Last year we had a professional photographer come out to take some photos of Carolyn and the prices were insane. They wanted something like five hundred dollars for a typical package of prints in various sizes, plus an extra hundred or two just to get a copy of the digital negatives. No thank you, this year I decided to do it myself and save some money.

This picture of Carolyn on the left features her favorite little stuffed pig and a great big smile. There are several more pictures of her from this session in our October 12th album on Picasa.

I shot all of these photos with my Canon HV10 camcorder in still mode using some fluorescent lights that I built for our little home studio here. If you're curious about the setup you can check out an article that I wrote for our Tech Help Weekly podcast.

The backgrounds are from a set of CDs I found on Ebay for about $30. The package includes hundreds of typical studio backdrops plus some cool scenics, drapes, and greeting card frame types of things. A great value when you consider that a single pro muslin background like the ones you see in portrait studios cost $100-$300 or more each!

I used Photoshop to isolate the subject and paste in a new background, and Picasa to upload them to Google Albums and shutterfly.com for prints. The whole process is very time consuming, and I still need a lot of practice to make them look natural.

It's a good start though, and we're having a good time with it while we save a ton of money. Now we can take decent looking pictures any time we want without the recurring expense of professional photographers.

Oh this is funny. This picture of our cat to the right was actually a complete accident. I was setting up the studio to take some test pictures for my Canon HV10 article and she plopped down in the middle of the floor to stretch out.

I didn't even know how to operate the camera yet. I put it in full auto and just started snapping away. I could hardly believe it turned out so well from a camcorder! The video quality is even better. I can't wait to finish up Carolyn's 2nd Year DVD, which should be soon. Very soon. Stay tuned!

The webcam will require a username and password to see the live video and audio, this is currently reserved for immediate family members. Please be advised that the computer that is running the webcam is running windows, so it crashes a lot and may not be up to date all the time. If this happens please let me know and restart it.

I'm in the process of replacing my numerous wish lists and registries from all those various stores to a single wishlist from Froogle's Shopping List feature. I know that we are not easy to shop for, so I'm hoping this will make it easier for you to buy us lots and lots of exciting gifts and toys year-round with a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience. It is our goal to make showing us with gifts and cash prizes as easy and painless as possible. Thank you for your generous contribution!