My Most Expensive Hobby

A few years ago, my friend Morgan had her first baby (Emrie).  Rather than hire a professional photographer to take monthly/milestone photos of her little girl, Morgan bought a DSLR and had her brother and sister-in-law (who have their own photography business) teach her some tricks of the trade.  It was amazing to see how great her photos were from the very start -- but more than that, she seemed to be having so much FUN setting up these various photo sessions for her beautiful daughter.  I started to think that learning photography might be something I'd want to do when Stephen and I decided to start our family.

Flash forward a year and Stephen and I found out we were pregnant.  He was really wanting a nice, handheld video camera to capture moments like first steps -- but I was still pretty set on getting a nice DSLR (with video capabilities, of course).  Still, when a baby is on the way, you always have somewhere else to put the money.  For us, it seemed more important to buy a crib...a dresser...mounds and mounds of adorable baby clothes...  I was pretty disappointed, but we both understood that it didn't make sense to spend a ton of money replacing our point-and-shoot when we had ACTUAL necessities to buy.

Then my sister-in-law, Erin, bought her DSLR and started taking some beautiful photos.  I mean, really beautiful.  She's an optometrist, so the optical aspect of photography really makes sense to her, and she spent tons of time reading up on how to take the best photographs.  When Doug and Mindy welcomed Quinn in November, Erin took some photos of the new family that so perfectly captured the moment -- and I knew then that I really wanted to be able to do that with my own family.  (As a sidenote, Erin and Ken just came back from a trip to Rome and Amalfi and Erin's pictures are AMAZING.  She took one of the Sistine Chapel that is literally breathtaking.)

We got our Canon T3i for the December holidays and, thanks to a crash course from Erin, I started to navigate through the various camera settings.  We still had newborn photos taken of Gavin -- and actually just went back for six month photos -- but I've taken what seems like thousands of photos of my favorite little one in between those times.  It's something I really enjoy and something I really want to excel in.  It's been fun to see how I've grown as a photographer as the months have passed...Gavin's most recent photos, his seven month portraits, are some of my favorites.  It also helps that Gavin is a HUGE HAM in front of the camera.  That's what happens when you have a lens in your face from the moment you're born!  :)

So, like I said, I've taken thousands of photos.  I'm obsessed.  As such, I've been posting tons of photos on Facebook for friends and family, particularly those who haven't gotten the chance to meet Gavin yet.  We do a lot of fun things, so there are always opportunities to take pictures.  The thing is, I'm fairly sure that my friends without kids don't really care about our latest trip to the Cincinnati Zoo, so I've decided that instead of crowding their newsfeeds with more photos of Gavin feeding the giraffes, I'll post them HERE.  I like sharing my pictures, and I've had a lot people say they enjoy keeping up on how Gavin's growing, so I think this might be a more appropriate forum for that.  That way, I can reserve Facebook for complaints about the weather and birthday notifications.

Anyway, for those of you who are new to this blog, thanks for following and I'll do my best to post photos of my cutie pie son as often as I can!

One of my first portraits of Gavin, at just over one month old!

Four months old.

My most recent portrait, and one of my favorites!  Seven months old.