Practicing Photography

So I had the honor of taking pictures of two of my friends' babies and my friend's family this past week to practice my photography skills.  Lately I have been obsessed with learning my camera and the art of photography better...including getting to know the camera settings (SO much to learn), lighting, my new editing program (Aperture 3 for Mac...have I ever mentioned how AMAZING Macs are?), poses, etc.  Unfortunately, most of this stuff is very difficult to practice with an almost-15-month-old constantly moving...like won't sit for a single second, so all of them are action shots...which don't usually turn out the clearest.  So anyway, here are my favorites from those three shoots (in order from 1st to 3rd that I did...learned a lot as I went):

Little Emma - 9 months old - She looked so cute in her pumpkin tutu outfit.  She was very interested in the leaves and sticks, so she played much of the time, but I still managed to get some pictures of her looking at me!

 Not a very good picture, but this is the best we got of the two of them...and that wasn't Emma's fault.

Logan - 8 months old - A handsome baldy with stunning blue eyes.  He didn't care about the sticks and leaves as much as Emma did and was pretty easy to shoot:

Colby and Family - 18-months-old - We picked the perfect time of the day for these pictures and the trees and leaves were perfect.  Colby is also a rambunctious toddler (like Eben) and I was excited to have plenty of pics where he was looking at me and sometimes even smiling.  I also tried some new effects with most of these pictures (the darker background ones...if that makes sense)...I think I like the look of them, but it may not be some people's style.

No effect...

No effect...

With effect...

No effect...

With effect...what do you think?