The Story of the Asterisk in the Tiny Prints logo:
During the early days of printing, feudal print makers used an asterisk as a symbol to indicate a person’s date of birth on his or her family tree. Since then, it’s been used to represent everything from a special note in a text to the sweet little kiss of a computer emoticon. Because the asterisk is always used to denote something special, whether it’s the day a person joined the family tree or an online kiss shared between friends, the founders of Tiny Prints placed the asterisk at the heart of our logo as a constant reminder of all the ways we help people to celebrate life’s special moments in style.

Enter to Win Our Asterisks Everywhere! Contest
Since the asterisk is so central to the Tiny Prints family, we invite all of our Flickr group members to spot the asterisk in their everyday lives and snap a photo of it to share. You could see the shape of the asterisk in a cluster of leaves, printed in a newspaper or scrawled on a wall in graffiti, but wherever you spot it be sure to take a photo and post it to our Flickr group. We’ll select our favorite photos after June 22nd and send our top contestants one of these fabulous prizes:

-First Prize: Flip UltraHD Video Camera plus 100 FREE Photo Greeting Cards!
-Second Prize: 50 FREE Photo Greeting Cards
-Third Prize: 25 FREE Photo Greeting Cards

Contest concludes June 22nd, 2009 so start submitting your entries today by simply adding your photo to the Tiny Prints group on Flickr!

By guest blogger: Rich Bucich

This is the first installment of my tips to help you take better photographs of your baby. Over the next few weeks, I will be highlighting individual issues that will have a dramatic effect on the quality of your photographs. In this episode, I’ll go over auto-focus and how it is impacted by light.

Baby portraits are the most challenging photographs to take. At Tiny Prints, we receive a large number of pictures from you everyday and hear all of your struggles and frustrations first hand.

As a new parent, catching the perfect pose is as much about luck as it is about planning. The good news? There are a lot of things that you can do to help your odds without a lot of effort.

• First of all, the auto-focus feature on your camera uses contrast not distance to focus. This is why you can shoot through glass at distant objects.

• Secondly, in poor lighting, your camera may have difficulty finding focus or focus on an unintended area. For example, a sleeping baby’s face has little contrast which can confuse a camera. This is why you might have a well focused blanket but a blurry baby in your photographs.

• Thirdly, poor lighting includes most indoor photography, even in seemingly well lit rooms.

• While I will go into more detail at a later date, remember that the importance of focus accuracy increases as light decreases.

If you keep these issues in mind, you can see why light becomes one of the most important aspects of good baby photography. The same rules apply for many other types of photography, however. Our Tiny Prints website also has many effective tips with examples which may be helpful as well.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions and stay tuned for Episode II.

Parenting magazine recently announced baby Ella Segars, of Austin, Texas, as the winner of their beautiful baby search. I must admit that her piercing blue eyes and striking smile make her look like a doll!

But since all parents think that their children are the most beautiful kids around, why not show them off in your own way? Creating photo stationery cards for all major occasions (i.e. birthdays, holidays, religious celebrations) are the perfect way to share pictures of your children as they grow up. Check out some adorable photos in these popular Tiny Prints designs. We hope that you find these glamour shots inspiring!