Day... um... 23?!

Yup - I failed at my own challenge.  Whatevs.

Anyways - here are some cool shot I have taken recently

My son is having a rough week. Teething, feverish, hates laying down etc.  It makes for LOOOOONG and loud nights.  On this night, I gave up.  Sat him up in the crib at 3am and turned on his "Twilight Turtle".  Then I took pictures.  This is picture 3 in a group of 28 that I took.  It is the only one that turned out - the rest, no matter what setting I put on come out with the lights like lasers and everything blurry.  Was weird.  The setting on here is just plain old 'no flash'.  Who knew.

Here's my little guy being super sweet in the tub.  Nice enough picture but the lime green basket in the back bugged me.



So, I cropped it out.  Then I remembered all those nice and light angelic pictures I see everyone doing.  They probebly use some kind of 'mask' or 'filter' or some fancy thing... I just did my usual playing with levels and hues.  I tried to do my fancy eye pop trick, but then I realized it looked cyborg-like and reverted back.  I am ticked at myself for focusing on his ear instead of his eyes but - I still love the picture.

"Mommy, the 'indoor party' settings flash is WAY too bright!"

Day 7

Shutter Speed Priority...

My snotty drooly little boy :)

Day 6

I dont even know what this is, but I got to use my macro setting to take it... so bazinga!  a new things I tried on the camera.  Point for me!

Here is a before and after on my little guy.  Did my usual tricks, eye pop, played with levels and hue and also did a little face cleaning with the clone stamp.  Love.

I tried to erase one of my chins with the clone stamp in another photo... totally didnt work :(

Day 5 ... 6?

I Learned something new again!  I dont know what I would do without internet tutorials....


So, this one is one of my favourite shots (of some one other than my Liam ... this boy's name is also Liam though).  Top one is the original, second is tweeked and I used the eye popping technique and the third one is using the clone stamp to remove the crumbs. 
OMG - I now love the clone stamp!!!

Day... 4 (too busy on day 3!)

Just a cute one of my dog - straight off the camera.

Daddy reading.  Used the lasoo tool and box blurred the door.  Messed with the exposure, contrast, hue etc then used the 'curves' option to make it darker around the floor/edges.  This is the inspiration picture.  Not really comparable now - but I tried!

Day 2 Part II

Eeee!  I found a cool tutorial on Pinterest (ofcourse) and actually learned something that I think I will use forever now!

Here is the Tut

And here is my befor and after!  It`s all in the eyes!

Now, I am well aware that my tracing skills are sub-par and that if you look reeeeaaaaalllly close you can see how terrible I am at it - but that isnt the point.  The point is - I actually learned something!!!!!

Stay tuned for hundreds more ``practice`` pictures!

As promised...

Now I just have to remember to write the 'curves' values down so I dont take 45 minutes trying to match the eyes.  Duh!

Day 2

My husband finally transfered over all my pictures from our old laptop.  They contained many many many pictures (32G to be exact) from the brith of my son - and every day since.

I didnt own my Nikon back in those days - and now that I look back at the photos they look terrible.  Sigh... But, they are all great memories of little Liam's life so I am going to try to fix the most important ones in PS.  So far - I have only figured out how to do things that fall under the "Image-Adjustments" catagory.  Exposure, Hue, colour etc.  Not very exciting... and nothing I didnt already know from my old editing program.

Anyways - merrily I went along 'fixing' things.

Here are some before and afters (before on the left - obviously)

Looked a little green to start, now looks a little more 'true' to life - as I remember it.  Maye a little pinker. 

Seriously - why did my old camera make everything green?  I do notice now though - that pinking up Liam has caused a glare on his left cheek... must learn what to do about that....

This is my friends baby Addison who was born at 29 weeks.  All her newborn pics have this blue in them from the jaundice lights.  I though I would try my hand at removing the colour.  She was super happy - but I can see more of those glares all through the picture that I need to learn to soften.

OKay - back to work.

Day 1 - Hour One of Photoshop ownershp.

 I took some 'great' photos at a farm day last weekend that I was devastated to learn all turned out 'shaded' once I uploaded them.  Sigh.

Today I played around with PS and may have solved some of that problem!  I certainly have a lot of learning to do but, I am pretty proud of my tinkering without one seconds worth of tutoring.

So here is the before



I had to crop out another little boys hand in the right bottom corner, that is why the crop is so weird.

Here is my very first photoshop project.  I wish I could list everything I did to it, but honestly I just clicked a hundred different functions.  Some I kept, some I 'undid'.

So, shade gone!  Now to work on the fluorescent grass...

Here is another that I just tweeked the exposure and offset for....

That fixed the grass issue.  I still feel like his skin is too grey though....

I'm Failing...

Well, it's been too long between posts and I am afraid that I dont really have anything new to add as a skill I have gained.  I got the Aperature thing down and now I almost always shoot in 'A'. 

Husband says he is for real going to upload Photoshop to my laptop tonight, so I should be able to get into editing some pictures this week.  I have been scouring the interwebs for tips and tricks to use that program.  Here is a link to that collection.  I will contnue to add to the collecton as I find things if anyone is following along.

I hereby commit to myself to get 30 'good' pictures this month - either by editing old ones, or taking new ones.  That's one a day and 2 extras before the end of the month.  Given that it is fall and also Halloween in that time - this should not be that hard.

Anyone going to hold me accountable??

Also, today I had to do something gut wrenching... I had to format my memory card.  All 1700 pictures were uploaded successfully (I checked 3 times) and all the 'on camera' editing that could be done, was.  I honestly shed a tear.  I am so afraid of losing pictures and I like to have copies in lots of places.  Formating that card means my laptop is the only place those 1700 pics are saved to.  I need back-up stat!

Aperature Week

Well, I did it.  I went a whole week taking a zillion shots all in "A" setting.  Some of them turned out great... others turned out too bright, too dark or just plain bad.  I wish I could say I have a good grasp of how to manipulate the settings - but I don't.  I just messed with things when I remembered to and came up with these....



"Crazy Face" ... nice blur in the background

Chocolate Face,  I like how his hand is blurred... helps me understand the depth.

Just plain cute

I like how the background is all "bokeh"

My Little Guys First Meal

My awesome niece Alice

Cute Hair

So, not in 'A' but, cool colour-fill!



My husband took this one

.... I tired.

Daddy & Liam

So, anyways... Aperture setting is cool.  I will likely shoot a lot of outdoor shots with this.  I just need to set it right for the lighting.  That will be my next thing to learn.

Sorry - super distracted.  Will make a better entry later.

A Photo Shoot In My Dining Room

So, my friend who was coming to take some shots of Liam ended up being 2 hours late.  Liam was primed and ready at 2pm so I just started taking shots myself.  I took about 300 by the end of it, with some of them being lighting shots and others just messing with the different effects and settings on the camera to see what they do.

I had some ideas to work with that I gathered here.  Nothing turned out the way I thought I wanted it to but, some of the shots I am super proud of.

So, this is the shot that inspired the first few of these.

No editing

No editing

Colour Fill and a lowered saturation

Edited... but I cant remember how and cropped.

Cropped

I did a hundred things to this and then just turned off the saturation.  Something weird happened because Liam looks like a corpse...

This took a million shots.  Hard to get a natural shot of these two... always moving

BW, or maybe I turned off saturation.

Croped and warmed.

Cropped and cooled

'Enhanced' but I don't really know what that button does...

My fave of the day.  Cropped, enhanced, and cooled (I think)

Well, that was fun.  I still need to find time to go back and try cropping and editing some of the others... but with an infant and 2 dogs - time is not on my side.

My friend then taught me what some of the buttons do on my camera.  He set my pic taking mode to Jpeg Fine which is supposed to help take better photos. (we'll see, these are all just plain ol' Jpeg)  We also talked about aperture.  The next round of photos will be tinkering with that!

I also learned that a good editing program can make a world of difference.  The "shot well" program I currently use does not have enough bells and whistles for my liking.  Or maybe it does and I just don't know where they are...

Until next time.

Week 1 With The Camera

So, I have used up one of my 16GB cards twice this week.  I have also run down the battery 3 times.  Let's just say I have taken a few (hundred) pictures.

Most of the pictures turned out like they did when I was using my point and shoot, but some of them - especially ones taken outdoors - seemed to have an... energy to them that I don't think I have been able to capture before.

Like this one.

We went on a nature hike with a bunch of other moms and kids and I just took a zillion pics - trying not to have anything posed.

I love the little boy running, but not the elbow.  Must take more time to frame pics before I click.

Eventually, once I made sure to take at least one picture of everyones kids, I went on to taking photos of 'nature'.  This is where I got frustrated.

Why is the bird black - what am I doing wrong?

These bugs were super gross.  Why cant I get a more detailed pic though...?

A beautiful thistle that I completely forgot to use the macro setting for (duh)

Note to self - don't stand in the sunlight.

Food setting is cool, but must remember to focus on the meat - when it is meat that I am bragging about.

I need to learn the differences in my lenses and what their limitations are.  I know the 55-300 takes AWESOME close up pics of faces... but I must be at a certain distance for it to work properly.  Must learn that distance to save myself time and MBs.

Here are some examples.

I could take those ALL day, every day of my life.  As a new mom, I know the value of having a beautiful face shot to brag to your friends about!

Well - that's it for this week.  Today my friend is coming over to do a 'shoot' with his fancy camera and hopefully capture some nice family shots for us - and maybe teach me some tricks! 

Must learn to do good Bokeh soon.  I heart the look of those shots!