Picture IT: The Photographic Life-Photo tips for Moms Review

I am a mom and I LOVE taking pictures.  I even consider myself pretty good at it.  That being said I was extremely excited when I was offered the chance for a guest pass on The Photographic life-photo tips for moms, a photography community site.

The Photographic Life was started by, Mary, a mom who is also a professional photographer. This site offers a place for moms to learn photo tips, equipment tutorials as well as editing and organization tips.

I had a great time going through the website. There are many topics ranging from Gear (camera types, accessories), The Shoot (groups, toddlers, teens) Editing, Contests, and After the Shot (photo organization, scrap books, digital creations).  There are informative articles regarding ways to photograph your children.  I enjoyed one article called Posing vs. Waiting.  I am always trying to get Adeline to pose for pictures and they end up looking boring and forced.  Mary was having the same problem and once she gave up she ended up with some pretty amazing shots of her girls.  According to Mary “the lesson is to stop every now and then and quietly observe who your children are… it’s often quite a beautiful thing to document.”

I am a crazy picture taker and never delete images.  Even the images that I don’t really like I keep.  Why?  I don’t know.  I was excited to find an article titled “12 steps of Organization” I would like to share these steps with you because I am almost positive that some of you may be like me and “hoard pictures”.

Organization via the 12 step program…

1. We will admit that we are powerless over image hoarding—that our files have become unmanageable.
2. We will come to believe that a soccer season can be remembered with 5 or 10 images instead of 500.
3. We have made a decision to delete the bad images for the sake of the good ones.
4. We will sacrifice some of our Facebook time and use it for the organization process.
5. We will admit to our Flickr group and ourselves the exact nature of our image hoarding.
6. We are committed to occasionally putting down our cameras and participating in the events of our lives.
7. We will delete all blurry, dark and unidentifiable images.
8. We will make a list of all duplicate images and commit to deleting all but one copy.
9. We will make direct amends to such people (including our children)  that we have treated as though we were the paparazzi.
10. We will continue to take personal inventory and, when we are hoarding, promptly narrow down our stash to the ones that best tell the story.
11. We will seek through diligence and determination to maintain an organized filing system with detailed labels for future generations.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to other obsessed mothers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

If you are a mom and like to take pictures of your kids you should think about checking this community site out. You don’t have to have a DSLR Mary covers point and shoot camera’s too.  To become a member you can visit http://www.phototipsformoms.com/

Membership fees cost $6/month or $60/annual.  The fees are used as a way to avoid advertising clutter and to keep the site more private for the members.  Ten percent of every subscription, every month goes directly to organizations that help children or families of sick children!  I am very excited to join and be part of this community of mom’s and photography lovers.

– Erika

* WE DID NOT RECEIVE MONETARY COMPENSATION FOR THIS REVIEW. THAT’S IT MOMMY DID RECEIVED A GUEST PASS TO ACCESS THE SITE AND FACILITATE THIS REVIEW. THIS WILL IN NO WAY SWAY OUR OPINION OF THE PRODUCT OR SERVICE. THE REVIEW IS IN OUR OWN WORDS AND IS OUR OPINION. YOUR RESULTS AND OPINIONS MAY DIFFER.