Win a $500 Gift Card to Adorama Camera from mcpactions and adorama. Enter here: http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2010/12/13/500-gc-to-adorama/

Fernadele. Giving away some stuff. :) I love how her shop is a blend of photog props and yarny goodness. I think we have some things in common. ;)

Pamela Topping is hosting THE most amazing "Black Friday" giveaway for photogs this week, check it out:
http://www.pamelatopping.com/2010/11/blackfriday/

I love my blog...
wish I could visit more often...

Anywho...

Elizabeth Halford has a new DVD out, "Shooting My Kids." :P It looks fun and helpful. Clickin' Moms is giving away a copy:
http://www.clickinmoms.com/blog/?p=982

Good Luck!

i heart faces fix-it Friday

Not too long ago, I discovered a couple things. I discovered Google Reader. I had no idea one could follow blogs in one place like that. I had wished for such a thing, but I'd never asked. Can't believe I took so long to catch up. Now I get a daily dose of photography heaven--or overload.

I also discovered, among the many wonderful photography websites out there, i heart faces, a cool site about shooting people. (haha) Every Friday, readers get a chance to flex their processing muscles with a submitted photo. With my recent addition of Lightroom 3 and a fast new computer to my editing lineup (here is where the angels start to sing), I thought I'd give it a go.

This week's shot is an adorable little girl by Amy Locurto of Atomic Egg Photography (what a name! You'll remember that, won't you?) The focus was slightly off, but otherwise, was a dream image to work with.

Original:


Edited:


Now to try to remember what all I did...
I imported the image to Lightroom and made these adjustments:
Temp +31
Tint +22
Exposure +.05
Fill 10
Blacks 13
Contrast +19
Vibrance +79
Saturation -33
HUE
Red +27 (I dunno why, it just looked cool.)
SATURATION
Yellow +59 (brought out color of bows)
Green +2
Blue +59 (brought out color of dress)
LUMINANCE
Orange +34 (Took cast off face and made it glow)
Green +2
SPLIT TONING HIGHLIGHTS
Hue 50
Sat 11
Balance -11
SPLIT TONING SHADOWS
Hue 240
Sat 10
(I had no method to split toning, I just slid it around to see what it would do.)

I busted out the ultra-cool adjustment brush here and brightened up under her eyes a smidge, brushed the iris pop over her eyes, then brightened skin around the chin that was shadowed.

Then I opened it up in paint Shop Pro and added a texture from Muffet on Flickr. It warmed the background, but I mostly masked it off her face. I added a vignette using curves. Then I ran the high pass sharpen at radius 4 and 100 strength, overlay mode, on a duplicate, using layer masks so that the sharpening affected her eyes as well as her hair and mouth at a reduced opacity.

I like the brownish overall tone complimented by the pop of yellow and blue. and I think I got her eyes looking pretty nice--that was all LR adjustment brush and high-pass sharpen.

Sounds like a lot, but it really didn't take all that long. This is a really cool exercise to see what I can do with editing and help me to see what sorts of photos work well with what styles of editing. It's also nice to write down what I'm doing so I can come back to analyze and learn. Hopefully, I'll keep up with Fix-it Friday. :) Heck, it will give my pretty blog some action.

For posterity's sake...

I am very much a beginner with photography. I like to learn new things, and frequently, I pick them up quickly. And sometimes, I have these moments of frustration in which I just can't seem to catch up to where I feel I should be.

I suppose everyone has these moments, right? And in the spirit of trying to learn, I'm going to share a couple recent photographic mistakes.

I took a day trip to visit some family who live out on the country on a gorgeous bit of land that they've only made more gorgeous with all their additions. I wanted to photograph their new barn and I thought it would be pretty to have the wildflowers swaying in the breeze in the foreground. I got that a little bit, but had trouble getting a slow enough shutter speed without over-exposing. And here is my "d'oh!" moment... I had a polarizing filter in my bag. It might have even prettied the sky a bit for me, and it most certainly would have darkened things a bit to let me slow down the shutter speed more. It's not a terrible image, but it could have been better if I hadn't been in such a hurry.

I found this amazing, HUGE, Indian Paintbrush in their fields. It was perfect and I decided to try a downwards shot on it. Wouldn't it have been perfect if I'd actually shot a few more frames to actually get the blasted thing dead-on and not slightly off? It was windy, but I should have realized that any angle that got me off from dead centered would reduce the impact. Maybe next year I can try again...

Makeover in Progress...

Well, I redid my profiles on some of the websites I frequent, so I felt a new look was in order for my blog. I saw a cute blog recently and saw a little link at the top of her page to "The Cutest Blogs on the Block." I investigated and a whole new world opened up to me: I can download backgrounds and templates for Blogger beyond the ones that it provides for me!

*gasp*

So then I went nuts and wouldn't rest until I found just the right look for my blog. (Because I update it oh-so-much. It really deserved to look gorgeous. /sarcasm.) It still is a work in progress, but I think I've figured out what I can and can't do without taking a course in making style sheets myself. Hopefully, I'll faind some time to fine tune soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share what I thought were the best websites with the most beautiful templates and backgrounds for blogger:

Hot Bliggity Blog ,
The Cutest Blog on the Block , and
Shabby Blogs
all have super-easy-to-install backgrounds. These won't change your current layout, they just update the basic look behind it.

Pyzam and
Simply Fabulous Blogs
have templates that you have to download and install using the "edit HTML" section under layout. Directions are readily available and it's not complicated, I promise. But you will want to save any layout widgits, etc, that you have because installing a new template will delete your current ones.

Have fun if you need to browse for a new style!