Practicing Lighting

I've been practicing with lighting and the flash lately. Surprisingly my kids have been very cooperative! :) I am beginning to feel more comfortable with the flash. It still takes a lot of trial and error but thankfully not quite as much as it used to!
Here are some collages of the pictures I took of the kids. I'm thinking of even having these printed to put on the wall in their room :)

Lesson Learned

LESSON LEARNED:
This picture is my entire family. It's the first time we've all been together in almost 3 years. My parents really wanted a family picture. So we got it all set up and arranged. My camera settings: F-3.5 1/250 ISO 100... WHY DID I USE F-3.5?!?!?! All my pictures are blurry. I know better. GRR Thankfully there were 3 other cameras set up to take pictures. I'm still very frustrated but I guarantee you that I will never make that mistake again.
 (for those who don't know about F stops this site explains it very well.)

This is everyone. All 36 of us!!!

These are the two who started it all.

My parents and my brothers and sisters

spouses added

All the grandkids and Grandma and Grandpa (22 grandkids!!)

My oldest brother and his family

Next oldest brother and his family

Older sister and her family

Myself and my family

Younger sister and her family

Younger brother and his family

My Kids

Sorry I've been MIA lately. I've been feeling really blah. I haven't been feeling very creative so I haven't had much to blog about. Yesterday I decided the only way out of this rut would be to just get up and get out of it.
The kids all decided to take off their regular shirts and run around in their undershirts. They called themselves "The Undershirt Club" lol. Even though they were messy and their hair wasn't combed at all I decided they looked so cute that I'd go take some pictures of them. They seemed to have fun with it lol.
Here are some of my favorites.

Mt. Rubidoux

Yesterday we couldn't decide what we wanted to do. We knew we didn't want to just sit at home and do nothing but we weren't sure exactly what we wanted to. Sister in Law showed up and said "What about hiking Mt. Rubidoux?" We thought "What a great idea, it gets us out of the house and gets us some exercise" So we loaded the kids in the car and SIL went and got her pup-pup and we headed to Mt. Rubidoux. We had so much fun!!! Of course I took the longest to get up the mountain and back down again but that's because I kept having to stop to take pictures.

I made the leap yesterday and shot totally in RAW. Plus I have evolved to to shooting completely in Manual mode. I was having a hard time getting out of the priority modes for awhile. I just couldn't fully understand Manual mode. It wasn't clicking. I started to shoot more in manual mode right before my camera broke but still hadn't fully grasped it yet. When I got my new camera I decided to put it right into Manual mode and haven't looked back since. It seems to have clicked. I still have a TON to learn but it finally feels like the pieces are coming together.

On to the pictures from yesterday.

 Oldest and Twin B walking. She walked up the entire mountain. The other two ended up in the stroller at one point or another.

 Twin A. Contemplating.

 This is one of my favorites.

This is the whole group. Minus me lol. Hubby has the twins in the stroller. SIL is walking pup-pup and Oldest is jumping off the side.

It was such a beautiful day and we had so much fun!!