The Glitter Princess Photo Session, My Beautful Girl |theDALEYlife.|

Before the nurse typed "g-i-r-l" on the ultrasound, I always thought about having a little girl. I wanted a daughter so bad I even tried to will my son (our first born) into a girl as he was still forming inside my wife. Note to any future Dad's, talking directly to your wife's stomach OR asking her permission to speak into her open mouth does not work.

But my little girl. My precious little Preslie. I find myself looking at her sometimes and wonder how on earth is she mine. Just watching her twirl and laugh and run around during this session you have to wonder how there can ever be anything bad in the world. She has the same eyes as her mother and knows how to use them to get what she wants. They are the same eyes her mother looked at me with when I fell in love with her. And I know some day she will be looking at me and asking for the keys to the car or telling me about some amazing boy she is in love with. As much as that breaks my heart, it also fills it with love.

My good friend Christa was the inspiration for this session we did together aka this was her awesome idea and she let me tag along.  Any time Christa contacts me and says "I have an idea," I am already game. Glitter, princesses dresses, open field...I mean, you cant go wrong with any of those. With photography, a lot of the time the technique doesn't matter as much as the idea. Look at the Anne Geddes baby photography craze from ten years ago. The technical execution is second to the idea. So, thank you Christa for pushing the idea because I never would of thought of doing this.

If you want to try this session, I do have some technical tips for you to make the images look the best.

1. I found the blue/green/purple colors of glitter showed up the best.

2. Buy a lot of glitter. We had a couple of the like 3 inch containers

3. Get close to the action. Glitter is small, but not small enough to hurt your camera. Just blow it off when you are done.

4. Younger kids will want to blow the glitter like its a candle on a birthday cake. On film, this leads to pretty funny faces. This works for some of the images, but for the gentler look it may be a little distracting. Fill there hands up with an overflowing portion of the glitter and let them gently blow it off the top of the pile, instead of trying to blow it all out of their hands at once. It will take a few times for them to get it. Also, pour some in your hands and show them what you want, kids learn from watching us more than understanding our photographic vision!

5. Shoot with their backs to the wind. This allows the wind to take the glitter and blow it around.

6. Shoot from the side too (as in the photo above.) This catches a lot more of the glitter.

7. I shot these images with a 24-70mm lens at 24mm / 2.8 / shutter 500 and iso 500. You will want your shutter decently fast so you can catch the movement of the glitter, so raise your ISO before lowering the shutter speed if you need more light. You can also brighten the images in Lightroom afterwards if they are a tad too dark.

8. This will be one of the few times your kids will be annoyed with you wanting to take photos. Let them have fun. Some of the best images will be them doing their own thing. Go with it.

and to be fair to my son...who was a TROOPER in hanging out for a princess/glitter photo session. Killing it on Angry Birds while knocking back some goldfish.