Friday Q & A

So, my question is... how do you keep calm in the middle of Lucy's outbursts?  I am really struggling with my 8yr old daughter... screaming crying, kicking.. you get the picture.  I am having such a hard time keeping my patience as time goes on, mainly for the fact that it's rubbing off on my other children, who think they can talk like that too (aged 6, and 4).  How do you nip it in the bud with Lucy?  

The very best advice I can give (and it's HARD to do) is not let emotions get in the way.  My sister says her husband once told her she just needs to be a "durable object" during tantrums and I love that.  In my mind I just try to stay as calm as I can, internalizing the fact that it doesn't do anyone any good for me to freak out.  The Love & Logic stuff is the VERY BEST, if you haven't read that book, you should. It's all about keeping the emotions out of discipline.  So I very calmly tell Lucy she is very welcome to cry and whine as much as she wants, but she has to do it in her room because it isn't fair to the rest of the family if she is hurting all our ears.  Then I FOLLOW THROUGH.  That is key.  If she won't go to her room, I ask if she wants me to take her or if she wants to go by herself.  I am very firm, but not mad (most of the time...I am definitely not perfect at this by any means).  It takes a bunch of practice, but I swear, consistency and low emotion is the key.  If we as mothers feed into it and get mad, it feeds their desire for any kind of response and I think it triggers more of that behavior in the future.  Same with teenagers.  Praise the good, try to minimize attention to the bad.

We have chores and punishments for not doing them (like not hanging out with friends, or going somewhere etc), but my children seem not to care until they want to go out, then they are screaming, crying, the whole works.  I can give my six-year-old daughter a job to clean her room, and I am not kidding when I say she can be up there hours, and nothing?  It's so frustrating, I have helped her on numerous occasions, but for the most part, they think it's ok not to do it.  I have stopped them from going places before, but I feel that I am always grounding them, and they never get to do fun things, because they can't do as I ask.

It's kind of the same with the last question.  You need to be a "durable object" and not get upset when they have to miss out on stuff.  You almost need to kind of WANT something to happen where you'll have to follow through...some really fun thing with her friends or whatever....something she wants to do that she can't because she didn't do the stuff when she should have (maybe even create a fun event that she'll have to miss...does that sound mean or what??).  And when she doesn't clean in time, just very calmly tell her you're so sorry she'll miss out on the fun.  If she is like my kids, it will only take her one to two times to realize you mean business and she may as well just get it done. 

More later on all this...right now as this posts I am on a pioneer trek with my teenagers...probably starving and tired, but hopefully learning and growing along with them (and the 500 other youth going!)

Once upon a time (part 3)

Once upon a time in a desert suburb there was a temple building proposed.  

The families surrounding the area were excited.  They took pictures where it was to be built: 

(More about that back in part 1.)

The families helped build the bedrock of the foundation with their testimonies and love written on rocks.

More about that back in part 2.)

The youth participated in a temple walk to be even more aware of how exciting the whole deal was:

(More on that back here.)

The families in the area watched and waited as it rose up from the ground.

Then one day (completely unrelated to the temple building going on) one mother went to school to pick up her daughter for a lunch date (because she liked to do that from time to time).   

As she was checking her daughter out from school there happened to be a whole slew of other moms grabbing their kids.  They asked her if she was going to watch Angel Moroni being put up.  

She responded that now she was :)

So she and her daughter went on a special date to watch that guy be hoisted up there to the top.  

They stood around with the hoards of other people who came to watch, in awe of how cool it was to see such things... ...(and even ran into the mother's dear college friend who she hadn't seen in ages:)

And although that mother was sad she only had her iPhone to capture the day with, it was sure the date of a lifetime for her and her girl.

...one they will remember each time they drive past that beautiful building.

And maybe even on that girl's wedding day some day in the future...

You never know :)

Photography: How to Use Summer Light to Your Advantage

I get so excited for photography in the summer time.


It's when my favorite subjects (my children) are surrounding me all the time doing things I want to document.

Whether it's just a perfect sunlit afternoon,

a walk on the beach at sunset,
or capturing fireworks on the 4th of July,
  or just the overall fun of summer,

...here are some things I have found that work!

1) Check your lighting and turn off your flash!

Lighting is key in taking good pictures. If you look for beautiful light, you are almost certain to end up with beautiful pictures. In the summer, there is good light everywhere.

When I first started family photography, I did it purely on my driveway in front of my garage. I know, that sounds very picturesque, right? But I got great results. I bought a black, king-sized flat sheet and hooked it up to the bottom of my open garage and shot away. Something about the light bouncing off the pavement with the backdrop created beautiful light:

Porches or garages are great in the shade. This next one was on our back porch. Again, the pavement creates a great reflector of beautiful sunlight to light up faces.

Open doorways, with you outside and your child or children looking out the door, also provides you with great light. This one was just inside our back door.

(Investing in a $9.99 fan creates a pretty cool effect, too.)

Even though shady areas work great, don't limit yourself to just that. In the early morning or evening when the sun slants just so, there is gorgeous light to be found.

If it's too hot outside, you don't need to invest in expensive lighting equipment if you want to get good indoor shots.  You just need to know where to look for the light. Almost every home has got some good lighting somewhere if you just look for it. I utilize beautiful light inside my house wherever I have north-facing windows.

2) Learn your camera and watch tutorials on the internet.

Know which aperture to use when you want to take a portrait (the lower the number the better) and how fast your shutter speed should be for shots like this:

Know your ISO settings and know to adjust them when the sun starts sinking down low.

Some of the best summer shots can be found at night. If you know your camera well enough, you can capture things like this:

and this:

(More sparkler pictures in this post.)

You just have to manually set your camera to a really slow shutter speed setting (meaning the camera takes a long time to click and actually take the picture). This allows the camera to capture all the light you are waving around in front of it, but it also means you have to hold the camera super still (or better yet, use a tripod) so that you can get a crisp shot. In the "Coronado" picture above, I took individual pictures of each letter (one child standing in front of me waving around their glowstick in the shape of each letter) and then made a collage of the letters.

3)Composition: get creative with it.

Get down on the ground.
 
Look down at the subject from high above. Try standing on a stool or chair.

Get closer. The closer we get, the more we really "see." Try getting so close you only capture half of the face. Get close up and take pictures of toes, fingers, just a smile. You'll be so happy with the results.

Look for neat angles or reflections:

Summertime is a perfect time to appreciate all the beautiful nature around as well.  Getting really close to nature makes your jaw drop with how breathtakingly beautiful it is.

I love to set my little point-and-shoot on the "macro" setting and get super close-up.

4) Catch emotions and relationships.

I always ask kids to laugh instead of smile. It seems to produce a much more natural smile than the cheese-ball ones that are easy to get with kids.

But remember, subjects don't always have to be smiling.

Or looking at the camera.

5) Always have a camera ready.

Although most of the time I feel like my big camera is just an extension of my body, it's too big to carry around all the time. But I ALWAYS have a point-and-shoot (or even my phone) in my purse that I can pull out when I have an opportune moment. I love having a little camera that also takes video footage so I can capture things on the go. Even my eight-year-old has captured some masterpiece videos with it that we are going to love some day. You don't need a bunch of fancy equipment.
You just never know when those kids are going to strike a perfect pose for you.

Or when you're going to capture things like the tongue-hanging-out-run.

Good luck capturing all that summer fun that lies ahead!

Elle photography

Elle has been busy doing photography lately.

After she did Claire's baptism pictures back here, a few friends have asked for her services.

And I know I'm a little bit biased, but I sure think she does a great job.

She takes these all by herself, edits them beautifully and burns them on a CD for the families.  

 

...a great way to earn a little extra summer cash and develop a skill at the same time.

I couldn't resist snapping a couple of her while we were looking for good lighting at a new place she was shooting.

  

Typical...

  

 Love this girl.

Gotta get the mom in there too...

And she practices a little on her sisters.

...who don't seem to mind too much :)