My favorite hobby is...

...photography!  Well at least it is today.  Sometimes it is baking.  And sometimes it is playing my piano.  But for today, it's photography.

I liked it a little when I was younger.  I took a simple photography class in high school, and kind of enjoyed it, but I was impatient, and I didn't like the tedious process of developing the film, then the test strips to find the correct exposure, then developing the photograph at the precise exposure, just to find out that I had a mediocre photograph on my hands.  Although the dark room was kind of neat.  But in any case, I lost interest.

Then came digital photography.  INSTANT gratification.  INSTANT learning! And since I am a learner at heart, this was my thing.  I could snap a shot, look at the photo on the camera, re-take it if I didn't like the first one and keep going, going, going.  It's genius!

I was very lucky to get a gift from all of the family members for my birthday to help out with my favorite hobby.....they all pitched in for gift cards so that I could buy a new fancy lens for my camera.  And I am so excited!

But I was very reluctant to spend my gift cards without knowing which lens was the RIGHT one.  What if I chose the wrong one?  I decided to rent the lens for a day before committing to an expensive purchase. And it was perfect timing that my best friend Katie is 8 months pregnant and had not gotten any Maternity Photos done yet.

It was fun.  And a little more difficult than I thought it would be, in terms of posing people. (My current photography subject, Alex, doesn't exactly POSE for me, so I just run around trying to catch her doing things in live motion, making silly faces and such to get her to laugh.)  Adults aren't really the same way.  They are much better behaved and actually DO the poses that I ask for.  Ha! And I don't have to make silly faces, although I'm sure that would make things more entertaining for them.  I'll think about that for next time.

Without further ado......here are a few of my first Maternity Portraits of the gorgeous Katie and her handsome husband, Jeremy:

I love the photos.  I can see some room for improvement, but that's okay, especially for a first try!  And I'm buying that lens!