Daughters

This is one of my all-time favorite photos of Daddy with his precious Daughters. It was taken just a couple of weeks after we came home with Maddy (September 2006). Those who know us well, know about all the years (and the heartbreaking losses) we went through to get these two beautiful children in our arms and that makes this photo even more special to me.

   

(To see a larger version of this photo, click <here>)

I struggled with this month's theme ("Daughters") because ALL of my photos seem to be of my daughters and even though I think the pics are lovely, I couldn't imagine how I could take a single picture that was worthy of such a precious title. A Daughter is a relationship and how can one image illustrate something so beautiful and complex? Then I remembered this photo. Like I said, I've always loved it but it really wasn't technically very good at all. It was dark and the white balance was all wrong and it had a really distracting bunch of stuff (my messy office!) in the background.

So I fixed it.

To me, photography is all about creating a record of beautiful memories and not necessarily about producing photos that look perfect straight out of the camera. Someday I hope to be that good but, for now, I'm happy to use my photo editing skills to make up for my photographic shortcomings and help my photos be all they can be!

Here's the original photo (click for larger view):

Camera: Canon Rebel XT
Mode: Manual
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
Focal Length: 17mm
ISO: 400
Aperture: f4
Shutter: 1/60

I'm curious to know what I could have done to make this photo better.  I must have spent two days fixing then re-fixing this photo.  Then I noticed that one of my favorite sites (I ♥ faces)  was offering some "constructive feedback" this week.  Talk about perfect timing!