Win a posing beanbag from ShootBaby at Inspire me Baby:
http://inspiremebaby.com/2011/02/10/giveaway-shoot-baby-ottoman-posing-beanbag/comment-page-14/#comment-7369

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...