Happy Birthday!

Happy 6th Birthday to our Princess! Can't believe it's been 6 years and it's been so long since I've posted here! We've had a busy spring! We did some quick bday shots this morning in studio. Hope to get some outdoors at some point! Our Princess has 5 teeth missing! The comment of her skating teacher last week was... she saw lots of smiles, but not many teeth out on the ice!

More composites and enlargements!

Wow, it's been awhile since I've been on! Even though the weather has no idea it's spring, I guess our schedule has picked up as it does in spring! I'm still waiting to get out of the mid 30's so I can go out shooting.... we've had wonderful, diffuse, overcast light... however not much fun to shoot in 30 degree weather!

So, not much camera action this week. However, I decided it's time to order some prints to start showing some work in studio. (well, at least the walls outside the studio) So, these are the prints I ordered today... I've never ordered enlargements so we'll see how they turn out.... I really wanted to do a 20x20 of our 4 kids, but I couldn't find any photos of each of them that went together to create the square... so that one has to wait! I got a couple 11x14, a 10x20 and a 16x20.... I got them all mounted and sprayed so I don't have to frame them since I can't for the life of me figure out good frames and I really want the focus on the photos, not the frames anyway....

The first one was actually taken by hubby.... I just love it so much (it's our youngest) that I'm going to put it up even though I didn't take it! He said that was okay!

I got contacted by someone from the father/daughter dance I shot to do a sitting. Fun to start to get "strangers" calling me. I'm out of town though for 1/2 the weekend she wants so we'll see if that comes through. I have actually 2 more shoots besides that one scheduled this month! I think that's the most I've ever had in a month. It's always nice when God provides instead of me "forcing" the issue.... if I just take it as it comes I don't have to stress out over whether I should be doing more/less.... what a hobby should be, right... fun and not stressful!

Beautiful and Fun Girls

Okay, I'm finally back on! It's Spring Break here and we've been busy! Happy Birthday, Mom!

Here are a few from my shoot with 2 beautiful girls Tuesday. They were so fun to photograph! No seriousness here, just all smiles and goofiness! And I learned a new way to do white (actually hubby's idea, thanks Dear!!). It worked very slick... much better than masking!!

Oh, and who could guess that "broccoli" would create so many giggles???!!!

My brain hurts!

**very poorly exposed image to start**


**my fix**

I went to the library (by myself!) yesterday so I got to look at "big people books" :-) I have three new books to study (plus a couple more coming in that I ordered). I've been studying a text by Lee Varis called Skin. It is **amazing!!** It took me two nights to figure this technique out, but I think I have it! It's teaching me color correction, based on skin tones using curves. I played with a very poorly exposed image (I'm sure it would have gone faster with a well exposed one!) to see what I could do. I think the result is pretty good! It also gives me another idea of how to get my white background. I just have to figure out if I can make an action or something because it would be quite tedious for a session. Anyway, my brain hurts! It's time to watch "Heroes". Hubby and I are into that show now. We can watch in on Netflix for free! Gotta love free entertainment! We're both hooked! Glad we have a LOT to catch up on as we're practically watching one/night! :-)

More floor and some "paint!"

Yeah!!! Greg said I could have an advance on some money we're getting back from taxes! So, I went out today and got a new white "floor" and some fleece! I'm hoping to use one of them for the shoot tomorrow so I don't have to PS a background! The fleece works awesome!! Love, love, love it! The only issue is it's not very wide. I'm thinking eventually I'll get another 2.5 yards of each color and PS the seam, but for now it's okay to experiment with. The girls are wearing one "formal" Easter outfit tomorrow and then one casual outfit. I thought the white floor would be nice for Easter shots. Here's a quick peek... Kylie loved the eggs! I'm working on a composite, but it doesn't look good to me yet so I'll wait to show it.... Happy Easter!

New Floor!

Okay, not really... but I set up a "fake floor and wall" for the first time. I think it turned out pretty good! I used my white backdrop pulled taught, a baseboard and a roll of laminent (have no idea how to spell that). I was going to try plexiglass, but it's so dang expensive. This set up only cost me $28!

So, I PS'd in a blue background on the boys. I think I'm going to try to gather some sheets. The PSing just takes so much time.... I have a shoot on Friday that I'm going to use this for and I'm considering getting a sheet or two for that so I don't have to PS a whole session.

Anyway... terrible picture. This was taken last night. The boys loved the "new floor" too much and I had a **really** hard time getting any picts, but was desperate to see how the floor looked. So, the lighting is horrible and the pose even worse, but it shows the floor anyway. This is as REAL as life gets! All it needs is K in the background laying on a sofa with what I'm pretty sure is strep (we'll find out today).... then it would be "perfectly real!"

backgrounds

Well, seeing as I have very few options for backgrounds I'm trying to get creative.  Of course, there are two main commodities... time and money.  Being short on money (to buy new backgrounds), I default to time.  I had fun today experimenting with making different backgrounds in PS, however it is VERY time consuming!  I have to figure out how to mask faster! So, here's an example of what I was working on today.  The "grey" background is supposed to be white (yeah, that whole not enough lights problem)... so I replaced it with a shot of my actual gray background adding a color overlay creating a sand color background.  I think it looks okay and gives some options.  Now, proofing a session this way is not an efficient use of time, however it may be okay while I'm PBing as I have more time (believe it or not) than money!

Not the greatest shot, but fun to play with and shows the personality of these two!  Not bad focus for f5.6 either.  (I'm sad K isn't in sharp focus) I was only planning on shooting one kid at a time, but J wanted K in the shot too.  She wasn't too gung ho on that idea, so she was being silly the whole time!