Kodak Gallery has great ideas for gifts submitted by customers. One idea I loved involved creating a mini photo book for a baby shower.

Photo from: KodakGallery

All you have to do is ask guests to submit photos to you online and then create the book through their website. Request submission of photos on your baby shower invites. Then, when you get them add their pictures with space for guests to write little words of advice for the mom-to-be.

Today’s adorable baby photos were submitted by Jill Barton, who sent us two adorable photos of her two sons.  We just love those big blue eyes and chubby cheeks!

Please join us in giving a collective “awwww, how cute!”

To submit your baby’s photos in our adorable baby feaure, email blog@tinyprints.com.

Whether you’re barbecuing, watching the fireworks display, having a picnic or staying in, here’s hoping you stay cool, take lots of pictures and make tons of memories. If you’re going to take photos of the fireworks this year, you’ll want to pick an ideal spot, choose a wide-angle lens and keep your hand steady. For more tips check out BudgetTravel. Their article on Fireworks Photography is sure to bring out the professional photographer in you. In honor of tomorrow’s special holiday, we at Tiny Prints want to wish you all a safe, fun 4th of July.

By guest blogger: Rick Bucich

This is the third installment of brief tips which will help you take better photographs of babies. Seek out catch light in your baby’s eyes. Nothing makes a portrait come alive more than that sparkle. Take a close look at any good portraiture; you will likely see light reflected in their eyes. It is so important that professional photographers set up artificial lighting to achieve a small glimmer. Next time you’re visiting Carter’s website or store, check out their models, they do an exceptional job.

There are a few easy ways to achieve catch light in your photos. The easiest would be to have a natural light source. For my son Jack, I propped him up facing a large window that receives indirect sunlight and then get between him and the window. The light from the window illuminates his face, avoiding harsh shadows and provides that extra sparkle that sets the photo apart; see the sample photo of my son.

An alternative would be to use the flash on your camera. Even in a well lit room, a flash may be helpful. By turning down the power of the flash using the manual setting of the camera, you can create catch light and have the added benefit of eliminating some harsh shadows. If you have ventured into the realm of the external flash, you can really get creative; many have a bounce and/or swivel feature that allows you to aim the flash away from your subject. This allows the light to bounce and scatter throughout the room, creating a more natural effect.

I hope you have found some of this information useful. We really enjoy seeing your baby pictures improve with practice and technique!

By guest blogger: Rich Bucich

This is the second installment of tips to help you take better photographs of babies.
If you read my last post, hopefully you have a greater understanding of how your camera’s auto-focus works and the impact of good light on achieving a sharp, clear photograph. There’s much more to the equation however, and understanding the settings on your camera will give you a distinct advantage.

Good light provides a faster shutter speed for the camera. The faster the shutter speed, the more the movement will be frozen and “camera shake” will be minimized. In poor lighting, your camera will try to speed up the shutter speed by adjusting settings which may degrade the quality of your photo.

The camera will likely take the following steps to speed up the shutter:

• The camera will open the aperture (AKA f/stop) - this will let more light through the lens but will also require much more accurate focusing. The area achieving sharp focus may be very narrow, i.e. tip of nose is sharp, eyes out of focus. The term is called “depth of field.”

• The camera may increase the ISO* - a higher ISO will allow for faster shutter speeds but can severely degrade the quality of the photo. For best results with “point & shoot” type cameras, keep the ISO at 200** or below. Digital SLR camera will be much more tolerant in this regard, often being able to shoot in excess of 800 ISO with acceptable results.

• The camera may turn on the flash - the flash is your friend, but automatic settings will often create harsh shadows or over-exposed areas if too close to your subject.

*ISO stands for International Standards Organization and is essentially a measurement of light sensitivity.
**Higher ISOs settings may be required under extreme low light situations such as parties and events where shutter speed needs to be maximized. In these cases, the additional sharpness may trump any graininess. We don’t recommend high ISOs in baby photography because the skin tone can be severely degraded.

If manual settings are overwhelming, you will have a huge increase in your photo success rate if you just focus on providing as much diffused ambient light as possible.

Our Tiny Prints website also has many effective tips with examples which may be helpful as well. Please register and post a comment if you have any questions.

“A dog is the only thing on earth that will love you more than you love yourself.”
Josh Billings

This will either sound outrageous to you or normal cause you’ve done it before. Have you ever celebrated your pet’s birthday? Because there are a number of Doggy Bakeries popping up everywhere with birthday cakes made especially for your pooch, I wasn’t too surprised when I also found a lot of websites devoted to helping make your pet’s day special too. Nor was I shocked to hear that there was about 700,000 pets in the US lucky enough to have owners help them celebrate their birthday.

While I’ll embarrassingly admit that I don’t know the exact date of my dog’s birthday, I do know that she is turning 13 this year. No small feat for a dog. If you have a good dog like mine, you’ll want to celebrate another year with them as well. I found this cute Pet Announcement on Tiny Prints. I edited the text and made them into adorable pet party invites for friends and family.

Austin Photo Dog Announcement: Black

Sources:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Celebrate-Your-Dogs-Birthday-with-a-Dog-Party&id=177157

Does your family have a family crest? If you don’t already have one, why not make this a creative activity for the whole family? It will help kids understand where they came from and give them a sense of pride about your family’s history.

Decide together what shape you would like your crest to be. Then, add significant symbols inside. For example, a flag of the country your family originated from and then the flag that your family currently resides in. Other parts of the crest could include your initials or monograms. Or how about drawing a picture of your family? While there are formal ways of creating your family’s crest, I think it’s more important to have fun with it and get everyone involved.

After you’ve finished with it and everyone’s satisfied with the results, there are places that can professionally create this for you.

Another great idea? Use them in your next birthday card. Just choose a photo card and use your beautiful crest to decorate it.