This weeks theme for Two Moms Made a Photo Challenge is green. As in the color. Color challenges are always fun because it’s interesting to see what kind of things people come up with to represent their color. Or what they photograph with the color in it.
I was at a loss for which photo to use for this weeks challenge. The theme is “play” and we do plenty of that around here. I had 3 photos that I liked, but when it came down to creativity and the shot that stood out the most, there was only one that fit the bill. I grabbed the camera the other evening with this weeks theme in mind and took Little Man outside for a photoshoot so I would have pictures to use for the blog hops play time. Out of all of them, this was my favorite. I love everything about it. I love the composition. I love the shadows. I love the angle of the sunlight hitting it. [Maybe I’m just partial…] What do you think??
It’s that time again! This week has gone by pretty quickly [thank goodness!] and Thursday is here already. I’ve been holding on this picture all week because I wanted to use it for before and after, so I’m super excited. This is probably one of my favorite pictures of Little Man. The clarity of his eyes makes me so happy. I love photos where the eyes are crystal clear and stand out. And this is one of the best photos I’ve ever taken that achieved that. I had the white balance all wrong in the SOOC shot, and the exposure was a little too high. But his eyes….they were perfectly in focus.
I did a vintage/retro type edit as well, but I’m not 100% sure how I like it.
Head on over to Monica’s for a look at some other beautiful edits!
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I had a hard time finding a photo that I wanted to use for today. In all honesty, I have a hard time shooting with “black and white” editing in mind. Usually when I shoot, I have intentions of bright, colorful, cheery edits. Not black and white. Especially when taking pictures of children. And since my Little Guy is the only model I have right now thanks to this God-awful heat, black and whites are hard. But I did find one when I was cleaning out the files on my computer last night that I love. I took it a while back, but I’ve never shared it on here. And it’s one of my favorite black and whites to date.
I love the contrast. I love the detail. I love the simplicity of this photo. Head on over to “The Long Road to China” to check out some more beautiful black and whites!
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The theme for this challenge is “urban.” I’ll be quite honest with you, I’m not exactly sure what technically qualifies as urban, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Keep in mind that there isn’t a lot of ‘urban’ style to this small, South Alabama town. No matter, here is my shot:
I took this at my Father-in-laws house and was intrigued by the random dead leaf holding on to the building. Reminds me to hold on for dear life when I feel like things in my life are crumbling. Head over to the challenge to see more awesome shots from some of the other amazing photographers!
Instead of doing two separate posts for these two fun photo meme’s, I’m just going to link them together. Hope that’s alright! :)
The first one I’ll be joining in with today [well, actually tomorrow because I’m posting this on Monday night.] is with the Trendy Treehouse for Shutter Love Tuesday. This weeks theme is “sports.” I was originally going to post this photo, until I realized that I entered it in the “Black and White” meme last Wednesday. Oops. That’s what I get for not looking ahead to see what this weeks challenge was. Oh well. I found another that I like almost as much. This one is of little man playing at his Papa’s house. “Ball” is his favorite sport, so it was fun to get a few cute shots of him enjoying himself. I love the clarity and the detail. I love how you can see the dirt and the grunginess. He was absolutely filthy by the time he got done playing, and that’s the essence I wanted in this photo.
The second Tuesday meme is “Sweet Shot Tuesday” with Darcy. Another unbelievably fun photo challenge that always has some fabulous entries. I had a hard time coming up with a shot for this one. I want to use my “sweetest shot” but I’m saving my favorite new photo for “Before and After” this week [I’m beginning to sense that I need to be taking dozens upon dozens more photos to keep up with all of these meme’s.] I finally decided on one of Little Man that made me smile. We were outside playing, and while I was crouching down snapping some photos of him playing ball, a plane flew overhead. And he just stopped and stared-wide eyed and mesmerized by it.
I found this Blog Hop today and I am super excited about the theme for the week, because I already have THE perfect photo for this challenge. The theme for this week is Father and Son. It doesn’t have to be my son and his dad…just a general father/son type photo. So I’ve chosen one of my new absolute FAVORITE photos of little man and my daddy.
I took this photo the night that we went out to eat for my 23rd Birthday [which was just a few weeks ago.] We were waiting outside for our table and little man found the rocks to play with. His Paw Paw was busy picking rocks up out of the grass for Little Man to take back over to the rock bed. This is the photo I snapped.
Something about the innocence of childhood and the love and patience of a grandfather with his only grandson. I’m planning to enlarge it and give it to my dad. My younger sister took a somewhat similar photo of Little Man holding onto my moms finger and they want to frame them and put them side by side. This will probably always be one of my favorite photos.
Read more...Ok. I’m going to be totally and completely honest with you-I’m a big fat fraidy cat when it comes to shooting in full-manual mode on my camera. I did do really well when I bought my first SLR and skipped that evil little green ‘automatic’ square. I’ve never, I repeat never shot on Automatic with my camera. I’ve played around with Tv [shutter speed mode] a little bit when taking some action shots, but I usually stick with Av [aperature] mode because I am in love with the creamy Bokeh I get from this mode. However. The other day, I ventured outside with little man and took some photos. The lighting was really good and I was feeling brave, so I ventured into manual…and I am officially in love. Here are a few of the unedited shots I took in manual mode followed by the edits. I was really excited about how clear the color turned out and how little tweaking I had to do with the edits…
Like I said, I was so excited with how they turned out and I felt like I really had control over my shots. The lighting was great, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of adjusting with the images and it made the editing process much, much quicker. I think I may have just found my new favorite thing…photography wise that is. {By the way…the edits you see were done using the action Perfect Portrait from Coffee Shops free Actions for PSE and CS programs.}
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Have you heard of “Paper Mama?!” Her site is absolutely adorable. She’s got loads of fun stuff and, my favorite: a photography blog hop. She does weekly challenges and for this week it is “Absolute Favorite.” We are supposed to link up our all time favorite photos to date. It was a little bit difficult for me to pick out just one, because there are several of Little Man that I really, really love. But when it came down to it, I picked out one that really shows off who little man is and what kind of goofy, happy personality he has. So here we go:
Photographically speaking, I love the smooth, creamy bokeh in this picture. I love the off centered composition. I love the background and the textured brick. I love the clarity of his eyes. I love the dorky, goofy grin on his face. This photo is going to be blown up and framed in our living room. Head on over to Paper Mama to link up your favorite photo and view which ones everyone else can’t get enough of.
I am in love with this weeks “Fix It Friday” photo from iheartfaces! Sometimes I play along and others the picture just simply doesn’t interest me, but this week was a MUST. The entire setting is beautiful, the girls in the photo are absolutely adorable, and the original photo itself really isn’t that bad either. But here is what I came up with.
This is another “first” blog hop for me. I found Beth via another photography blog and loved what I saw…so here I am. Linking up for the first time for another fabulous little photo hop. The theme for You Capture this week is Black and White. And while I could have just used the photo I posted earlier this week, I won’t. I’ll use something new. Because I want to.
I did this edit originally with a fun Urban/Vintage look, but something about the textured brick behind Little Man made me think that I could get by with a Black and White here. I’m not sure I like it as much as the other edit, but it looks pretty good. Atleast, I think it does. But I could just be partial to the subject. ;)
First things first, before I get to the blog hop: MY WEBSITE IS UP AND RUNNING! Can you tell that I am excited? Just a little? ;) I spent a lot of long hours working on this little baby, so I would love for you to mosey on over and take a quick peak and let me know what you think. You can find it here or by clicking the “website” button on the menu bar.
I took this the other day, inside, with horrible lighting, while Little Man was helping mommy “count change” and put it in a jar. We’re saving pennies and all of our loose change to put toward our trip to California in October. I had the White Balance on my camera set for Tungsten Light, but it didn’t really help the picture out that much. I hate indoor lighting. Bleh. Here is the before photo:
Horrible. Absolutely horrible. Nothing in the world about this photo that I thought could be salvaged. The only reason I didn’t delete it immediately is because I liked how clear the jar looked and wondering if maybe, just maybe, I could figure out something to do to it so that I didn’t have to totally get rid of it. I just downloaded the Trial Version of CS5 and hoped that this little beast could help me out. After much tweaking and playing around [even experimenting with textures!!] here is what I came up with:
I had to crop out Little Man’s blurry hand, adjusted the curves, applied a few different color filters and added a free texture that I found somewhere off of Google. I’m actually very proud of this one. I love the vintage look, and I’m considering framing it and hanging it up one day when we get moved. It looks like something that would go in a kitchen or something. And the Mason Jar has given me TONS of ideas for more photos. :) Head on over to Monica’s to see what everyone else has come up with this week!
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I love finding new photography meme’s to join in on. I find that, as much as I absolutely adore photography, it is a little bit difficult at times to find the incentive to shoot-especially when I don’t have a session lined up. That’s why I enjoy finding other photographers and aspiring professionals who start up these fun weekly photo projects to get my rear into gear. {Ok. That rhyme was totally unintentional.} This week, I discovered The Long Road to China and fell totally and completely in love with it. And, as you can see, the photography theme for this blog is “Black and White.” I knew when I saw it that I had the perfect picture to go with it. This photo is one that originally intended to use on my Before and After hop on Thursdays, but in the process of loading all of my photos onto my new computer and deleting them off of the old one, I accidentally lost the original. And what’s a before and after, without the before?? So, instead, you’ll just get the after:
I knew when I uploaded this photo into my computer that I wanted it in Black and White. Something about it just looked like it needed to be Black and White. So….that’s what I did. And I think it turned out perfect. Exactly as I envisioned it. This photo is going to be blown up and framed when we get moved again. I love how simple it is, and I love that it is exhibits exactly who Little Man is and what he loves.
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This week I’m linking up to two brand new [for me, at least] photography memes to show off some of my photos. This week, I’ll be linking up with Darcy for Sweet Shot Tuesdays and with Trendy Treehouse for Shutter Love Tuesday. Here is my entry for this week:
I downloaded the trial version of CS5 until I can get my hands on the real deal later on in August. I’m absolutely loving it so far!!! If you can’t tell, I attempted to play around with textures here a little bit. Didn’t use any actions on this one. Did all the hard stuff myself. :) Head over to these great blogs for some photo fun!
It’s Thursday. Which means it is time for my favorite blog hop…Before and After with Monica! And let me just say, I’ve already looked at the entries that have been listed so far this morning and they are phenomenal! This week, I’m using a photo that I took of Little Man the week before last while he was outside playing with his daddy. As soon as I uploaded this photo to the computer, I had a the vision of what I wanted it to look like, and I must say that it came pretty darn close to what I envisioned:
I love that he just looks like he is all sweet and innocent in this photo. And the Bokeh is my absolute favorite. I took this with my Canon Rebel Xsi and a 50 mm 1.8 lens. Edited it using Lightroom 3.
This week for the before and after blog hop, I’m going to go with the photo that I had intentions of using for the 4th of July last week. I snapped the week before last while the hubby and I were in Panama City Beach, Florida. We were going over the bride down to the beach and we passed the Gulf Coast Community College. The SOOC was boring and way too far away to really see, but I fixed it. :)
The vintage and grainy look seemed like a must on this photo. It reminded me of all of the sacrifices that have been made in years past and all of those that are being made day after day after day by our Military Men and Women and their families. We lived in a blessed nation and it certainly hasn’t come without sacrifice. I am more aware of that now than ever before. A whole new sense of pride engulfs me when I see our flag. I hope you all had a fantastic 4th. I know we did.
On a different note, how do you guys like the new header, logo and watermark?? I only took about 2 weeks and a lot of re-dos and redrafts. But I’m content and satisfied. I’m working on my letterheads and business cards now, and should have my website up and running in the next few weeks. I’ve held off on all of that right now while the hubby is home. But when he leaves Saturday it’s back to business. Hope you guys have a wonderful week! And don’t forget to head over to Monica’s for more “Before and After” editing!
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