Chocolate

This little girl was at my daughters birthday party. Initially the image wasn't usable because of the inordinate amount of chocolate ice cream around her face. So with the aid of a PhotoShop generated wet wipe I cleaned her up.

Future son-in-law?

This is one of the candidates who could become my five year old daughters husband.Taken at her fifth birthday party, this cheeky little chap is one of her favorites.

Chaos Theory

Asking six boys to smile and pose for a camera is guaranteed to create instant havoc, and this time was no exception. The hardest task was getting them to stop wriggling and giggling long enough for the camera to fire.

I wanted to take a few more of them, but the poor hapless ones on the bottom of the pile couldn't take the pounding from those further up the food chain.

Shot at 1/200th and F6.3, this was just fast enough to capture the action.

Conspiracies

It doesnt take a genius to work out that something bad is going to happen to someone soon. These two were plotting the soaking of one of the helpless girls at the birthday party. Their arsenal of weapons were loaded and ready for action.

I was worried about making eye contact in case I was targetted. So I grabbed this from the longest focal length that I could hold.

Leap of faith

Where do kids get their fearless ability to leap twenty feet from the top of a slide? I have far too much imagination to attempt anything like this anymore. All I could think about was where I was going to setup the triage area.

It took a few goes to get the camera panning to work, but I had plenty of willing models!

Taken at 1/200th and F5.6 using the 24-135 lens.

Page Boy

I took this shot at a friends wedding ages ago. I loved the expression on the little chaps face as he sat on a nearby gravestone watching the ongoing official photography.

I deliberately threw the 'happy couple' out of focus in the background whilst still keeping them appropriately framed.

The first time I took this to the printers, the lab assistant printed the out of focus couple and cropped off the actual subject of the small boy! I wonder why he thought I wanted blurred 10x8 photo blowing up?

Happy Birthday to me...

This was my birthday present. Not the girl as such, but the fact that she had spent five hours getting ready to take me out!
I was only allowed five minutes to turn around from getting back to being out the door - including taking this photo!

Although it wasn't explicitly discussed, not taking this photo wasn't an option. At least not if I really wanted to reach another birthday!

This was taken at 1/60th and F4 while she stood in the doorway hissing at me that the taxi was waiting...

Friends

Shooting one child is hard, but shooting four of them is easy!

Individually they would have been a lot more self conscious, but when kids hunt in packs they are much more likely to relax and show their true emotions.

Shot from a safe distance through an open doorway with a plain white reflector on the floor. I took this at 1/125th and with plenty of depth of field (F8) to keep the front and back in focus.

They had been wreaking carnage on the other guests all afternoon. Why did God give all children the ability to turn innocent toys into deadly accurate projectiles?

Christening

This is my mother-in-law holding my Godchild at his Christening.

It was my only real opportunity to be creative in the church, and of course it happened just as everyone was leaving.
It was lit using just the light from the window on the right, and I purposely wanted to leave the high contrast result.

The camera had to be set to to its highest ISO rating to stand any chance of capturing this, but the noise is still very minimal. The image was captured at 1/100th and F7.

The second shot is of the proud mum and dad taken at the reception.

The reception room itself didn't readily lend itself to photography, with distracting pictures on every wall. So to capture this I got them to stand in the open doorway while I stood outside in the rain.

The background was still a little too distracting so after this shot I improvised with a black reflector. It looked technically better, but they didn't have the same insanely happy grins!

4 going on 14

Grabbed this shot during one of the many time the candles were re-lit.

This was a tricky shot, as it the lights had been 'ordered off' by the newly ordained four year old. Trying to catch a an excited child still enough while hand holding the camera was hard work, but I got her just mid blow at about 1/15S.

The situation requires no explanation... However there is something not-so-special about eating cake covered in wax and spittle!