Every month my wife has me set-up for a photo shoot of our newborn baby girl. I used to laugh at the idea. Really? We're going to shoot every month's birthday? But I got over that pretty soon when I realized she wasn't kidding.

I also began to see this as an opportunity to improve my portrait photography skills. Yesterday I shot a new round of photos. I started out using my Nikon D800 but quickly switched back to my older Canon D Mark II with a 50 prime lens. That lens is stunning and I simply don't have an equivalent lens for the D800. I dropped the depth of field to a razor thin margin so that I would get her eyes as sharp as possible while softening out the rest of her face. I did that on a few photos and others I opened up a deeper depth of field.