Play From Above

When I was pregnant with Zane I was so not in the mood for crouching down to get the right angle when photographing Jack. Yet, I wanted to continue to practice and try to grow and learn in photography. What's a unwieldy pregnant chick to do?

As I played around with different points of view I took this photo and my #playfromabove series was born.

Until very recently this series was only captured with my phone and posted to Instagram. It is easier to capture a top down POV with a camera phone, and Instagram provided me a platform to instantly edit and share. This was great because it kept me on track with practicing photography while still being pretty freaking pregnant-lazy (which is an entirely different kind of lazy).

 Once Zane arrived it also gave me a starting point for capturing their relationship as brothers without attempting to get a baby and a toddler to both look in the same direction at the same time. Which was, and is, a sanity saver.

Experimenting with your POV is one of the first lessons in many of the photography books I've read. I am far from an expert, but if you are looking for a place to start growing your photography skills try playing around with different angles. Frame your shot with your camera - you don't need a fancy camera for that. One you learn how to do that you will have taken a huge step in rendering what you see, and what you want to portray. Which is ultimately one of the main goals of photography - not just snapping a shot, but seeing potential, and being able to translate that, first with your eye, and then with your lens.