Inspiration...

...is everywhere to find. You just have to find it.



My friend Ashley over at Photos and Ramblings introduced me to Selfie Saturdays hosted by Elena. At first I thought, ok cool, I'd love to have some good self portraits with my DSLR. So I mozied on over to selfiemagic.com to check it out. On her Week 8 of Selfie Saturdays, Elena posted about another blog and I followed the link to Courtney's blog ,Perfect Imperfections. I didn't think that I would find a blog post that kind of smacked me in the face a little; in a good way. I mean, duh. I am always behind the camera. My husband (love you!) can barely use a point and shoot. The last time he tried to take pictures of Dylan and I, after he came home from work one day, with the DSLR... well, it was a total fail...even in auto mode (though the autofocus on my 50mm never works in low light). I think like the next day, I ate my spinach and put Dylan on one hip and my Canon in the other hand and stood in front of the mirror in our downstairs bathroom.

While I think Courtney's message was more of, take photos of yourself for your children not with your children...but it made me realize how few photos I'm in...in general... but even more devastating of how few photos there are of my son and I. It brought me to tears reading her post. How awful. Here I've been given this blessing of being able to take decent photos, I should at least be able to use that to my advantage. I already regret looking back and realizing how I'm never in photos with Dylan. And those moments are gone. I can't do that over. Ever.

Here's Dylan and I around 5 months:





I look a little scary in some of these....lots of blurriness, but I didn't care because the keepers were the ones where he was actually looking, or at least being really cute (ok so the first one, I thought I looked halfway decent-I know he's not looking!!). And my ridiculous faces were in an effort to get him to smile. It went something like this: {silly face; Dylan would smile; try to look normal; hope the framing is right and he's still smiling; and snap} It's hard to juggle a baby and a big camera while trying to look normal, but I think managed alright. I mean, I got some images. But I wasn't really happy with the quality of them. Hence, why I don't do it all the time...I pay someone else to. (and she's fabulous by the way!). April Sirit of Evoke Photography has done Dylan's newborn photos, 3 month Christmas photos and more recently his 6 month Easter photos (which I will get back in a week or two!). I mean tell me this isn't the most amazing work ever. This slideshow makes me cry every time. What I love about April most, is that she makes sure that there are photos of all of us together (now that RARELY happens even more) and some with us individually with Dylan. I am so incredibly thankful that she captured those moments for us. Or else they never would have happened.

So, being inspired by all of the people I've mentioned in this post, I think every Tuesday I'm going to devote to taking a photo of me and my son. Together. If I do this once a week, I should at least have 1 keeper in each bunch, which would total about 4 photos a month...which is a lot considering I could probably add up the total "keeper" photos of Dylan and I on two hands in his first 7 months of life. I'm not sure if another blog is doing this as well, but maybe some of you might join me in the future? I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with it. If you know of anyone else doing this, please send me the link so I can link up!

My wireless remote will be here Monday...so, I'm super excited to get started. (and actually have something that forces me to do my hair and makeup!!) ;)

On an even more personal note and to reminisce; here is me last July, 8 months preggo with little D! I did "selfies" in the mirror every month with my P&S. :)


edit// Thanks to Ashley's comment, I found another "mommy and me" (or daddy or caregiver) type photo challenge. In fact, she had spoken about it at our dinner on Tuesday. Our conversation lasted TWO hours, so it was hard to remember the details of everything, but she had mentioned her friend Casey in the conversation when this came up...I knew I hadn't dreamed it up myself!! haha. Anyways, I plan on also linking up with Casey's challenge on Fridays. It's called Mama In Focus Fridays and you can enter by clicking her button below! She does weekly themes, so I hope I can keep up!

xo