Say 'sausages'!

If you look at my previous Blip you'll see that I'm taking a photography class at the moment.

I actually studied photography when I was about 18, in the pre-digital era and I seem to recall I was quite good at it. Anyway - I stopped needing to use those skills, so all knowledge tumbled out of my head to be replaced with something very inportant (I have absolutely no idea what).

Anyway, one of the reasons I wanted to learn how to take manual photos was to take more natural looking pictures of the kids at home. Daytime was always fine - the house was bright enough for the pictures to come out fairly natural looking, but the trouble is our house at night time. We have very orangey lighting and taking a picture at night would mean either a very dark, blurred image if I used automatic setting, no flash or a nice, sharp, in-focus shot with a very stark, bright flash stripping out all the warmth and character in the room.

So...here I am at the beginning of figuring out what settings I should be using to snap the kids after dark. It needs work, I know that but I'm still quite chuffed with it - the warmth in the room has remained I just need the rest of it to click together now.

Anyone care to suggest techniques for me to reduce the movement / long shutter speed etc, will be GREATLY received...

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Anyway - sorry for the geekery. Lets get back to the normal Blip setting of spraffing rubbish...The VERY most important part of this picture is that Ida is in the throes of shouting the word 'saaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuussssssssaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeee' for the first time. She loves having new words, especially when we actually understand them. She loved saying it, and we loved hearing it.

"Sausages". Officially the cutest word in the English language...