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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Another Birthday Portrait Preview

I’m still way behind on my editing…but I wanted to share another sweet birthday picture preview with you guys today for Before & After! The SOOC shot was really blown out and over-exposed. The sun was freakishly bright on this particular afternoon and Little Man was running around way too much for me to accurately keep my settings in check. Thank goodness for Editing Software…I was able to salvage this one.

 
I ran a few actions on this one to get the color like I wanted it: First, Pioneer Woman’s Boost action, followed by Coffee Shops Perfect Portrait. I lowered the opacity on the Vignette  when I ran perfect portrait. I then ran a Warming Filter and lowered that opacity to 25%. I wanted to add some color to his face, but not so much that he looked orange. Then I lowered the brightness and the contrast a bit until I got the look that I was going for-enough brightness to not distort the coloring, but not so much that he looked totally washed out. And last, I ran Pioneer Woman’s Define & Sharpen. And voila!

Make sure you head over to Monica’s to link your own Before & After photos and to check out some other absolutely amazing photographers and their work! Happy Thursday!

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Project 365: Days 3-9

I can already tell that this project is going to push me and challenge me like I never dreamed. But I am really excited and eager to take it on. As of now, I am only one week into this project and I already find myself seeing things creatively in my everyday life. Even the cup of pens sitting beside me as I type…I find myself wondering how I could make them into art. Here are my favorite photos from the past several days. Naturally, I shoot more than 1 photo a day, so if you are interested in viewing my complete “Project 365” collection, head over to my Flickr Page and browse the set.

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Nine

This week has been so much fun! I am already looking forward to what’s coming this week! Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to head over to Madeline Bea to check out the other Project 365 participants.

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Sweet Shot

I shot a lot this weekend gearing up for the Sunday Scavenger Hunt. There were several photos that I was particularly excited about, but the point of this fun blog hop is to link up your sweetest shot…the shot than stands out to you above all others. This one was no competition.

 

Head on over to Darcy’s for more wonderful Sweet Shots!

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Before and After

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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Sweet Shot/Shutter Love Tuesday

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.

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Eye See You

This week for Monica’s “before and after” blog hop, I decided to go with a photo that was a big mess up. I was outside in the yard with Little Man, snapping a few random photos of him acting like a boy, and he started playing behind the stair railing on the front porch. And this is what I snapped:

 

 

 

Nothing at all ‘correct’ about this photo. Nothing of any significance-except his ‘eye.’ That one eye was so clear and so bright that I thought this picture would be worth saving {after some editing of course.}

 

And this is the result:

What do you think? Head on over to Pixel Perfect for more before and after fun!

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