Mornings can be some of the most trying times with my little Ted.

Often I’m tired, Alex is rushing to get out the door and the babe is refusing to eat his breakfast.

These snaps probably make mornings look a lot more fun than usual. They were an assignment for a new online photography course I’ve started with Life:Captured, Inc. Billed as the modern school of memory keeping, their whole philosophy centres on the importance of documenting and, I suppose, appreciating the everyday.

So far, husband and wife team Trish Lee and Joel Chong of Sydney-based Tealily Photography have explained how to use our cameras in manual mode, the art of focusing and a little on composition. This week we’ve been asked to take a series of photographs to tell the story about some of our daily routines, and I chose to document a morning.

It took me a day, I reckon, to sort of get the hang of using the manual settings on my camera. When I say, sort of get the hang, I mean take a photo which wasn’t totally white or totally black.

I’ve binned a lot of pictures to get a handful to submit to Trish and Joel for some feedback. The focus is a bit iffy on lots of these snaps, but I love the emotions in them and Ted’s little face grinning at Alex. He is so cheeky.

If you couldn’t tell, Ted loves his Daddy and he also loves pulling all the saucepans out of the cupboards.

He could take or leave toast, however. He’s trying to give it back to me in that first picture.

Do you ever stop to take photos of the ordinary moments? And have you got any tips for me on improving my focusing in these photographs?  I need to glue Ted to the sofa, I think.

(If you are a serial phototaker do sneak a peak at Life:Captured, Inc. The other half of the team Ronnie Mason, of The Shoemaker’s Daughter, is teaching classes on memory keeping and photo organisation as well as writing a wonderful blog sharing her thoughts on photography, memories and life in general. It’s a great read.)