area's museums are planning programming that links in with the festival.  The tulip festival website has details on all of this and more.

The fact is, there's a dizzying variety of programming and there's no way it would be fun to dash from activity to activity, trying to cram it all in; what we do is take a look at the schedule and try to earmark just a couple of things that sound fun on a day or two I'm not officially scheduled to be there.  We keep things loose and watch the weather, and if we can go at those times, so much the better.  And if things don't align so that we hit all our "planned" events, we try to keep in mind that what the kids really like best is the chance to ride the tulip shuttle bus (a novelty for my suburban children), see the ducks on Dow's Lake, and yes, eat fudge and Beavertails and tear around like mad things.

The better sleep that night is just a fringe benefit.

Shawna is mom to 4 year old Sage and almost-2-year-old Harris.  She has  been writing online since 2003, and her latest project is a fledgling photography blog.  She feels a defensive need to let you know that she herself rides the bus almost every day.