Happy 1st Birthday Aiden

Some of my favorite subjects to photograph are people.  I absolutely love to capture emotion in a moment.  Photographing children is a great opportunity to do this.  If you are lucky, the children ignore the camera and you are able to photograph as the story unfolds.  Funny enough, it is harder to capture adults without them stopping the moment and posing.  This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to photography Aiden's first birthday. 

All of the photographs from the party were captured with a speedlight on camera and at -2 exposure compensation.  For the direct shots of people, the speedlight was diffused to produce a less harsh light.  I did try to bounce the flash off the ceiling in a few instances, but the surface was not reflective or close enough to produce the images I was looking for. 

I feel fortunate to be able to share a few of the shots of his party with you.  Here is a picture of the beautiful birthday cake pre-Aiden.   Such a talented mom he has.  Can you believe she made both of these?  I thought it was a really smart idea to have the smaller cake for him to destroy, I mean eat.  The silver under the birthday cakes worked great as a built in light reflector to help angle the light upward.

  
He was a little confused about what to do with this cake.  This was definitely a departure from his usual pears and bananas.  So cute.  With kids there expressions tend to change so quickly.  To capture those expressive moments I tend to photograph with the camera on continuous shooting.

Figuring this thing out...  Although I don't tend to like every shot looking at the camera, having this connection in a few frames works well. His beautiful eyes are very expressive.

Starting to do some damage.

Aiden finally decided that the fork was a waste of time and really just slowing him down.  So very efficient for a one year old!  I was glad to switch up my prospective, I think it added to this shot.  Had I not moved in for the side view I would have missed the destruction that was hiding behind the cake.

I am guessing that I am not the only one that thinks one of the best parts of a one year old birthday is watching them try and figure out how they can destroy the cake.  (Maybe its because this really doesn't happen at many other birthday's besides our first one).  Children's party's are a great place to capture those emotional moments.  I think the best bet to capture the moment is to keep our hands on the shutter release and our eyes behind the view finder.   

Thanks for sharing Aiden's captured moments with me...