Jen here with another First Year post!

In case you missed it last week some of my fellow Confidence Workshop teachers and I had images featured in Me Ra’s awesome Disney Babble post titled 12 Football Pictures Even Football Haters Will Love – Including Bonus Photo Tips to Capture Your Own. (The pictures are so much fun, so be sure to check it out!!)

When Me Ra was putting her post together and asked for photo submissions, I knew I wanted to capture some images of Logan in honor of her first football season; however, it took some brainstorming to come up with the components.  I took a bunch of other photos for this series and featured them on my website’s blog.  They were such a big hit; I thought I would share a few with you here and give you the insight as to how I created them.  Let’s get to it!

I decided to dress Logan in a white sleeveless onesie (to give  her a sporty look :)).  I sat her in the grass on a neutral-colored blanket with our fence as the backdrop and gave her a mini football to hold and explore.  The set-up was cute, but something was missing.  I finally thought of creating eye black – you know, that black grease players wear under their eyes to help reduce sun glare?  I created a baby-friendly version from a thin sheet of craft foam, which just so happened to naturally stick to her skin with the help of the humidity in the air.  The improvised eye black was the perfect finishing touch!  Here is the image that was featured in the Babble post.  I just love it!

The first image I wanted to capture was of Logan exploring the textures of the football.  She had never seen a football before, and with her being really big into feeling different textures, I just knew she would love it.  Look at her intense concentration as she runs her fingers over the little bumps! 

I got down to her level so my camera was the same height as her eyes – her eyes would be my focal point in the image.  When selecting my DSLR settings, I knew I wanted her facial expressions to be the center of attention, and I wanted the background to be buttery and soft to keep the focus on her.  I decided upon f/2.8 to make all this happen.  If I had dialed my aperture down to 1.8/f, I would have lost a lot of the football’s detail.  My ISO was 250 and my shutter speed was 1/250 sec (250). Here is the end result!

While Logan was exploring the football, I wanted to capture a detail shot of her hands.  I stood right over her and focused on her hands, then reframed the shot so that she was off-centered.  I love how using the aperture of f/2.8 captured the detail of her hands as well as the football and her sweet little toes since they were in the same focal plane.  By standing over her, you get to see the pattern in the blanket, too, which I think brings a feminine quality to the image – just perfect for my little girl.  My ISO was 250, and my shutter speed was 1/320 sec (320).

This last image was completely spontaneous.  Logan was no longer interested in the football and began to explore her feet…and crazy flexibility!  I focused on Logan’s eyes, and with the f/2.8 aperture I could keep her hands and foot in focus too.  Since the football wasn’t the focus anymore, it was okay for it to be blurrier in the image.  She was looking upward toward the sky, imagining one day growing up to be a football kicker, perhaps?  Ha!  To enhance the daydream storyline, I framed her in the image so that she was in the bottom half and left the top half empty so there was plenty of room for those daydreams she’s thinking about.  You can almost imagine a thought bubble above her head!  I think this composition also helps to show how little she is, which is perfect to the theme of this series “football season with baby”.  It just goes to show you how sometimes the spontaneous shots end up being some of your favorites!

Now it’s your turn!  Celebrate football season with baby by capturing your own football-inspired images with your camera!  Me Ra and I would love to see what you capture this season, so please share your favorite football-inspired images on Me Ra’s Facebook page for us to enjoy.  Ready?  Set?  Break!

Meet me here next Monday when Logan shows off how she’s keeping her baby figure in shape with Daddy in the gym!

First Year Cheers!

Jen