Goodnight Silas...

“Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.”
-Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon 

While my last post was about Silas' newborn photobook that I will treasure forever, it's not actually my favorite book right now. A few weeks ago a surprise package showed up on our doorstep, and inside was this gorgeous storybook that my sister had written for Silas.

Inspired by the children's classic, Goodnight Moon, Callie had written a story featuring the details of Silas' room. The poetry is amazingly clever (love the rhyme about sprocket and rockets!), and the verses are illustrated with photos that either my mom took when she visited in February or from our professional newborn shoot with Erin Drago. And, surprisingly, (because great minds think alike!!) Callie picked the same cover photo that I did for his photo album.

 

I hope that she doesn't mind if I show you a few snapshots. We are just so in love with this book. It sits next to the rocking chair, so that I can read it to Silas as part of our bedtime routine. I love that Silas can feel a bit of love from his aunt each night before bed.

A photobook to treasure...

"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."
~The Wonder Years

 

As I posted back in March, we splurged on a professional newborn photo shoot by Erin Drago here at our house when Silas was just thirteen days old. I was so excited with how the images turned out, and as I mentioned in that post, I hoped to create a photo book of the pictures. However, this was the only thing on my maternity leave to-do list that just didn't get done before I went back to work full-time.

But I am finally checking it off the list! And, I could not be more thrilled with the book that I ordered from Artifact Uprising. I can't wait to show you!

 

Although usually I'm a Blurb girl for my travel books, I knew I wanted something of heirloom quality for this particular project. I read so many good reviews of Artifact Uprising and thought this would be just the project to start with.

While sometimes I design photo book pages in PhotoShop or InDesign before publishing, this time I wanted the photos alone to tell the story, so I decided to stick with the provided page layouts. Artifact Uprising's online book-making software makes it easy to upload photos in bulk, but I was simply overwhelmed with trying to pick the best image from the tiny thumbnails in the interface, while at the same time pick the best page layout. So needless to say, I started and stopped this project several times before completion.

 

A few weeks ago when I decided to give it another go (thank you once again, One Little Word project for encouraging to get things done!!), I tried a new approach. As I scrolled through the photos in iPhoto (where I had already given them a star rating and could easily magnify them to see them better), I chose the best photo from each "scene" along with up to four accompanying images. I then uploaded the photos in small batches to the online software, and chose a pair of page layouts accordingly.

 

I'm on the Artifact Uprising email list, so I waited a week or so until I happened to receive a coupon code for 10% off and then placed my order. The book arrived on my doorstep about a week later. 

It is gorgeous... with its matte paper pages and crisp colors. I absolutely love it and can't wait to flip through the pages with Silas as he grows older. A moment of newborn life captured in time...

 

 

Stay tuned because you may see that cover image again in the next post!

 

Silas meets his cousins... a photoessay

"I may argue with my brother, but I fight beside my brother against my cousin, and with my cousin against a stranger."
-Old Arab adage

"Photoessay" may or may not be an excuse to avoid writing a boring "this is how we spent the weekend" post about a not-so-boring weekend.

Silas met his Aunt Stephanie and cousins when they came to visit last weekend. He loved playing with Chase and T.J., even if we were all exhausted and needed a break by the time they headed home on Sunday afternoon.

Silas' Newborn Photos...

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."
-Carl Sandburg

When the sneak peek of Silas' newborn photos were featured on Erin Drago's blog a few weeks ago, I was thrilled with how beautifully she captured the morning we spent with her at our house (Silas was two weeks old). I kept the webpage open on my phone for days (I think it's still open actually!), and I would scroll through the photos several times a day. And, then when we received the dvd with over three times as many images, I was absolutely head over heels!

It is amazing how much Silas has grown and changed in the few short weeks since the photoshoot, and yet, his features and expressions are just the same. We will treasure these photos and the memories of these moments for the rest of our lives.

Here are some of my favorites...

I chose a few of my favorite photos to send birth announcements to family and friends (look for them on the blog next week!). And in the upcoming weeks, I'm hoping to also design an heirloom photobook and to print some for our walls, but there are so many good ones that it's overwhelming even to begin. Just waiting for that spark of inspiration...

A Day in the Life of Silas' Socks...

“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.”
-Berenice Abbott 

I've wanted to learn to effectively use the manual settings on our dSLR camera since we first purchased it (only 5.5 years ago!). But, no matter how many tutorials I read, I couldn't keep it all straight in my head: shutter speeds, apertures, and f-stops, oh my!

Knowing how much I want to capture some great photos of Silas' early days, Rob gifted me with an online photography class for Valentine's Day. The timing of the next Photo 101 class at Nicole's Classes [website | blog | facebook] coincided perfectly with my maternity leave, giving me plenty of daylight hours at home to practice over the next couple of weeks.

I started last week, and I already consider it a success as I was forced to pull out my camera manual and learn what each of the dials and buttons control. I still have to think really hard about the theory in order to predict what the adjustments will do, but with time and lots of practice, I know it will come.

For the final exercise of last week's assignment, I chose to document "A Day in the Life of Silas' Socks." While I realize not every photo is spot-on in terms of exposure, I'm super proud that I captured the whole series with manual settings!!! Couldn't have done that a week ago!

12:26 pm

1:10 pm

3:25 pm

3:35 pm

4:04 pm

4:46 pm

4:46 pm