Learning to edit

That's what this whole week is about...learning how to use Photoshop (the real thing), layer masks, and starting to find our editing style. I don't know why, but for a lot of my pictures I am drawn to the sun flare, hazy look. I do like pictures that are bold in color and have a clean edit, but I felt that the following pictures of Hannah kind of needed a hazy kind of look. The pictures themselves aren't new, but the action that I used on them is because I MADE IT MYSELF!! Plus, I have sharpened and resized them for the web (something else I've learned how to do). Hope you enjoyed!

Bunches of outtakes part two

I just wish I could have gotten him to look at me... :-(

Bunches of outtakes part one

Here are some of the pictures that I took of Aaron that would have been awesome had I not ruined them by overexposing them or missing focus:

And there are plenty more where these came from!

San Diego bound!!!

It's just been confirmed...I AM GOING TO SAN DIEGO IN MAY!!! It will only be a short trip (I'll get there Thursday night and leave Sunday morning), but Ray and I will have 3 Entire nights and 2 Entire days just to ourselves!!! I'm already nervous about flying solo, but what an awesome little trip it's going to be (we are staying at some little island resort).

Workout plan...here I come!! :-)

A rough start

to my new class, that is! The assignment this week was to arrange for a "real" photo shoot. We had to choose a new location, plan for props, and stuff like that. So, I thought I would challenge myself and go after a toddler. I'm getting quite good when shooting Hannah and Emily because they aren't constantly moving and I have time to play around with my settings. I knew Aaron wouldn't let me do that, and as much as I didn't want to step out of my comfort zone, I knew I had to.

And, it was a challenge indeed! It wasn't really Aaron that was challenging. He did run around and didn't really stand still or look at me, but the real problem was me; I was having trouble metering for him (partly because he kept moving). I must have overexposed and missed focus I don't know how many times. It was becoming exasperating! We are supposed to post up to 5 of our best images...my best are far from best...

Here he is on the swing...great, tack sharp eyes, but the composition isn't the best...

He was sitting on a little stool. How I managed to actually underexpose one, beats me...

He was sitting on a picnic table here...I didn't see the sippy cup until it was too late. (I was using backlighting...)

I really wanted to use this house more, but he wasn't interested...

I did try to play around with some using my very limited editing skills...This first one was so overexposed...I broke the rule of finding beautiful light. This light casts harsh shadows on his face. But look how cute it would have been!

I cropped the one with the sippy cup...

And tried to lighten the underexposed one...

I think if I had better editing skills, a lot more of these pictures would be usable. So, if Vickie was a paying customer, I would be able to give her some, but it was so disappointing for me to ruin so many of the pictures. I ended that last class on a high note, and now I feel like I've taken a few steps back.

But, like Ray said, Rome wasn't built in a day, and I just need to keep practicing and practicing and practicing. It was good for me to push myself today, and maybe one day, I'll be good at nabbing great shots of toddlers too!!

This special kid

I just wanted to take a moment and talk about how special this kid is. (Emily is too, of course)Today, she knew I wanted to try some new pictures, so she rushed in the door, got her homework finished as quickly as possible, changed her clothes, and said, "I'm ready!"

This past weekend, Hannah and I spent time running around to various stores spending some of her birthday money (that I made her save) and getting stuff I wanted to use to take pictures. Everywhere we went, Hannah would tell people I was a professional "photographist." At the fabric store when the lady asked what her project was (she was carrying the fleece), she said it. When we were at Hobby Lobby buying the umbrellas, she said it again. At one point, the cashier said to me, "You're a photographer?"

"A wannabe," I meekly replied. It's so hard for me to think that way about myself...

"Mom, why do you keep saying that??? You are a professional photographist!"

It's like a have a little self-esteem booster walking next to me. She even threw my own words back at me, "Mom, you know you are only as good as you think you are."

Cute, but not for consideration

I meant to share this in the last post, but forgot. I won't be able to use it for my class, unfortunately, because I missed the focus on her eyes and I chopped part of her fingers off, but I wanted to share it because I thought it was really cute!

More trial and error

This is my last week in the Beginner/Intermediate class. We have to take all the concepts we have learned and put them all together. It's like we have to have the "best of the best." Of course it has been raining and cold. So, I thought I would try out the studio idea in my office. It definitely needs some tweaking, but I did get a few pictures I liked (but far from what I envisioned).

Yesterday, I bought some pink fleece to use as a backdrop. I didn't think about using wrinkle releaser until it was too late...the background would look soooo much nicer had it been smoother...:-( These are all unedited...

I also bought some paper parasols at Hobby Lobby for $3 a pop!! Hannah was spinning the umbrella when I took this picture: I like the pop in color and that you can see her hair all done up and you can even tell the umbrella was in motion.



I tried and tried to get full body shots, but I just didn't have enough space. I need to spread the backdrop out more and until I move more stuff around in my office, I can't do that. So, I resorted to some close-ups, just not-so-close-up.

Here is one full body shot I got, but there is a slight shadow on the backdrop because she was too close to it. I bought this "floor" paper at Hobby Lobby yesterday too, but they only had 20 sheets...I probably need at least 10 more to make this wide enough to use with a wider backdrop...

And then I tried a different perspective. I stood on a bucket to look down at her...

I have to give it to Hannah...she was a real trooper today and has been throughout this class. She has given up playing with friends, has let me dress her and fix her hair, and has posed the way I asked all without really complaining.

My office definitely gets great light...I just have to figure out how to give myself more space!! It's supposed to be warmer and sunny tomorrow. I'm going to try again tomorrow, but if I can't, I'm probably going to use 3 out of the 4 posted here.

Wish me luck!

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself #31

I hit rock bottom last Friday. I couldn't get myself out of bed. I tried and tried and tried. I did manage to get up, but only long enough to call into work, go back to bed, and sleep until noon. I did a lot of thinking that day about what was wrong. There was lots bothering me with no immediate solutions. Then I thought, I need to seek out some solutions, so I went to Amazon and started searching out some inspiration. I finally settled on a book called 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever by Steve Chandler. I thought I would share one of the chapters I found especially inspirational:

Most people think they'll feel good once they reach some goal. They think happiness is out there somewhere, perhaps not even too far away, but out there all the same.

The problem with putting off feeling good about yourself until you hit a certain goal is that it may never happen. And you know all the time you're striving for it that it may never happen. So, by linking your happiness to something you don't have yet, you're denying your power to create happiness for yourself.

A lot of people use personal unhappiness as a tool, as proof of their own sincerity and compassion. Yet, as Barry Kaufman points out eloquently in To Love Is to Be Happy With, being unhappy is not necessary. You can be happy and also be sincere. You can be happy and also be compassionate. In fact, loving someone while you are unhappy does not show up like love at all.

"Love," says the great American spiritual teacher, Emmet Fox, "acts the part."

Songwriter Fred Knipe talked to me recently about how we human beings have learned to use and abuse unhappiness--he said he had made a list for me of the secret reasons why people think they should feel bad.

"If I feel bad, then that proves I am a good person," he said. "Or, if I feel bad, I am responsible. If I feel bad, I'm not hurting anybody. If I feel bad, it means that I care. Maybe if I feel bad, it proves I'm being realistic and aware. If I feel bad, it means I'm working on something."

That list gives us powerful motivation to be unhappy. But as Werner Erhard (personal transformation pioneer) has always taught in his well-known est seminars, happiness is a place to come from, not to try to go to.

I once saw Larry King interviewing Werner Erhard by satellite from Russia, where Erhard was living and working. Erhard had mentioned that he might be moving back to the United States soon, and Larry King asked him if coming home would make him happy.

Erhard paused uncomfortably, because in his view of life nothing makes us happy. He finally said, "Larry, I am already happy. That wouldn't make me happy, because I come from happiness to whatever I do."

Your happiness is your birthright. It shouldn't depend on your achieving something. Start by claiming it and using it to make your self-motivation fun all the way and not just fun at the end.

When I finished reading this section, I immediately started to think how this is such a valid point and one I really need to focus on. This is soooo how I function. For example, I want cute clothes but I won't buy them because I feel I should lost 10 pounds first, that losing those 10 pounds will make me happy. I won't allow myself to be happy until I reach that goal. I should really be happy now and celebrate me and love me the way I am now. But I think I'm afraid to do that because then I might never work on getting in shape. Like, my unhappiness is a motivator, but really, it's just a hinderance.

I know I should live the way Chandler recommends & it makes sense, but it will be hard since that's not how I'm used to functioning. I have always used my unhappiness as a motivator...a punishment...

How dumb is that????

I bought it! I bought it!

Wooohooo!!! I just wanted to pop on in here and say, "I just bought myself an external flash!!" I know. Most of you are scratching your head wondering what the heck I'm talking about. Well, this is what I'm talking about:

It mounts to the top of my camera and can be adjusted in strength and tilted up to bounce the flash off the ceiling (instead of right on the subject) and swiveled to the sides to bounce the light off the walls. It can even be used remotely (meaning off the camera) to get more directional light. I signed up for an Advanced Photography class that starts on Monday and in this class I will learn "Advanced Lighting Techniques" and we needed an external flash. I am excited, excited, excited!!

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This isn't the "real" flash I wanted. I was trying to save for the model above this one, but it's over $400 whereas this one is only $279. It will still be good to have for studio lighting and fill flash when shooting outdoors, or I can sell it one day to buy the other (or keep it to use it in tandem with the more expensive one. I can put the more expensive one on my camera and it will fire off the one I'm getting if it is sitting somewhere else in the room--works for studio lighting), but it's a good place to start.

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You have no idea how amazing it is to me that one simple decision in October to forgo new living furniture to pursue a dream has gotten me this far. I remember the moment I made this decision. It was a deliberate, conscious decsion that I stewed over for a long time. I was standing in the kitchen/eat-in area looking around the living room imagining how awesome my new furniture would look (I had been saving for several months and was only a couple of weeks away from having enough). I was looking at the fireplace when I decided that sacrifices were necessary if I really wanted to achieve my dream. Furniture was going to be the first sacrifice to make. Don't get me wrong, I still really want that new furniture (I think about it nearly every day), but dreams don't come free or easy. And maybe when I am making lots of money as a photographer, I can then buy my new furniture (and maybe when my salary gets cut by more than half, I'll have a new career to fall on).

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Here's a quick run down of what I've done so far (you can skip this section if you want...it's mainly for me!): I bought my first prime lens (aka: a nice, expensive one) in October; I signed up for my very first photography class in November; I bought a backdrop stand, made my first $20 from a shoot, bought a reflector kit with those profits, and bought several photography books in December; signed up for my second photography class in January; signed up for my third photography class in February and began contemplating a home studio; and so far in March, I've bought my Speedlite. And, I'm hoping that now that spring is sooo close, I'll have more opportunities to get outside and practice.

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It might not sound like a whole heck of a lot, but for me it is. To stop sitting around just wishing to actually doing something about a dream of mine is HUGE. And the budgeting and saving I've done...amazing. I've managed to do all of this with cash (so a BIG thank you to all of you who gave me a birthday present!) while still getting a few things for me and the girls. I used to run out of money by the second week of each month, and now I'm rolling money over to the next month. I get frustrated with my tiny budget, though, but it's all about finding creative solutions and setting priorities.

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Sometimes I get scared thinking about venturing out on my own (well, I should say I'm scared senseless about this EVERY day), but I know I'm on the right track when I'm feeling blue and tired and down, and I take my daughter to the park to shoot pictures for practice, and I come home feeling on top of the world even though each picture wasn't a success. I couldn't wait to pull them up on the computer and see my images and critique them and edit them. I spent several hours doing this, and didn't mind doing it, and sometimes, I just pull them up for the fun of it. This tells me that I'm on the right path. The joy I get from this is a breath of fresh air. You just have no idea how much I need this.

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Thanks for listening!