Christmas Card

So, I have never altered a photo as much as I did this one.  I had my mom snap this when she was visiting us during thanksgiving.  I so wish I could take the picture and be in the picture at the same time to get it just how I want it.  It is just in our backyard against our fence.  To make it work with the card I had printed I reversed it.  Jordyn's face is pasted from another picture.  My face is pasted from another picture.  I added some light coming in from the right.  It played with it for days before I felt ok about it.  And still, I only feel ok about it.

Pumpkin Patch

What I love about these pictures:-bright contrasting colors; magenta, orange, sky blues, specks of green...
-angles; especially the landscape one
-lighting; what a bright beautiful day
-fall; I just love fall

What I don't so much love:
-the camera.  I took these with my small power shot and I remember why I love my DSL so much.

Birthday Girl

My baby girl turned 1 last week.  I have been trying to learn how to make a collage and realized there is so much I can learn!  Here is my first one:

This took me about 2 hours.  I started by editing all 12 pictures with the text.  I then realized that I could just add the text after placing the picture.  That was so much easier.  So these next few I made were a lot quicker.  I also figured out there are cool backgrounds, frames, colors, text and a whole lot more that I have not explored yet.

Here are all the pictures I took and edited of Jordyn on her birthday.  Well, I took a bazillion, but these are the best and the ones I chose to edit.  Originally, I was going to get some ballons for the picture, but I got lazy an just went with the birthday hat.

All Fun and Games

Another one...

So, after I edited and posted the last shot with the wrought iron, i went back and found this one that had some of the wrought iron in it too.

So my goal with this one was to bring out the iron.  There was really no direction to the natural light here.  So I made it black and white with about 80% opacity.  Then put in a strong spotlight coming in from the left.  I originally had the spotlight coming in from the right, thinking it would spotlight the iron.  But it really just washed out the iron.  When I took it to the left it brought it out a little more.  Still, not as dramatic as the first wrought iron picture I did in the last post.  But this is the best edit I have done with this picture.  Before I was trying to make the baby the focus, but when I gave up on that, it all turned out better.

Different

This picture is different for me.  I just played around with it, and love it.  The only thing I wish is that Jordyn was focused on me, and not reaching for whatever else has her attention.

I like how you see all the lights and darks in the wrought iron.  I made it black and white, at about 90%.  Then I added an omni flashlight lighting effect.  I was pleasantly surprised that it would spotlight Jordyn in the background so much without washing out the wrought iron, so you could still see all the lights and darks there.  It is different for me, but I like it and hope I can try more like this sometime.

Usually on Labor Day, I go up the mountain with my family.  We cook a huge breakfast, go on jeep rides, eat goodies, visit with loved ones, share memories and create new ones.  This is the first year I could not go.  Being in Denver, I thought about my family all day.  They are probably having breakfast now.  They are probably making sandwiches and getting ready for an afternoon ride.  I wonder where they will ride to this year?

Luckily my sweet husband took me out of the house and we did a little exploring here.  We went to a park and had a little picnic,and I brought my camera along.  I was really looking to get some bright colors in these pictures.  I wish I would have dressed Jordyn in something more solid and bright, but this dress is still one of my favorite anyway.  Also, it was early in the afternoon so the light was really harsh.  But oh well.





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Naturally, the light was coming from the top and left here.  I did a spotlight coming from the bottom right with the idea of trying to brighten up the dark shadows.  It was a little successful.  I took a lot of pictures with her playing here, but they were mostly taken from an above angle, and I could tell as I was taking them that they were nothing special.  When I bent down and got low, I could tell this one would be better.  I could see the blue sky and the green trees as opposed to the wacky colors of the playground.  It was just weird how when I snapped the picture, I could see huge difference that little change of background made.



I really like how this one turned out.   The colors are a little asku, but I like it.  A blue hue or something.  I manually adjusted the brightness/contrast/color enhancement.  The colors looked normal after all that.  Then I played with a spotlight coming in with the natural light from the top left corner of  the picture.  I messed with some other features there with the spotlight.  I played a lot with metallics vs. plastic and shiny vs. matte.  This is what I ended up with .  And I like it!

This is my favorite of the bunch.  I always find pictures of my little girl so much more endearing when they are up close, and I have been trying to focus in on that at least once each time I get my camera out.  I first made it black and white.  Then played around with the spotlight coming in from the top left.  I adjusted a lot of the other stuff there too, but I cannot remember any of it now.  All I can say is that it was all on the same menu with the spotlight tool.