Dear Mojitos & Munchkins family,

It is no secret that I like love strongly adore photographing my children. Where they see me, they see a mom fanatically taking photos. My mammarazi’ing has taken on different phases throughout my years. Pre-children, I could be seen proudly carrying around my Digital SLR camera, properly worn around my neck while shooting, and just-as-properly put away in its’ traveling case when I wasn’t. Child #1 came around, and I continued to document every big (and small) milestone, but eventually gave up on “properly” wearing the neck strap. After all, kids move so damn fast that I was lucky to get the lens cap off before I missed the moment.

When child #2 came around, I lost the lens cap within a day. By the end of the first week as a mom of two, I had lost the entire camera. Who has hands to lug a big camera around when you can do it all on your phone anyway?

By the time I was planning child #3’s first birthday party, I realized I had zero quality pictures to print because 1.) I stopped taking photos with my digital SLR, 2.) Phone pictures look okay for Facebook, but are NOT okay for printing, and 3.) Ain’t nobody got time to print these crappy pictures anyway. Eh.

Here I am 7 years into parenting, and I’m still figuring that #momlife stuff out. Lord help us that they allow moms to bring babies home from the hospital without signing on the dotted line that we DO have it all figured out, right?? One of my many failures that I will admit to is gifting my children with a lifeline of blurry and pixelated selfie stick photos as their legacy. The first step is admittance, so let’s move the train right on down the track to ACTIONville, USA.

From over-exposed to under-exposed, blurry to WHAT IS THAT??? This is my photography journey.

On this day, Monday, March 20th, 2017, I will commit that I will no longer accept iPhone-only photos of my most cherished possessions on earth. I will commit to dusting off my trusty DSLR camera. I will commit to steering that camera far from the land of “automatic,” and I will commit to learning the heck out of those manual settings. {Mommy power, hear me ROAR!}

Below is a detailed list of my ACTION plan, and it is my pledge to each of my readers that I will NOT back out when the going gets tough. {I’m going to need you all to hold me to this one, because I’m a bit nervous about whether or not I can affectively stick to the manual settings and have the perseverance to open up my braid to the language of photography.

Step One: Sign up for the Shoot Along Camera Class for Parents 

Step Two: Keep me camera OUT and ACCESSIBLE at all times

Step Three: Share my lessons {and my wonderfully-amazing-terrifically-NOT-pixelated photos} with my blogging family.

Time to keep me accountable. Check in. Often. And better yet, sign up for the class WITH me. I need as many friends as I can find, and we are just a week in!

Hugs,

April