More Baby Moments & A Winner!!

This post was created in partnership with Canon Canada

I hope you all caught last Wednesday's post... because if you missed it, you not only missed out on some cute pictures of Nolan and great tips for capturing your wee one's at home, but you missed a really great giveaway! I'll get to the winner of the Canon Selphy CP910 photo printer shortly, but I wanted to share some more tips and photos first!

As I mentioned last week, Canon Canada has a wonderful app called Baby Moments, that is full of all kinds of wonderful, easy to follow tips and tutorials to help you capture better photos of your little ones. Last week I talked a bit about the importance of lighting to capture great photos, and this week I have a couple different tutorials I attempted to capture that I want to share.

The #BabyMoments app has a section that is broken down into tips for great photos to capture based on your baby's age. In the 0-3 section, one of the tutorials is for attempting a fun scene of your baby, staged from above. I decided to try it out for myself, making a fun fishing scene for Nolan. I set the scene in our dining room, where we have the largest windows, and took the pictures mid afternoon when the sun wasn't too bright or harsh. I then laid out my scene using a blue bed sheet, a sun made from yellow felt and rick rack, cotton ball clouds and a halved basket for the boat (B's Mom helped me out with this part). Then, B helped by wrapping some rope around the top of the basket and we added a little life saver from Halle's bath toys. The most important prop (other than Nolan) was a tiny fishing rod B had, and a toy fish from Halle's bath toys.

Despite having the perfect scene set, we were lacking a baby who wanted to stay asleep. I attempted to nurse him and settle him to sleep more than once, but it's much harder when they are past the one week mark. I was so close to capturing the perfect shot of him, but he startled himself in his sleep, causing him to kick the basket and wake up fully. My added tips here, try when Baby is very little and sleepy and maybe include a white noise machine into the mix. Regardless of Nolan's inability to stay sleeping, I wanted to share the two best photos I captured, using my Canon Rebel SL1.

{He's starting to wake up here, trying to get his hands in his mouth so he can soothe himself back to sleep}

{This one would have been perfect, like a celebration shot of his catch... if only he wasn't kicking the basket!}

The next tutorial I attempted was a sense of scale. I needed to start with a nice soft spot to lay our little guy, in a room that receives a lot of natural light. I decided on our downstairs guest bedroom in the afternoon, which is extra perfect as it is a nice bright white bedroom. I set the scene with Nolan in my favourite newborn outfit (and it was the last time he wore it), and some white bedding along with a faux sheepskin rug, with our DIY headboard as a backdrop. I was lucky that he stayed asleep long enough for me to snap some good shots of his tiny self...

Though this last photo has nothing to do with sense of scale, who can resist an adorable baby yawn (and that outfit!? Seriously!)

Now, before I get to our winner I need to say I was thrilled to take part in this with Canon Canada. Not only has Canon always been my camera of choice, but I think it's so important to capture all the stages of our little one's growing up. Sharing these tutorials with you really pushed me to capture some different and sweet photos of our little man. I know I will definitely continue to use the tips from the #BabyMoments app to capture special moments of Nolan as he grows, and of his sister as well!

The winner of our giveaway was selected using random.org... and the lucky number was 12! That makes Linds  our giveaway winner!! Lindsey, please shoot me an email so I can make sure your prize is sent to you! Thank you to everyone who stopped by and entered, and congrats to our winner!!