Been a while...

I have not taken many pictures lately.  But here is one from a bit ago that I played with.

The original.  Chad took this photo

The edit.  I had to cute my hugeness out and brighten it up...a lot.  I am not loving the results, but it is ok.

Jordyn @18 Months

Because we are new to the area, I have been trying to scout out new places to take pictures.  Parks here are kind of ugly cause the are surrounded by open space which is just kind of dry and dead right now.  We went on a bike ride last week and saw this cute little pond, quite picturesque, so that is where I went back to to take Jordyn's 18 month pictures.

My big thing I was wanting here was a good close up of her face and I got a couple great shots of that.

I took this one with the aperture as small as possible.  I love outdoor pictures because the shutter is still speedy with such an aperture.  In editing I did auto with contrast, color enhancement, lightness/darkness, and manually brightened it up quite a bit.  I then added a 2 o'clock soft spotlight coming in from the top right corner.  I discovered I really like the look of a low percentage on the spotlight and a high ambiance.  I really brightened the photo without washing out her face.

Pretty much the same edit as the one above.  Chad was standing behind me doing patty cake with her here.  She has the fattest cheeks on the planet!

 I was also loving the lighting situation.  It was about 9 am.  If we took the pictures in the shade of some trees, I got the best results.  Any I took out in direct light was too bright.  Her face was all squinty and there were really harsh shadows. 

See... harsh shadows.  Not in the shade here.  I do like the look of the background here due to the aperture adjustments.

Again, harsh shadows.  She is kind of squinty.  I tried to edit this one, as I did the one above but they were just not worth the effort.

Here is the good lighting situation:

I love this one.  Not only is she a cutie, but I like the photo stuff.  We were in she shade of the tree, but some great light still came through.  I am so ticked at myself for not noticing her pants were uneven.  Dang!

This one is ok.  I like the light behind her but she is quite dark.  We were not in the shade of the tree.  When editing I brightened it as much as I could without the background being blindingly bright.  I also added a slight glow.  Very slight.

This one is a big experiment.  I have never done that glow light in the corner.  I love it when I see it in other photos, so I decided to try.  I think the placement is good.  I like that it is coming from the same direction as the actual light.  But I think I made it too big, or too bright or something.  I also brightened this one up a bit and put in the  low 2 o'clock shadow.

All in all, I like these photos.  There is still so much I want to learn in editing.  And I need to be more observant while I take pictures to notice those little things like bunched up pants.

Photo Fun Day 6: Dinner

Ziti tonight.  I couldn't decide what to focus on here, so I focused on a few different things and put it all together.

Photo Fun Day 5: 10 am

I skipped day 4.  The topic was a stranger, and I thought that just sounded creepy.  I was to lazy to think outside of the box to find something not creepy.

The topic here is 10am.  Every morning it surprises me that by 10 am, all the toys are already out and the house is already a mess. 

I knew right off the bat that I wanted a frontal focal point with Jordyn faded in the background.  I opened the aperture as much as possible.  In editing, I put in a med-high dark to light contrast as well as a med-high color exageration.  I put a light coming at 20% from the bottom right corner.  High on both metallic and shine scale.

Photo Fun Day 3: Hands

Let me first explain the picture.  These are my little Jordyn's hands.  I have mentioned how meticulous she is.  When she is ready to sit on the couch, she gets the things she needs and then looks to me to get her all situated.  She always wants her blankie.  She will put her arms up so I can put the blankie on her lap, then she rests her hands on her lap, like so.

I did two edits of this picture.  The first is a black and white at a bout a 60% opacity to let some color shine through.  Then I added a glow.  On a 1-10 scale, I like the first photo about a 5.  I felt like the color and busy pattern on the blanket overpowered the hands, which is what I wanted the focus to be.

The second is a blue tint.  I then added a spotlight coming from the bottom at about 15%, high metallic and high shine.  Then I didn't like the blue tint so I put a brown over it.  One thing I need to remember is that when I am doing a tint with a lower opacity, to do the lighting effects first.  Because when I lower the opacity, it also lowers the tint.  So I should do the lighting effects, then the tint, then lower the opacity.  Lesson learned!  I like this second edit much better because I feel like hands are more the focus.  I give it a 7.

Photo Fun Day 2: Words

I have been busting my butt trying to start a small tutoring business.  It might be the most frustrating thing I have ever done, because I feel like there is so much out of my control.  I got a call about a potential student the other day and was just so thrilled!  As I talked to the mother of the student, I scribbled down a bunch of notes that can only be read by myself!  Sloppy, confusing, mumbled, words!

Not my favorite photo ever.  But it is what it is.   On a scale of 1-10, I only like this one about a 4.

Photo Fun Day 1:

I saw a friend doing this on a blog and thought I wanted to try.  Basically I am bored, and need something to focus on!  She had it all mapped out to do in February and to do 1 photo a day for 29 days.  Well, it is March, so I missed out on that.  Plus, I can't commit to taking a picture a day so my Photo Fun may drag on for a while.

Day 1:  Your view today.
Today, I watched Jordyn without her noticing me for about 5 minutes.  She cracks me up.  She is so meticulous about things.  She sees and notices details in everything.  She knows when her diapers are not stacked nicely in her baskets.  Before sitting on my lap, she gets a sippy, then her blankie, then her puppy, and only then will she let me pick her up.  She knows she needs her things.  She is not ok if her jackets come unzipped, or if the velcro on her shoes comes undone.  Basically, she knows how things should be and she wants them that way.  Today I as watched her, she was moving her ABC magnets from the fridge, to the dishwasher, and back.  As she  moved them, she put them in lines and when was as long as it could get, she made a new line.  She knew how she wanted the magnets to be.  Very particular.  I love that this gets to be my view today; her work, her little particulates coming out through magnets on my fridge.

Proud Moment

This post has nothing to do with photos, and everything to do with photoshop.  I have been a freakin photoshop maniac this week.  I got this project in my head and it just kind of spiraled.  It started when I wanted to make a family book for Jordyn so she could know her cousins.  I hi-jacked some photos off blogs and facebook and put their names on them, then but them in little cheap photo album.  She likes it I guess.  Then one day I was trying to do animal sounds with her and she was so not interested.  I thought to myself that I need to get her an animal book.  Then I thought, I should make one!  And I did!  I copied a whole bunch of animal clip art online.  One thing I learned was to look for png files because they are already cropped if that makes sense.  They aren't copied in a square box, they are copied in shape.  Then came the photoshop.  I learned so much from this project.  I did so much with backgrounds, frames, graphics, text and fonts, and all in layers,  It was a HUGE learning process.  But after the first few cards it was all routine and the hardest part was thinking of animals and matching sounds.  Here is just a sample of my favorite one.

I belong to a facebook group called 'Mommy Talk' and told them I would post some printables.  I need to print them off myself first and make sure they come out ok.  It makes me nervous though.  Sharing stuff.  It is good enough for me, but is it good enough for others?  My standards might be lower than the general public.

On another note, does anyone read this blog?  If so, you should leave a comment so I know!

It don't matter if your black or white.

Sometimes I think black and white solves everything.  I wanted to take a picture of Jordyn to put on a valentines day card to send to family.  And as I have expressed, I have such a hard time taking pictures indoors with lighting.  I took these during the day with all the curtains open in the room in hopes that I would not have to use a flash, and I didn't!  I also have an issue with backdrops.  For some reason I always think I need some kind of prop or backdrop or something to give character to the scene.  But I got lazy with these and just put her on the blanket chest against a plain old wall.  And I am so glad for my laziness!  I love the simplicity in these pictures.  I love the the black and white pulls the focus to Jordyn and the great smiles she was having that afternoon!  When taking these, I had the aperture as open as I could get it to let enough light in, while still keeping a pretty quick flash.  Some turned out blurry because of it, but some turned out great!  In editing, I really exaggerated the light/dark contrast before I put it in black and white.  Then I added a teeny tiny bit of a glow.

This is her "whoa" face.  She his this high pitch little "whoa" while she raises her eyebrows and purses her lips.  She saw the garbage truck drive by and was absolutely amazed.  Glad I caught it!

Side note:  I printed these and realized a few things.  1.  It is very beneficial to print quickly while I can remember the photography and editing process I went through.  I usually wait and I was quicker with this one.  2.  These looked a lot grainer printed than they did on my computer.  I remember having the graininess set high, but it did not seem to look like anything on screen.  In print, I can see that it would have been better had I relaxed with the graininess.

Another version...

I like this one better because you can see the text a little more.

Tears!

Luckily this photo was taken outside so I did not have to deal with lighting so much, cause dealing with the kids was enough.  I feel bad cause this one focused on Dillon crying, but in truth, Jordyn, Porter, and Dillon all shed a fair share of tears during this little shoot.  Then top it off with Brooks showing off his rock and roll side and a few more grandkids to bored to look at the camera.  All in all, you have the makings of the average christmas family photo!

Christmas Pictures

These are the first pictures I have taken indoors for a long long time.  It sucked.  I had read a tutorial about how to take good photos of a christmas tree.  The trick is to leave the shutter open for a long time.  That is impossible with a 1 year old.  These 4 pictures are about the only ones without a blur.  Eventually, I just gave up and turned on the flash which completely washed out the tree.  With all of these, thankfully, a spotlight focused on the tree brightened up those lights and made the pictures with the flash turn out ok.  But oh boy, these were some frustrating pictures to take.

Another thing I had going against me here was the window.  In almost all of them, you can see a horrible reflection of the flash.  So, I did my best to copy a section of the window that was not destroyed by the flash and lay it on top of the flash invested mess.  Lucky for me, it turned out ok!