Photo Challenge: Toddlers and Light

I'm joining a host of lovely women who want to improve on their mamatography skills. The wonderful Holly over at Styled Grace has graciously decided to share her beautiful talent with us by starting a neat photo project where she'll be mentoring us on learning the basics so we can try to capture our heart moments.

I'm thrilled to be linking up with her and look forward to learning and hopefully improving on my mamatography!

This weeks challenge was to focus on light. Light, light, light is what shares the beauty we always are trying to capture with our cameras. Too little and too much all can be tamed to share beauty, which is exciting and a challenge!

I've been shooting on Manual Mode for a little while. After our Sony Nexus-F3 purchase I quickly noticed that photos were lacking on auto so Manual craziness it was for me from then on. Basically all I've done is play with the settings till something starts to look right and keep my fingers crossed.

My subjects for this challenge were the little men in my life on an overcast day. My toddlers. The ones who love, Love, LOVE giving me the backs of their heads every chance they get. The ones that love to look away from any light source, much less keep still for a  nano-second for the photo to be taken. Yup, those little ones were my subject today and probably will be most challenges because they kind of have my heart these days.

I really love natural photos. Pose-y  (let's just say it's a word for the sake of this post) ones, I mostly try to stay away from because my life isn't posed. It's here and there, it's sitting and standing, laughing and chatting, walking and running, smiling and frowning, lots of movement mixed with few still moments of reading, mealtime, building, and more.

Haha. Now, after that little tidbit of preference was shared, I will say that I just may have asked my two toddlers to sit near our patio gate just for the sake of getting even a couple of face-forward pictures. So, Mrs. Not-a-fan-of-the-pose-y asked for pose-y. Surely, you all know how tough face-forward is for a three and one year old?? Right? Or, is it just me and my boys? 

After another day of water-painting, I tried and these were the results. Feedback welcomed! 

The boys. These brothers. The backs they share to me. Often. Especially when they're playing. Which, is all fine and dandy, but not when I'd love to capture their sweet faces!

On and on they go. Lots of hair to see while they gather acorns and "bake" something with the water in the cup I gave them.

In turn, mama moves to the side. Where the light is obviously behind them. 

I'd be bending down to his level, but this little corner near him isn't friendly and I'm being uber careful with my back these days.

So then, maybe, just maybe I nudged the little man onto the stump near our patio gate for a pose-y, pose, pose.

Still! More hair and but with the top of his head rather than the back (Progress?). No little face to be found! But, there's better light...I think?

Naturally, once I get to see the sweet face that is my Linus, this is what I get.

This is him requesting to return to his bake session-nicely.

Which quickly turns into this. Because, it's Linus. And, it's just how he rolls.

Then Bigfoot decided he would be okay with sitting on the stump just for a wittle bit. I said, Yes! and we captured a little bit of his sweetness.

This last heart capture quickly turned into my favorite! This is my Bigfoot. This is him on his good days and bad. For the most part you can steal a smile or turn his frown upside down with a jig and the mention of Gummi Bears, baking, or playing outside.

Holly, I look forward to hearing and learning from you! I have another set of pictures I grabbed from my Android phone-camera yesterday during the coveted evening Golden hour I hope to share soon too.

Do you have any tips for taking better pictures? How did you improve? Best lessons-learned? And, how do you get your littles to join in on your mamatographer craze??