Family Photos

Two summers ago we explored Yellowstone National Park with our good friends and their 14-month old daughter (aren’t they brave?!).  It was a great trip, but due to some rather unfortunate circumstances, we lost our point and shoot camera.  And of course, it just happened to be after a day full of fantastic photo ops—oh, and it was our anniversary.  Read the full story here (see the end of the post). 

Since then, we’ve purchased another point and shoot (snagged it at Target the same day we brought Liam home from the hospital, as we figured it would be nice to have a small camera on hand since there was now a cute face to capture), plus we found a used SLR Nikon D90 on Craigslist that had barely been touched.  Matt has a natural gift for photography, and since buying the SLR, he’s been honing his skills, in addition to playing around with photo shop tools, like Picasa (a very simple, free version) and Lightroom (we’re experimenting with a free Lightroom trial right now).  Pardon the various shades of light in the following photos—this is a work in progress!

Clearly we’ve been more excited to take photos since Liam came into the picture…ooh…a pun!  It certainly doesn’t hurt that the leaves we’ve neglected to rake gracing our yard make for the perfect natural backdrop. 

Using the tripod was quite the experience, to say the least.  Thankfully, Liam was a total trooper, although he was a tad distracted by the squirrels, drifting leaves, and his extremities… I’m a little disappointed by the fact that I’m hunched  over so much in these photos, but overall we were pretty happy with our amateur photo shoot.

Here are a few sweet shots from when my folks visited.

I have no idea what they’re laughing at in this picture, but I love that they all seem to be in on some inside joke.