Ethan

I know it’s been ages since I posted, and I thank those of you who are faithful in sticking around to see what I have new going on. It isn’t that I have stopped taking pictures, so much as it is that I just simply have not had time to do it as much as I would like. The husband is back home from California and we are preparing to make the big move to Kodiak, AK in less than a week.

Over Christmas I did have the chance to snap a few non-professional photos of the husband’s stepbrother’s baby boy-Ethan. I’m planning an actual session with them for his three month portraits in the coming week, but for now, here are just a few of the snapshots of him I captured Christmas Eve:



Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Watch for more new photos…hopefully coming SOON!

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No Words…

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Marchman Christmas Photos

This past weekend I had the chance to photograph my little guy and my brother-in-law for my Mother-in-laws Christmas photos. It wasn’t too chilly and the wind stayed calm enough that we were able to snag quite a few cute photos for her to use. Unfortunately, I already ordered and had my cards delivered, so I won’t be using any of these for the holidays, but they will certainly be going up in our new house! Here is a little preview from the “session.”

Hope you guys had a GREAT Thanksgiving and are gearing up for the holidays! Christmas is right around the corner!

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Black & White Conversion

I adjusted the SOOC first; bumped the contrast, boosted the colors to make them pop, and then desaturated the photo. I read a great tutorial somewhere [can’t remember WHERE] online about how if you bump up the saturation before you de-saturate, it makes the colors in the black & white pop. I then added a few textures from Kim Klaussen to the edit.

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Before & After

I have been MIA from this lovely blog hop for a few weeks now. I have been swamped and completely overrun with all of this moving jazz; but now that I have a new photo to show off, I wanted to make sure that I linked up. Here is one of the toughest shots I had to edit from my session with Mandi and her family this weekend. [You can find the other shots from the session right here.] I loved the expression on Maddy’s face, but the giant distraction in the background had to go. Here is the before and after:

See what I mean? That giant pump thing in the background was a HUGE distraction. But for those of you who photograph children often, you know that when you are dealing with a feisty, excited and rambunctious two year old, that you have to shoot where you can and hope for the best. Fortunately for me, I was able to clone out that hideous background and replace it with something much more acceptable.

Hope you guys have a great Thursday!!

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The Miller Family-Preview

This past Saturday I had a chance to shoot the Miller Family-Sean, Mandi and their beautiful little girl Maddy. Mandi blogs over at Mandi Miller Blog so she and I had virtually met a while ago. If you remember, I did my first real session with her daughter Maddy back in April; so it was great to have the opportunity to work with them again. Here are just a few of the shots I took this weekend.

     

These are some of my favorites so far. I’m only about 1/4 of the way through editing, but I wanted to share this preview with you guys so that you know that I’m still alive and haven’t deserted you could see that I’ve been working. Check back tomorrow for another shot that I had to do a pretty major editing over-haul on. Have a great Wednesday, guys!

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Windows to the Soul

This week Mandy over at A Sorta Fairytale is hosting her photo challenge. The theme this week is Windows to the Soul aka Eyes. I have taken several new photos lately of the little guy [birthday pictures, Halloween shots] but none that I love as much as this photo from the archives:

 

This is by far one of my favorite shots of Little Man. I took this during the summer and I have loved everything about it since then. The angle, the bokeh in the background. The clarity and color of his eyes. This is the kind of picture that reminds me day in and day out WHY I love photography.

 

 

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I’m still here…

Just wanted to stop in a say “Hi!” and let you all know that I am, in fact, still here.

When we got orders last week [which you can read about here, if you haven’t already] everything seemed to get a wee-bit crazy. I have tons and tons of photos sitting on my computer just waiting to be edited and no time or energy most days to edit them. I’m working on the last few dozen photos from that big Coast Guard Retirement Ceremony that I shot in early October right now, and then I am hoping to have some shots to get back to my challenges. None of the ones from the ceremony or the reception are really worthy of sharing here. They are good, but not as creative as I wanted them because the gentleman I shot for didn’t want them like that. He was pretty specific on just wanting candids and lone standing family group shots. So, that’s what he got. :-)

I hope you all will bear with me just a few more days till I get caught up. Little Man’s birthday is tomorrow and then Halloween this weekend and I have an Engagement shoot on Sunday. Then hopefully, next week, everything will be back on schedule and you’ll start seeing some new photos again. Hope you are all having a phenomenal week!!

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An uh-oh from the Pumpkin Patch

I knew right when I saw this photo that if I could manage to fix it, that it would be my Before & After/Touch Up Tuesday for this week! I took Little Man to the Pumpkin patch last week to pick out a pumpkin to carve {which, we have still yet to do} and to take some more birthday pictures. When I got there, he jumped out of the car immediately and started doing all sorts of cute things. I started snapping photos right away and failed to double check my White Balance. When I stopped and looked at the first 5 shots I had taken, I realized that my WB was set to Tungsten Light instead of Auto or Daylight. So this was what I got:

 
BUT…I managed to save it. First I adjusted the layers to brighten it a bit. Then I ran The Pioneer Woman’s “Warmer” action 3 times. I then ran Pioneer Woman’s “Boost” action to brighten the colors. After that I bumped up the contrast and the brightness a tiny bit, ran PW “Define & Sharpen,” the Warming Action again and erased it from his eyes. I wanted to warm up everything around him, but I like to keep as much blue in his eyes as possible. The warming actions were pulling out more hazel. Because I had boosted up the colors and fixed the levels so much, there was a lot of noise in the green bushes behind Little Man. To fix this, I went in and ran the “Reduce Color Noise” filter in PSE 8. And voila! This is what I got:

 
Another exciting salvage for me! I love fixing my “whoops” photos! It’s so much fun taking something that should technically be considered ruined and turning it into something useable and beautiful!

This week, Faith over at Simplicity’s theme is Straight out of Camera. I don’t generally enjoy sharing SOOC shots because I really don’t enjoy people critiquing my imperfect skills when it comes to shooting in manual because I like to spruce my photos up…brighten the color, up the contrast…BUT since that’s the theme this week, I’ll share one {can you tell I’m grumbling?}

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

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Fall, Fall, Fall!!

My absolute FAVORITE season! The leaves, the colors, the temperature change, football, holidays…what’s not to love about Fall?! Here are some of my absolute favorite new photos…including a link up for The Paper Mama’s Fall Photo Challenge:

 

And my Photo Challenge Entry:

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