I've been ready to name this girl for a few days now. Not having a name is driving me CRAZY because I keep calling this baby Inga! I have found first & middle names that really "fit" when I look at her. But Eric is dragging his feet. He's waiting for a name epiphany: lightning coming from the sky, thunder announcing that we have found The Name. I don't think that's going to happen and I want to move on. I have the birth story ready to share, the birth video ready to publish...all just waiting for a name.
So instead I will share some pictures I took on Saturday. I just started shooting in manual with my DSLR and it's amazing how much better my pictures turn out. Manual isn't as scary as I thought it would be. I'm still learning how to get the focus and depth of field right with my portrait lens. The trickiest thing was getting the baby to hold still. She's a sleepy newborn if she's on my chest--not if I'm trying to pose and rearrange her!
So sweet! She is a chunky girl! I am excited to read what you name her! Blessings to your family!
ReplyDeleteWow, you are a natural! I'm impressed. I started learning to shoot in manual a year and a half ago, after our daughter was born. I wanted to learn something new while I spent all of that time nursing - a great time for reading!. I shot in Aperture Priority for a very long time and only recently switched to manual and I actually don't find it easy at all. I think it take so much practice, especially on moving subjects. What I noticed about these photos is that your white balance looks great. Not sure if these where shot outdoors or in, but if it was indoors - wow, you are fantastic! A lot of bloggers have nice cameras but don't understand white balance so their indoors pictures look yellow. White balance is so hard. I recently bought the Expodisc and am loving it!
ReplyDeleteSometimes the white balance is really off, but it turned out well this time. It helps that I was in our bedroom with 2 enormous windows in early afternoon, so we had tons of natural light. I used 400 ISO (my standard for indoor shots), f 2.2 (my lens goes down to 1.8), and around 125 or 160 shutter speed, whatever made it look light without being overexposed. I can't remember what the white balance setting was--I think "cloudy" or "overcast" from an earlier photoshoot.
DeleteThere are lots of other settings I still haven't even experimented with yet. I really just have played around with the 3 basic settings of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. It's fun, though. I also started using a tripod when taking pictures of indoor rooms and wow, does that make a difference! I can really lower the shutter speed and get great results with no blurring. Kind of obvious, but I'd never tried it until recently.
Wow, you must have great indoor lighting to shoot at ISO 400! I've learned to compromise ISO first because there's so much you can do to reduce digital noise post-processing and the ISO capabilities on my new camera are amazing (before I had a rebel and they were less good).
DeleteWell, your new baby is simply perfection! Do you have any tips for us on how to feel amazing post-birth? Is that the norm for you?
Yes, the lighting is really great in our bedroom: big E and N facing windows. And my camera isn't anything super fancy; it's an older Nikon D40x, probably about 5 years old now.
DeleteSo how to feel amazing post birth: I will probably write up a post about this, but in short:
- have more than 1 baby. In other words, recovery after my first took a LONG time. But with my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, recovery was amazingly fast. Like, besides a mildly sore bottom for a few days, I hardly felt like I'd had a baby at all. There really wasn't any significant difference between my 4 births (all at home, spontaneous pushing in whatever positions felt best etc) except I did have a straightforward 2nd degree tear with my first. But from talking to lots of other women, there's just something about having already had a baby (vaginally) that makes recover so much easier the next time around.
- Have full-time help for at least 1-2 weeks or more, especially if this is not your first baby. I know so many women can't have this because they don't have family who can come...but if you can, go for it. My only responsibilities postpartum are 1) lie in bed 2) nurse & cuddle the baby 3) read or putz around on the computer and 4) eat dark chocolate. I don't take care of the kids except to let them come in briefly and hold the baby. I don't prepare meals. I don't get the kids dressed or entertain them or put them to bed. I hardly even come out of my room at all. Now, I have to *make* myself stay in my room and rest because I'm so used to doing things and being useful. But when else am I going to have the luxury of nothing else to do but snuggle the baby?
Traditional Chinese medicine has a theory that it's very improtant for a woman to rest and do almost nothing the first *month* after the baby is born. My in-laws are linguists in Thailand and their Chinese friends appartently don't even allow guests to come and see the baby!
DeleteI have four kids, three biological and our third is adopted from Ethiopia. I agree with what you say to a point. Certainly, the births were less of a big deal the more I had. I remember joking that it was like, "What'd you do today? Oh, I went to church, baked bread, had a baby." It felt very natural. And I was far less sore than I was with my first, which was a forceps/episiotomy/+ tear. But with all of my bio babies, I did go through the "baby blues" (like up to 80% of women, depending on the statistic you read). I went to acupuncture, I did moxabustion on myself, and it passed after 5-7 day. But it really sucked. I would just cry and not know why (normally, I am not a crier). But taking it really easy did help me bounce back quickly and, outside of the baby blues that first week, I felt pretty fab. Especially since I have three other kids to looks after and our baby was colicky and a terrible sleeper (still is).
In case you haven't seen it this genius idea for keeping a newborn calm during a photoshoot has been going around facebook lately.
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That is awesome!
Deletewell just start calling her by the name you've picked and maybe that will stick. I know we always just did "test runs", thinking if it didn't seem to stick or fit after a week, we moved on to the next name. maybe you could talk him into a "test run" and then his inspiration will hit him.
ReplyDeleteSo gorgeous! She really does look like Inga and I can totally see how you keeping calling her that. :-) But it's about time she had her own name - I'm excited to hear what you guys choose!
ReplyDeleteLight, eh? What about "Claire"? :)
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to hear what you've decided on for a name! We go through the same process with each of ours and I always just want to make a choice already! The pictures are just gorgeous and I love that you are doing nothing besides chilling with baby.
ReplyDeletebeautiful! She is darling and chubby and you did a beautiful job with the photos. Manual is so wonderful as you have so much more control. WAY to GO!
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