It's so expensive to have professional photos taken of your baby, and with today's camera technology you can really create professional-looking and lovely photos with regular cameras.

Here are a few tips!

Keep it simple: try not to attempt catalogue style photos with a fussy background or certain tilt of the head required. Keep the shots easy and simple for you all.

Background: keep an eye on what's behind your baby and check there's no washing on the line, or dustbins in the background or a traffic sign coming out of their head! A leafy hedge, a grassy bank, a blank wall are all simple and effective backgrounds that will look good.

Lighting: light the picture naturally if possible so take pictures outside or in bright rooms. Flash is fine but can distort the colours in the picture or result in red eye or closed eyes!

Sunshine: it's lovely to take shots in the sun, but beware of sun shining in the children's eyes and causing them to squint or shut their eyes. Don't tell them to try and smile and look into the sun... it just won't happen!

Get up close: try to have the photo full of your baby so that about 3/4 of the photo will feature the baby and the rest is background or other things. You can always crop the image after if you don't want to hold the camers in your baby's face.

Practice: get to know what all the buttons on the camera actually do. You may find they enhace the shot with a bit of practice. Take plenty of shots too, don't spend ages lining up a shot and then just take one. You can delete any you don't like.

Tilting: try out some different angles and tilt the cemera, turn it portrait or landscape and play around with what you can do to get the right image.

Eyes right: don't always insist your child looks at the camera.  Looking down, or into the sky or eleswhere can make gorgeous shots.

Make it fun!: encourage your children to laugh and enjoy their photo session by making it a game and fun!

Take pictures often: by taking pictures often the children will be familiar with the idea of a camera being used and will not find it intimidating or embarassing.

Good luck!

Using technology to teach and inspire children is vital in this day where computers are commonplace, digital gadgets are all over the place and technology is so much more accessible.

Many children have their own toy cameras now, which is great to see the world through the eyes of the children.

However, you can try to give the camera usage a little more direction by setting the children photography projects such as:-

• Things that make me happy (ice cream, friends)
• Things that are brightly coloured (coat, bike)
• Things that don't belong here (litter dropped on the pavement etc.)
• Things that are beautiful (nature, trees)
• Things featuring numbers (shop phone number, house number)
• Things featuring letters (road names, signs)
• Things we need (post boxes, front doors)
• People I love... etc.

You could set the challenge of photographing things that begin with the alphabet letters.

• Find an Apple, Bed, Cup, Desk, Egg, Fence etc.
• Find various colours: find find 5 red items.
• Find a certain number of things: find 3 socks, 2 teddies etc.

When the pictures are taken, show the children how to load the images onto the computer.  Describe what happens as you flick through the pictures and sort them.  Show them how you print them and trim to size etc.  You could then create a booklet displaying the images in order and writing the appropriate letter on each page.

Now that the warm weather is here - hopefully to stay - it's a great chance to get outside and capture the pretty things that appear in spring.  If you have a digital camera, a phone with a camera on it or a kiddie digital camera why not go out on a photo shoot.

• Discuss where you want to go... the local park, a pond or river nearby or the garden.
• Plan together what you should take: snacks, drink, sun hat, blanket for resting on or note book to draw things.
• Talk about when to go (morning time when the birds are singing, lunchtime when the sun is brightest and highest, or evening when things are covered in the glow of the setting sun.

Allow your little one access to the camera - with supervision.  See what they are attracted to and help them take photos. You could focus on different things:

• Colours: Take photos of different coloured things line green grass, brown bark, pink blossom, white daisies. See how many you collect.
• Texture: take photos of different textures like rough tree, smooth leaf, bumpy path, silky flowers.
• Size: take pictures of small, medium and large and super-large things such as tiny ants, medium shrubby bushes, large fallen trunks and massive towering trees.
• Mini beasts: find and photograph as many mini beasts and animals you can find: insects, squirrels, butterflies, spiders and webs, birds etc.

Have a happy, snappy time!