You know, I’ve been doing this a long time. And when I say a long time, I mean about five years – so a long time compared to, say, how long I’ve lived here or how long it takes to read the entire Harry Potter series, not compared to say, how long my parents have been married. (Hi, Mom!) Still, it’s a long time. Anyway, in the time I’ve been blogging and designing and website-ing, I’ve learned a lot about photography.

Just compare this picture of Max

to this picture of Charlie

to this picture of Teddy and Tommy.

(No, people, those are not their real names. I realize that might seem a bit weird, since after all I do business under my real name, but I figure it might reduce the chance of someone stalking them on the internet and getting the kids to come with them by calling their names. If you yell “Max!” at Max, he most likely won’t even turn around. You know. Unless you sound really crazy.)

Is part of that due to a steadily increasing quality in cameras? You bet. (I have a Nikon D40 and I LOVE IT.) But I’ve also learned a lot about lighting, composition, background, staging, et cetera, and I don’t use any fancy equipment. Other than my fancy, fancy camera, that is.

Anyway, I had so much fun mucking around on my website yesterday that when I did my photoshoot this morning I decided to document it and share my tips for getting good pictures in true cheapo fashion. The article is Getting Good Portraits, and I hope you find it useful.

You turn around to change a diaper or two, then someone’s hungry and what are we having for dinner tonight? Better hurry, because it’s bedtime and we have to see the dentist tomorrow. Yes, it’s time to go grocery shopping again and what did you do to your toyroom?! Then the babies are hungry and you might have fallen asleep for a bit and it’s time to switch over the laundry because someone’s out of underwear and next thing you know all of the spoons are dirty and what do you mean you lost your boots?

Seriously, did I just miss five days of blogging? I can’t really remember.

Anyway, I don’t have much to say today, aside from, “Hi, Mom, I’m not dead!” and if you’d like to read more of my writing that’s actually cohesive with lucid points and relevant information you can check out the article I just uploaded to Inner Child Crochet. It’s called “The Miseducation of the Crocheter,”  and it’s something I submitted to be included in the Crochet Liberation Front’s First Ever Book back…uh…how long ago? Two years, maybe? Unfortunately there just wasn’t room for everything submitted, and my article was sent back to me. (My Saucy hat made it in, though!) I stumbled across the article while trying to clean my files off our desktop’s hard drive – that computer is 6 years old and going down like the Titanic…we’re just trying to save the passengers at this point – and decided to put it up.

Aside from that, I’ve also spent a lot of my free time recently changing the copyright dates on my webpages to 2010. You’d think I’d have set up some way to do them automatically or all at once. Not so, sadly, not so.