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! 

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.