Catching Up!

Yay! I finally have some pictures to post! And also, major thanks to Nicole and Dan, for helping me to learn useful technical stuff and awesome Photoshop tricks I would never be able to figure out on my own. They are awesome.

Now, about this picture. Do you know how much my abs hurt after taking pictures of my feet in the air? I was just in the most unnatural positions, trying to get this crazy shot! And I also ordered these toe socks special from eBay to use them on my website. I'm pretty sure they came from China, so ... woo! Exotic! I'm going to lighten the picture up a bit before putting it on ye olde site, but in general, I was pretty pleased with the results.

This is my super handsome baby puppy Flash! (He's full grown, but he's still a puppy to me.) I love this puppy so much! And yes, that's my bed, and no, it's not made. Life is like that sometimes. Or, if you're me, most of the time. Can you even get over how cute that face is?

Same shot in black and white. I like the tones but actually prefer the color version.

My first avocado I ever cut open! I got a whim to make guacamole, and you know me--I do like to indulge the whims. I really didn't know what to put in it, so I just bought some stuff that sounded good, busted out my handy chopper, and went to work. It turned out pretty good, but as you can see, I didn't quite let the avocado get ripe enough because I couldn't wait. Still, yellow guacamole is tastier than you might think. Possibly because all you can really taste is the garlic. :)

Okay, now this is a picture from my brunch last weekend at the Buehlers'. Blue milk! Pretty crazy! Except really it's just the glass making it look blue. And it's not mine. I kind of hate milk, passionately. Don't get me wrong, I like dairy products--cheese, ICE CREAM, but something about the texture of milk grosses me out immensely. Plus, I worked at a Ritter's Frozen Custard in high school and would regularly come home smelling like sour milk. Oh, and I worked for like two weeks at a coffee shop in college, and I also hated the smell of steamed milk.

Anyway, enough about my weird milk thoughts and just let me say that I loved the bubbles in it. So pretty!

This is Meghan, the Buehler's kiddo, and she is THE SMARTEST child I have ever met in my entire life. I hadn't seen her since she was a baby, but she is amazing and I love her madly. I have another picture that is totally out of focus of her making a hilarious face, and I may have to post that one later as well. Also, she may have taken over as best behaved child I've ever met. I feel totally fortunate that me and Billy have friends with such good kids.

Here is Meghan in some awesome light, looking very eyelashy.

And you know, usually I am more of a "color" girl, but I really LOVE the black and white here. This is definitely my favorite picture I've done in awhile.

Alright! So that was more than three pictures, which is awesome, and maybe next week I'll spread them out a little bit more. Or not! Anything can happen!

On Goals

So it was/is my goal to post new photos three times a week, but I haven't so far. I prefer to not think of it as "failing" though, and instead to think of it as "not succeeding--yet."

I have been taking pictures all weekend though with this goal in mind. I'm waiting for my good friends/Photoshop gurus Dan and Nicole to get back into town and to show me a couple of things. I have pictures of the world's smartest baby, my rainbow toe socks, and the very first avocado I ever sliced open on the way. And let me tell you--they are just as awesome as they sound! :) So hang with me, I'll have it going on before you know it.

Cass

So I have to say that I have been really unusually busy this past week--things from the Bridal Show have really gotten rolling and I've been going to meetings and appointments like crazy. So I have not yet gotten to the picture I need to take for my website and the suspense builds, but I did still want to post pictures and try to learn some stuff.

Thankfully, in the midst of being busy, I've also had some significant time to sit down with Photoshop and peruse the internet for free actions that I can download. So for this one, I have revisited an old favorite picture and used the Urban Acid action on it. (I forget where I got it, but it's a pretty easy Google.)

Okay, so here is the original of Cass at Matt and Kim's wedding. Obviously the picture has some fuzzy edges and I remember when I first saw it that I almost deleted it, but I just kept loving it so much that I couldn't bring myself to do it. The color is also a little funky, being under fluorescent lights and all, but especially if you know Cass, this is kind of a perfect picture of her. But even in spite of loving it, I've never been totally satisfied with it and I keep trying to think of stuff to do to it, so basically every time I learn a new Photoshop trick, I bust this picture out and give it a go.

This is the result with the Urban Acid action. I really like it, even if I can't really explain why. I think it just gives it more of a surreal look, or perhaps enhances an already surreal look. Something I did learn about this action as I tried it on like ... a zillion other photos is that it doesn't always work really well on people, especially if they aren't the focus of the shot. It seems to add in some serious yellow and/or green (sorry for all the technical buffs out there--I tend to be more on the artistic approach side of things, messing with stuff until it "looks good" and not really crunching numbers to figure out why) and therefore seems to work better on warmer toned pictures. I also have a feeling that it would be most awesome on buildings, but since I dont' take a lot of pictures of buildings, I'm not sure.

Although I might have to go revisit a picture I took while I was at Herron and try this out. I think as a photography gift to myself, I'm going to buy one of those sweet looking journals that looks like it came from Lord of the Rings (you know, where you tie it shut with leather?) and make notes of the pictures I want to take and what I want to do with them after. I've been feeling really creatively inspired lately, so I need to stockpile it for when I need inspiration.

Donkey

Okay, so this is the first in what I hope to be a long and fruitful ongoing project, where I post different pictures three times a week (that's my personal goal) in hopes of stretching my photography muscles (photoyoga?), trying new things, and learning some stuff.

Alright, so this is a donkey that lives on my mantle. He's one of those little push toys that I always loved but never had as a kid, so Billy got him for me in a dollar bin at Target and he's the cutest thing ever. And he moves really well, except that sometimes his head spins around like in The Exorcist.

Anyway, about the picture. I chose the donkey because I wanted to try to make a picture look sort of old-timey and he seems like an old-timey toy. The right side looks pretty washed out on the PC I'm using right now, but it's not so bad on the Mac. Donkey is still looking okay though. I desaturated him, but not all the way, and added a diffuse glow filter. And added some blue to the color balance. This was the end result, and I love it. I would totally hang it in a kid's room or something, if I had one of those. (Kids or rooms. I live in a studio.)

Family Pictures! Jamie, Jon & RJ

Man, I have not posted in forever. And here I was, all set to be awesome at it through the winter! But then Christmas happened, and well. You know. Christmas. How can you possibly get anything else done?

Anyway, speaking of Christmas, I took these pictures just before for their Christmas cards. Jamie and Jon are actually friends of Billy's from way back, and when I first met them, Jamie was very pregnant with RJ. So we get to see them fairly often, and I have to say, RJ is THE most well-behaved, good-natured kid I have ever been around. I've only really seen him get mad once, and that was when Jon took a beer bottle out of his reach. (Oh, the humanity!) He's also the first child and first grandchild on one side, so he's VERY good at getting his picture taken.

This one was probably one of my favorites, in no small part due to the perfectly coordinated outfits. Also, as someone with a hopelessly oval face, I am totally jealous of Jamie's chin and jaw. Sigh.

Here is a perfect example of RJ really working it for the cameras. He was pretty hilarious, because when he was in a shot by himself, he would go all Glamour Shots/senior pictures on us, and pose like these were going in GQ or something, but whenever anyone else got in the picture, he would throw himself face down on the floor, occasionally sticking his butt in the air. There were a ton of pictures like this from that afternoon where he was hamming it up like the baby supermodel that he is. I hope the grandmas got a couple of these.

This is the only one that we actually got Lucy, the dog, to sit still for. She is a wild woman. Also, you can tell a little bit from this picture that she has one brown and one blue eye. So cool! And, because I don't think that it shows here, she is a big dog. When I come in the house, she is always extremely excited to see me and stands up and wraps her front paws around my waist. It's nice to be loved. I don't think she realizes how big she is, though, and she likes to stand on the back of the couch and see what's going on. When she does that, Billy calls her Lucy the Mountain Goat.

A nice one in front of the fireplace. Oh, and that reminds me. This picture led to a lengthy discussion between Billy and myself about how RJ's foot looked like one of the marshmallows in Count Chocula. I had initially said that it looked like a foot marshmallow, and Billy gave me a funny look and told me that marshmallow wasn't a food, it was Count Chocula's head. I pondered this for awhile and decided that he was probably right, and that did make a little more sense. So ... moral of the story, I guess you just never know what kinds of things you're going to learn about kids' breakfast cereal while taking pictures ... ????

A closer shot in front of the fireplace. No Count Chocula commentary for this one.

Oh, this was probably my favorite, even though it's kind of crazy and out of focus. RJ was hitting the point where he kind of needed a break, so I told Jamie and Jon that it was cool, and I'd just take one or two of them. Well, RJ, star of the show that he is, wasn't having it, so he climbed his way back in like a little monkey and taking no prisoners (as Jamie's hair would indicate). I just love how natural it looks and how everyone seems so entertained. And really, I think you can look at this picture and just know what kinds of things I like to remember about life. Hopefully other people feel the same way. :)

And here was the end result of the climbing. Totally worth it, I think. What a gorgeous trifecta!