Hi everyone, I’m April! Trisha has given me a great opportunity to write a column about one of my favorite subjects; photography! I hope that I can help you to not only bring your photos to a new level, but also show you what a fun and rewarding hobby photography can be.

As moms we all want to capture every little detail of our little ones growth and new experiences. So how many photos do you now have on that hard drive? Once we hit the digital age it became a new world for photography, not only is it simple, but now we can click away to our heart’s desire without worrying about the expense or irritation of rolls of film to be developed. Now instead of rolls of undeveloped film sitting around we have gigabytes of photos sitting around! So along with the positives of the digital age so come the negatives, lots of photos that really aren’t that good and are of anything and everything.

There are several keys to keeping this under control. Be a little more “choosey” about the photos that you take. We really don’t need 50 shots of the dog licking the toddlers face. Yes, it’s super cute, but one or two is really enough. Are you ever really going to print one of those photos, much less all 50 of them? I know it’s hard, I want to record every little thing my children do but eventually we all run out of storage and then what do we do? You can also (and I know it’s horrible but be strong) delete some of those photos! Once you upload your photos to your computer take the time to really look at them, closed eyes, over exposed, six photos of the same group shot. Choose the best, the ones you will actually print or put into the digital frame, dump the rest…..trust me you will never miss them! There are also options like external hard drives and on-line storage, these options are getting cheaper and cheaper, but you still want to keep the inventory to as much of a minimum as possible.

My children are only 5 and 8, I take my camera everyplace we go, if I don’t start deleting a few now I will have a library by the time they are in there twenties. The really sad thing about all these photos stuck on our computer is that we never look at them, so really what is the point of taking them all if they just sit in storage? So this week make a real effort to look for the “perfect” shot, take fewer shots, and cull out the really bad photos. In the future I will get into more detail about storage and printing options to help you clear off a little space on that loaded down hard drive!

My hope for this column will be to help you with everything photo related, what type of camera is best for you, how to store and organize all those photos, what you should really be looking for when taking a photo, and finally what to DO with them once you have the perfect photo. There is so much ground to cover I can’t decide where to start! If you have any questions or want to see a specific topic covered please feel free to let me know! You can contact me at the MomDot forums, my username is JustTypicalLife!

Editors Note: April is being far too modest in this article. She was our photographer for the Hot Blogger Calendar and had her photo of me published in it! She has also been Bridgettes daughters’ photographer since Lily was a baby and is excellent. I have been looking at her work for years and its impressive. We asked her to come on and teach us how to take better photos and edit them to where they look this good all the time.  She made me look about 23 again. ~Trishatrishacal1