Today our baby—Teddy (the HTPYB cover baby)—turned 7!

I lay low as a photographer (after weeks of holiday photos and now feeling under the weather) and just enjoyed the day as a dad. Anne set a camera to Auto and grabbed these snapshots (bemoaning the lighting and lack of focus, but happy to have them nonetheless).

Oh to be seven and find waking up to balloons such a thrill!

Teddy proudly shared his celebration with Theo Bear who, he explained, turned 4 today (having been given to Teddy on his 3rd birthday). Incidentally, Theodore means “Gift from God”—which fits our Teddy well—he came to us after years of hope and then survived and thrived from a three month early, 2 1/2 pound start. We’ve had a blessed seven years.

Anne’s photos are a prime example of the classic tradeoff faced by amateur photographers all the time—the downside of opting for the mood of natural low light over a flash. With an excited kid it’s bound to be blurry. With a flash she’d have caught the moment in focus but without the mood of the tree and lights.

Anne discarded all the sharp posed fake smile pics and chose to keep the one above that captured his expression best. What about you… when going through all your shots to you keep or trash shots like these?

Anne seems to have focused more here on the tree than on Teddy. Notice how it’s sharpest in the middle of the picture. Looks like I’ll need to enroll her in some of my courses.

Alexander reading the card to his little brother.

Teddy’s other best friend joined us at night for cake. After weeks of indulging in holiday chocolates, we were all happy that Teddy chose lemon curd cake.

I took this photo of the boys—and Theo Bear. These guys are the Four Musketeers of our block.

With a January 2nd birthday we’re lucky that Anne usually forgets or can’t find all the previously stashed Christmas gifts. When the birthday gifts were over she remembered having bought this for me and the boys and forgot to give it at Christmas so dug it out and it was Teddy’s favorite. Not to mention this photo is worth sharing—in spite of it’s blurryness—as a good reminder of my warning to not put your subject smack in the middle of the frame! 🙂

So tell us in the comments below how you handle photos like these when you’re culling your millions of photos (you do go through and discard all the rejects, don’t you?!)

Which do you keep—the technically perfect, in-focus ones, which may be more posed and less genuine, or the real moments like the top shot of Teddy, however blurry?

Let’s just say in our house the professional photographer and the mom don’t always agree…what about you?

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