Sure I've got some nice newer cameras but occasionally I like to grab one of my old ones and have some fun. I found my older camera and popped on a nice 50mm lens and had some fun shooting my daughter as she tried to crawl. I really love the depth of field on this one.

I've also been enjoying Color Efex Pro 4. I used a soft focus filter and then dropped it back into Lightroom 4 so that I could add some clarity to her eyes and clean up a tiny piece of food on her mouth. Hey that's how babies roll!

Derrick Story had some similar advice this week about digging out an older camera. I shot this photo back in January but his idea holds true: Reinvigorate your photography by using one of your older cameras.

It's that time again, time to shoot another round of baby photos for my family. I always find baby portraits to be difficult because my daughter likes to bob and weave all over the place. And I have a minimal amount of time before she needs milk or a nap!

One answer I've found is to shoot in Manual Mode and really amp up the shutter speed without going too high on the ISO. The more ISO the more noise but noise reduction software is so good these days that I don't really mind it. The hard part is keeping the blur to a minimum and that's where the shutter speed comes into play. I usually start around 1/160, that gives me a nice clean shot with minimal blurring.

I also shot this series with a few different lenses. On my Sony NEX-7 I used my new 50mm prime lens. It's a cropped sensor which means I had to sit further back from my daughter than I would normally like but it takes great pictures. The other lens I used on my Nikon D800 is the 70-300mm, this is a great piece of glass for getting just the shot you want with a nice bokeh (or blurring of background).

I did some minimal post processing on these. A few I just ran through Lightroom and a few I used Color Effects Pro. Tell me your thoughts!

Photo of the Day: Baby Learning to Crawl

Shooting Baby Portrait Photographs