Maya turned 3 last friday. These days that’s about the age when kids have their first boyfriend and start to ask (demand) to go to parties. Instead Maya got a little party at home.

I wouldn’t blame you if after these 2 pics, you start to think that it’s some kind of weird Stephani tradition to dress birthday animals in rags and paint them like a member of the special forces. Well, there are some weird traditions in my family but not that. The same day, Maya had to perform on a grandparents party in school.

Kobe has been really fantastic with his two sisters. Although it’s not ease to be always the sweetest en easiest kid and still receive less attention than those drama queens. That’s why we bought him a present too. A while ago his image didn’t allow him to sleep with fluffy things anymore but when he lost some small Pokemon character last week, he got really upset (we found it back the next day). To prevent such drama’s from happening in the future we got him a Pikachu that’s a lot harder to loose.

Noa was impressed by the yellow monster too.

Maya got a gigantic Play Doo set and Kobe could play along. This must have been the last creation where it was still possible to determine different colors. Since then we’re stuck with only brown Play Doo.

Maya got birthday wishes from Tia Karen (my sister) and Ian from the UK.

It is a real tradition in our family to decorate the chair of someone who’s celebrating his/her birthday. Maya was very impressed with my flashy construction.

She was even more impressed when she got a K3-cd (Belgian child music group).

The Dora cake was also a great surprise.

At times like this, I try not to be much of a photographer. I just want to enjoy these moments above all. So I just shot natural light and on-camera flash for most of the time.
But sometimes I see a situation I just can’t resist. I exposed for the lights and the background. I then asked my mom to hold a 580EX (in slave mode) to camera left and point it towards Maya. That way I could choose the right  exposure for the background and fill Maya’s front with flash light. I zoomed the flash to 105 mm to prevent spill light on the bakground. Because I used a 580EX and a Canon ST-E2 transmitter on the cam, I was able to use wireless flash metering.

I tried if a 3 yo photographer would fit in the chair for a 3 yo. My wife ook his pic and ordered me to put in on the blog.