My wedding

I had a few extra moments today and figured I would try some editing of my own wedding photos. FUN!

Art

You've probably seen this already. But, in case you haven't. It's VERY worth a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpunQZ4cUyI

Music to my camera

I had the pleasure of practicing some more photography yesterday with the music minister from Grace and his family. I was really nervous that I wouldn't get a single shot I liked with FOUR children! Yikes! Turns out, we had a really good time. Granted, I took over 500 shots. But, I think there are about a dozen that are usable. :) OK, Wilcoxin's. Now I'm ready for you! I found the perfect spot at our local YMCA. You will likely see many of these exact scenes for a while. I loved the location.

Here's something fun that I also "invented" I don't have a huge diffuser and I've discovered by failure many times that patches of light are not flattering. with this big of a family, a huge diffuser would be pretty pricey. I've heard of making them 'home made' out of shower curtains and PVC pipe. You know I love PVC pipe. But, to keep it even simpler, I thought I'd experiment with hanging a shower curtain from my backdrop stand. It worked great! Looked a little weird, but worked great! Can you see all the splotches on the curtain itself? Yes, those would have looked horrible on my sweet subjects. You can call me whatever you want. But, it worked!

And see, everyone looks great! No splotches on faces. (I totally planted the bible on them. What good is a minister family shoot if he's not reading them the bible - wink?) Loved how it turned out. The idea actually originated from photos during Christmas of Uncle Daryl reading about Christ's birth to the kids.
This was supposed to be a cool picture by the barn. I love that I was able to learn so many things during this two hours. First off, they are wearing brown next to the brown barn.... not sure if I like it. Second, you can't even tell it's a barn! I was so worried about losing someone and making them look tiny, I wanted to fill the frame with their family. It occurred to me in the post processing that I could have had them stand closer to me and the barn would have simply looked smaller since it was in the distance. And, it would have been a cooler backdrop. Lesson learned. Look for this barn in future posts....
Love this shot of them up in the rocks. It's easy to take great pictures when you have great models.
How cute is this little guy?
Since they are wearing brown, I gave this shot a "chocolate" filter. I really like how it turned out. I'm excited that I was able to get movement in the waterfall and yet keep the family pretty much in focus. I told them, "Stand VERY still. Mom and Dad, smile continually. I'm only looking at the children. You are on your own!"
I totally stole this idea from Jasmine Star (J*). But, they were game and I think it turned out really cute.
I posed this shot because I thought it would be a cool way to display how this awesome family his heading down the curvy path of God's journey for them. Coming from a family of nine, I know it will be a very curvy road! ;) They are doing it hand in hand, united.
I love how it looks like he is totally in love with her right here. How could he not be? She's absolutely beautiful! I don't know her really well myself. But from the two hours I spent with her, she seems just as beautiful inside as well.
Rob suggested I make it a chocolate black and white for drama. I like it!
I have no idea what was going on here, but don't you just love it? It's like a little story. I don't know this families dynamics. But if it were my family, I could think of a few captions! ;)
Thank you so much, sweet family, for letting me practice with you.

And.... ACTIONS!

I've been trying to get that "pop" for a while now and a very sweet person, Michelle from http://michellehamstra.com/mhp.html, introduced me to actions in Photoshop. I didn't spend a ton of time on these, since first of all, that's the entire point of actions and second I'm just playing around trying to figure out which ones do what and if I even like them. If you want some great free actions, check out Rita over at coffeshop. She is absolutely amazing.

So, here's what an action does. In a few clicks, it can make a photo "pop". ;) before is above, after is below.






well, maybe sometimes it's just a little "too much". But, that's to figure out another night. Right now, sleep calls. I'm taking photos tomorrow for a church family with four kids..... YIKES! Wish me luck!

Less can be more....

Seriously, I should go to bed.....

I really just need to go to bed. :)

So, after my previous post.... What if I brighten some of my older favorites? Can you tell Gwyneth loves me enough to practice insane amounts on her children?

I must say I do like the vingette effect on this one.
Sweet Little Claire.
Even Sweeter?

This might just be one of my favorite photos of all time.

Or maybe this one.... I just have beautiful friends. Inside and Out.

looking for constructive criticism

I'm trying to figure out how to make my black and whites better. I'd LOVE any tips that you would like to share. I took this picture of sweet Aravis way back when. It was cute, but not exactly right. Luckily, Gwyneth is pregnant again and may give me another chance with baby # 3. ;)

Since I'm playing in photoshop anyhow, I thought I'd edit this one a bit.
Since I'm really tyring to focus on the black and whites, this is what I came up with for the above photo.
Here's when I ungreyscale it. Creepy, I know. But it seemed like I had to brighten and over expose it a bit to keep Aravis from being too dark when the hue was removed. I have no idea if I'm approaching this correctly, but hey - I'll learn!
Here's another favorite photo of Nate. Simplly converted, it looked like this... way dark.


Then I "played" a bit. I like this much better. I wonder what you think?

Green Day at Preschool

We celebrated St. Patrick's' Day in Suzy's little home preschool co-op this week. I declared it "green day" and we had all kinds of green fun. No Green Day music, but alas...

We even had two little special guests this morning. I wasn't able to get a sitter for Andy, so he joined us for circle time, took a two hour nap, and then ate lunch and played games in the afternoon. He's such a sweet little guy. We all had a really fun time.
We sang a few froggy songs with a puppet during circle. Lane was fascinated.
We had green cool-whip and crackers for snack.

We made yellow and blue home made play dough and combined them for.... GREEN!
I had shamrocks cut out with letters on one side and little motor skill tasks on the other. I know, I'm the ever multi-tasker. ;) So, the girls had to make their names with the letters provided. Then, we played the motor game at the end of the day. (No photos of that - sorry - it was too "hands on" for my part.)
Here is how Adeline spells Suzy's name. Cute.
We did some spring cleaning as well. I filled some bottles up with water and I honestly think this was the highlight for the girls.

Our story was "Green Eggs and Ham", of course. The circle time frog was our guest reader.


We had music time where the girls got to explore various instruments and play along to one of our little Heartsong songs.
This cracks me up. My brother has a Bass. So, Suzy can NOT be convinced that this instrument is a guitar. She says it's a "piano, just like Uncle Jeremy's." Funny on so many levels. She even "plucks" the chords while she sings.
What would music be without a group drum jam session?
I bought this cute hat at Wal-Mart and decided it was a leprechan hat. Each girl took turns wearing it and hiding coins in another part of the room.


The funniest part? They all hid them in the exact location - in the changing table. I even had Andy be the leprechan once to show them how to spread the coins around, but they would have nothing to do with it.
Whoa, baby brother! I just thought this was a funny photo of Andy as Suzy knocked his little hat off. Poor guy. Nice protective response though, eh fellow therapists? ;)
Once again, we had a great day with our little friends.