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Welcome to the forth and last installment of Baby's Growth Stages Captured in Photography by Shannon Kietzman from My Baby Photos.

Now that your child has reached the toddler stage, there are so many exciting moments for you to capture on film! By now, your little one is moving around quite easily and is getting into everything he or she can find. For that reason, there are six broad categories of photographs for you to cover once your child reaches this stage. These include:

• On Your Feet
• Curiosity is King
• The Great, Big World
• Family Bonding Time
• Capturing Innocence
• Embarrassing Moments

With each of these special moments captured in your child's photo album, you will have plenty of cherished memories to share as your child grows older.

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Welcome to the third installment of Baby's Growth Stages Captured in Photography by Shannon Kietzman from My Baby Photos.

As your precious little bundle of joy grows older, you will notice a personality begin to emerge. In fact, during the first twelve months of your child's life, he or she will grow and change more rapidly than at any other age. Therefore, the key to taking photos of infants that are one year old or less is to capture their personalities, their curiosity and the natural wonder they express during the first months of life.

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Welcome to the second installment of Baby's Growth Stages Captured in Photography by Shannon Kietzman from My Baby Photos.

Now that your newborn has finally arrived, it is important to capture photographs within the first couple of weeks of your child's birth. Your newborn baby will be changing rapidly over the first several weeks following his or her birth, so you want to be certain to get some great photos to help you always remember those first two weeks.

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Welcome to this multi-part series of articles on Baby's Growth Stages Captured in Photography by Shannon Kietzman from My Baby Photos.

Whether you are expecting your first child or your fifth, your pregnancy is a special time in your life. As such, you will want to capture these remarkable months with photos that you can cherish forever. By keeping a few key thoughts in mind while taking maternity photographs, you will be certain to have some amazing photos to share with your child when he or she grows older.

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Six free photography eBooks (+ two halves) for your reading pleasure. Click the title and go to the download link on the as marked at the end of each section.

1. Tinker Tubes - Personal Lighting Systems by Dean Collins

This is where the entire DIYPhotography blog started. A complete tutorial on creating a studio from nothing but PVC pipes, Ripstop nylon and Nikon SBs. Creating studio photography systems like the Ghetto Studio, the Backdrop Stand and Reflector Holders, are all covered in this book.

[26 mind expanding pages, click on "Download the Tinker Tubes book"]

2. Lighting 101 by David Hobby

Or should I say by The Strobist. The complete nothing but a strobe lighting guide. This is a great book for the starting photographer covering the following topics in depth:
- On The Go Lighting Gear: Clamps, Umbrellas, Swivels, ...
- Strobe Lighting Techniques: Bounce, Bare Bulb, Hard Light, Ambient Balancing, and more
- Creative Flashware: Gels, Gobos, Ball Bungees

If you liked the book, you'll surly love the blog.

[36 pages, click the "mirror" on the UPDATE section at the bottom]

2 1/2. JPG Magazine by 8020 Publishing

Jpeg mag is one of the better photography magazines out there. This photography magazine features readers photos (selected by readers), and also great articles (written by readers). In fact JPG mag is very similar to an online forum only it is printed. How cool is that?

In fact it is so cool that you can download a PDF version of any issue right from the JPG mag site. Go to "Issues" on the top banner, select the desired issue and click Download PDF on the right hand side. (Of course, you still order the JPG magazine in print).

OK, so this is not exactly a book, which makes it the first half of the six and three halves.

[pages vary, click the download issue on the right hand side]

3. The Image-Space Tips and Tricks collection by Joe Barrett

This is a great book for any digital photographer using Lightroom (and don't we all). The Image Space is a blog dedicated to Lightroom Tips, and the books covers areas like:
- Using Lightroom full power to organize your images
- Making the best of the develop module

If you liked this book, you can follow the online Lightroom tips and tricks here.

[34 pages, click on "Download the free Lightroom tips eBook"] Read more ›

Signs are great resource of photography inspiration. Why? Signs usually carry a clear message. Clear message is a good thing: you can echo, contradict or correspond with a clear message. If your message is clear too, you hit the jackpot.

In the following article I will discuss five ways one can interact with signs on pictures. At the end I will share a personal story showing the difficulties of shooting images with signs.

1. Relating Signs - The simplest way of using a sign in a photograph is to find a sign or a combination of signs that can convey a different message than originally indented. This is usually also very funny.

Pick Your Poison by Scott Ableman

There are several ways to do this: One way is to show two related signs in the same picture. This is what Scott did in his "Pick Your Poison" image. The road guys post up a "Dead End" sign to warn the drivers off a road condition. The fast food guys want the drivers to know that they will serve food on location. Combining the clear dead end message with a bunch of well known fast food chains create a new message: "fast food is a dead end".

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Usually on this site I describe ways to deal with shadows in pictures. This is because shadows can distract the viewer from the main subject. Shadows also often create high contrast that gives the sensor some hard time. In past articles I've shown how to eliminate the shadows, minimize them, diffuse them and even bounce to get rid of them.

But what if? What if there was a way to turn the shadow into a friend, to make the shadow so distracting, it will become the subject itself?

In this article I've decided to face the enemy and make it a friend. Here are eight ways to get a great shadow picture: Read more ›

Brian Shaler from the Brian Shaler Blog has posted a great flick with his panning technique.

Thought you new everything about panning? Think again! Brian brings us the "reverse panning" where the camera moves and the subject stays still.

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Last week I have talked about an important aspect of any picture - contrast. It was only natural to follow up with an article about low key and high lighting as both are tightly related to contrast.

After covering the definitions and some samples of High Key and Low key images, it is time to show some setups that will enable you to take High Key and Low Key pictures. I'll start with Low Key images today and will follow soon with some High Key setups. Read more ›

Sometimes you want to make a diagram of your photo session. (OK, sometimes you don't, but sometimes you do). I, for example, am going to use studio lighting diagrams for explaining about low key and high key studio setups. If you are like me, with two left hands in all that related to sketching, you are in a tight spot. When I draw (just like when I write), only one person in the world can understand what I wrote. Sadly, I have not met him yet.

So the solution to my situation is to use lighting diagrams "out of the box" with no handwriting involved what so ever. Ahhhhh.... sounds like heaven, right?

Great, how do you get one? Both Rui and Strobist have pointed out two great sources for creating lighting diagrams. One requires Photoshop and the other one is online. I'm going to show both. Read more ›