KISS

Pop quiz for you all. A kiss is:

1. What you get when you say goodnight to your kids
2. Something you rarely do with your spouse because of the aforementioned kids
3. Keep it Simple Silly

Well, for me all of the above are true to varying degrees. Aidan and Zoe give me a quick peck each night before going to bed. Zoe in particularly likes to pucker up and giggle. As for number two, I never could get enough kisses from my college sweet heart and that hasn't gotten any easier with the kids. But for today, we'll talk about keeping the child photography simple. Most of the time, we parents like to capture all the firsts, but sometimes even a simple portrait carries special meaning. In this case, Zoe paused just long enough after performing the Nutcracker, that I could capture her smirk, a bit of sparkle in her eyes and the "wind swept" hair that comes from her ballet performance.

Best bit of advice I can give you parent photographers - show your kids the pictures you take of them. They little narcissists really like seeing themselves on the back of the camera. Sometimes, we even watch a slideshow of the day's photos and get one more round of smiles and laughs before going to sleep.

Technical Baby Photography Note: 1/250 sec at f/1.8, ISO 200. The autofocus point was set on the eyes and I let her rip before the girl went into an encore of the Nutcracker. The photograph was cropped slightly to remove a pony tail thingy that didn't add anything to the composition.