party of three: 1/52

I'm so excited to be starting something new on my blog! Lately I've been inspired by Stacey at S, D, & Double E. She has a very unique style of photographing her kids, and her blog is one of my new must-reads. Lask week she sent me a link to a Flickr site where a photographer took one picture of her four kids each week for an entire year. Some were posed, some were candid, all were fantastic!

And so my 52 weeks of Party of Three was born. One picture each week of my three kids together. Might sound silly, easy, not a big deal...but do you know I only have a handful of pictures will all three kids together? Time to change that.

OK, here's the format: one picture each week of my kids together. Maybe some tips (or tricks) or something I learned. And perhaps some outtakes that didn't make the cut. Sound good?

And now...the first picture of my 52 week project:


I'm really excited about this project, and I think it will be so cool to look back at how my kids change over the course of a year.


As promised, a couple tips:
1. Whenever possible, if I plan to photograph Livia either alone or with the boys, I use a stand-in (read: cooperative child). The stand-in sits there while I test the lighting and adjust my settings, before the Tornado arrives on the scene.

The proof (in his pajamas):


I have such a short window of time where Livia will sit still, I can't waste time fiddling with my settings. I need to have that done ahead of time.

2. Can't get all your kids in focus when you're photographing more than one? One problem might be that your aperture is too wide open. The pictures below aren't the best examples of this, because the three kids are pretty much on the same plane. This would apply more if they were staggered, one behind the other.


My widest aperture is f/2.8. If your kids are on all different planes, there's no way a 2.8 will work if you want them all in focus. Try stopping down to 5.6 (or whatever...there's no set number, you have to experiment). I just mention this because when I first got my new lens, every picture I took was on f/2.8 to let in the most light. One kiddo would be perfectly in focus, and the others out of focus. It was maddening! I didn't know why it was doing that or how to fix it.

And now for some more outtakes from Saturday morning.


What can I say about this one? These pictures are going to priceless to me one day.


I'm not going to say our little photo session wasn't without a hiccup or two.


But nothing that couldn't be resolved with a lollipop.


Right now my kids are one, six and nine.


Can you imagine how special it will be for them to see these photos when they're 31, 36 and 39?
Or better yet...51, 56 and 59? :-)

I'm so happy to be able to do this for my kids! I encourage you to do the same with yours. The memories will be priceless. ♥