i am a horrible photographer

I have no idea how to get close shots of my daughter that are in focus, with no red eye and don't make her look horrible! I played around with my camera a bit this afternoon with her and came to the realization that I really do not have any clue how to use my camera. So, not great pictures to share but enjoy anyway.

This one is kind of fuzzy and not that close up.

This one is close up but the red eye was so bad she looked like the devil. I used a picture manager thing to reduce the red so now her eyes just look boring.

Red eye problem again. But don't you just love those little teeth!

And this one is close up but she does NOT look cute! HA!

So, I need help or my poor child will just always be dependent on her Aunt to get good pictures. Which doesn't work out so great now since she is 8 hours away. I tell her all the time that I wish I could keep her in my pocket and just pull her out whenever I had a photo-op kind of moment.

While I was taking all the pictures she was just content to play with her little Oscar book and kept talking to herself so much that I switched the camera to video to capture some of her mumbling. Turn your volume way up and you can hear some of it.




And here is a video of our first attempt at coloring with crayons. All the marks on the paper are from me trying to demonstrate to her how much fun coloring is. She didn't get it. The worst part I think is that I had myself convinced that she might actually color. I had even written at the top of the paper "Sam's first attempt at using crayons - 2-11-09" thinking that she might actually do something worth saving! I would have been happy with her making even the slightest mark with the crayon!




Clearly she didn't get it.