Test subject

This morning, I am home with a sick Liam. Well, he says he's sick. I'm not entirely sure that I am buying it (although he didn't eat any breakfast this morning, which is definitely unusual for him; and the last time I sent him to school when he didn't eat any breakfast was the day he came home sick from his class skating trip. So my intuition has not always proven to be correct.) I may take him in later today; we will see how it goes.

After Christmas, I picked up a background stand and some seamless, and though they stayed packed away for all of January, I've had them out a few times over the past few weeks. Enough with always being able to see piles of dirty dishes and stacks of laundry in the background of all my photos! Well, not really. It does require some assembly and is big enough to require shifting some furniture around, so this is not an everyday thing - but it will be great for the 3- and 5-year portrait sessions I have coming up. And it's a lot less 'ghetto' than the falling-apart garment rack I used to try to hang backdrops off of.

Mallory has been great at helping me get some practise in and being my little model. Obviously the pajama shot was for test purposes only and not meant to result in any keepers! She also helped me out last week when I did some shots of one willing 2-year-old and one unwilling 2-year-old who actually refused to get anywhere near the backdrop. (Here's Mallory on the right, trying to show how it's done for them!) I hadn't counted on it spooking like that... but as I said, as long as Liam and Mallory are willing to use it for birthday pictures then it will be worthwhile.

So far Mallory has enthusiastically agreed to some photo sessions when she turns 3... we'll see how she reacts when the time actually comes. I will keep a bag of M&Ms handy and hope for the best. Liam will likely give me a bit more trouble - I will have to scale back on the location and wardrobe changes with him - but if I have a bag of gummi bears available that day, I bet I can get a keeper then, too.