Christmas Pictures

I'm trying to come up with a cute photo idea for Carter's first Christmas.

I saw some beautiful pictures of babies with strings of lights and thought I'd give it a try.

The thing is, I know NOTHING about photography.

Like I've never dared to turn my camera to the manual setting until two days ago.

I decided to play around with the settings (It took forever just to learn how to change them!)

and see what I could come up with.

I knew I'd need some practice shots, so I grabbed Carter before his bath Friday night and gave it a try.

At barely five months old, he's not quite sitting on his own yet, so I decided to lie him down.

It actually worked out better for lighting his face, too.

I wanted a dark, moody look with nothing showing in the background.

I don't have Photoshop yet (Please, Santa!), so the only photo editing I can do is with

Microsoft Office Picture Editor, which came free with my computer.

(Does anyone know any good free photo editing software?)

Here's what our practice shot looked like:

What do you guys think?

I'm hoping one of you awesome photo-taking, blogging mommies will stumble

on this post and have some advice for me.  I know I need help.  Please be gentle, though,

as this was my VERY first attempt at shooting in manual.

My settings were F6.3, ISO 800 and I played with the metering

(Remember, I have NO idea what I'm doing!)

and I think wound up with my shutter speed around 1/15.

It was too hard to write down settings in the dark, while

trying to keep the lights out of Carter's mouth.

And I'm completely freaked out about the lead in the lights,

so I only let him touch them for a minute or less,
then he went straight into the bathtub.

Hoping to keep practicing and have some great images to share by Christmas.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any advice!

Oh, and my camera is a Canon EOS Rebel T3i with whatever lens came with it (EFS 18-55MM).

Linking up with Sunday Snapshot at Ni Hao Y'all.