The Difficulty of Photographing Kids

I used to think it was difficult to photograph MiniM.E.  The first few months were cake.  She slept and was still.  Even as she found her hands and started moving around, she was a baby and even if her arms or legs were a little blurry in a photo, its not like she could go anywhere, so most of the photos I took were decent.  Hence the thousands of photos I have of MiniM.E.'s first few months.  Once she was mobile it was a little more difficult to take decent photos and more often than not I would delete half the photos I took because they were blurry.  But still, a one year old isn't that fast, so I still had a pretty high photo-success rate.

Once she learned to jump and run, things were a little more difficult, and more often than not a photo had a least one blurry part.  But I learned to take LOTS of photos of everything, and usually I came out with a few decent photos where the whole kid was in focus.

Fast-forward to having a three year old and an (almost) three month old.  Caputuring a photo of both of them that is not blurry and where both are looking at the camera NOT making stupid faces is near impossible.  There have been countless times where I have spent 5 minutes trying to take a photo of them being adorable together and have looked at the photos later to find that EVERY. SINGLE. ONE is unusable.

Take today for example.  Uncle Billy sent an outfit for Christmas and I wanted to get a photo of LittleL.G. wearing it.  About 20 photos later, these are the best three:

cute of MiniM.E., Little L.G. ready to faceplant chair arm

cute of LittleL.G., MiniM.E. angry that LittleL.G. is grabbing her

the only photo where nobody is blurry

Bah.  I suppose it doesn't help that I'm using my iPhone for photos.  I probably need "kid-shutter-speed" But if I only used my "good" camera, I wouldn't have any photos because my diaper bag is already overflowing with a smaller bag for actual diapers, a potty seat, changes of clothes, snacks, water bottles, toys and a wallet.  No room for camera.  And I only got the iPhone because I wanted to always have a camera with me...

In other news, and illustrated by some reasonably decent photos, MiniM.E. and LittleL.G. spend every morning (and some afternoons) cuddling on the couch or in LittleL.G.'s rocker:

this is the best of 17 photos of them sitting in matching pajamas... can't say I didn't try

LittleL.G. is rocking tummy time:

MiniM.E. figured out that my phone has games and photos on it but can also be used by her to take photos:

And we went to a play date where MiniM.E. dressed up in a Belle outfit for hours, played princess and had the most adorable 3-year-old lunch date: