Happy Halloween!

Things are beginning to get a little creepy around here…

 

 

We’re nearly ready for our visitors tonight… Are you?

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Bored with her Hipstamom

9 is getting really testy about pictures lately. She’ll give you about a 1/3 of a second and that’s about it. Lucky for me, I’ve been learning how to shoot manual on the D90… cause I REALLY needed to figure out how to increase the shutter speed. THIS shot was a bloomin miracle because the Hipstomatic app doesn’t allow for bored 9 year olds. See there?… It’s a smile… for the camera… can you believe it?!

THIS is what she usually looks… She’ll kill me for sharing shots like this one day :-) *snicker*

Coulda been cute had she not tried to squirm out of the shot…  

And THIS is the look she gives 6… I call it her “do I really have to suffer the presence of my sister” look. Awe. SO mature.

Hey, at least I can find humor in her attitude, right?

Too cool for school

Seriously. I *may* be having a little too much fun with Hipstamatic. But it’s my blog and I’ll put as many of these shots as I want too ;-)

Baby loves her new hat.

Another one?

Y’all. I’m telling you. Hipstamatic is a SUPER fun app! If you haven’t tried it, give it a go. Lots of coolness.

Another submission to Hipstamom from the pumpkin patch… because it was just too funny not to share… 9 acting like a country girl… priceless LOL

Silly Pumpkin :-)

 

Sometimes calling somebody a Drama Queen is really just commentary on how silly they are :-)

Hipstamom Submission

Have you used the Hipstamatic camera app yet? So. Much. Fun. Old school lenses, films, and filters.

Here’s my submission shot to Hipstamom, a really cool site showing off what people are doing with the Hipstamatic app.

My Pumpkins in the pumpkins

Grainy vintage-y loveliness. 

Shooting Manual

SOOC shot

f 5.6     Tv1/100     ISO 640     98mm

 

Slightly edited shot… PW action Slight Lighten and eye’s adjusted just a bit :-)

Updated because of iHeartFaces… I’m ALWAYS finding new things to try…

THIS slight edit is using the Imagenomic Portraiture plug-in for Elements… Her skin softened, lots of noise was removed… then I popped her eyes a bit and  used PWs Slight lighten. Very pretty. I think I may buy that plug-in… I was able to see immediate improvement and it was not very complicated to use. You can download the free trial here.

I’m learning so much from Darcy it’s slightly ridiculous. Who knew all those numbers in the view finder actually MEAN something! Go check out what we’ve all been learning.

Photoshop Elements

The iHeartFaces constructive editing post really made me wonder… How can I be this dense? Surely I can figure out a freakin program… Surely? Photoshop Elements isn’t even the full blown Photoshop. Surely I can play around and figure out how to do ONE picture.

This was my test

It’s fairly cool in color… her eyes aren’t popping… it’s just off. Cute? Yes. But still… off.

Here’s what I did:

Using this tutorial and video found on iHeartFaces, I was able to make her eyes look much more vibrant. It was a bit tricky to use the magnetic lasso tool the first go around. That’s what the undo button is for, folks.

I have CoffeeShop’s Powder Room 2 action, and tried to use it. Honest. I did. But I need to read the instructions or something because I can’t figure out how to change the layers to show what the adjustments do. Huh. Moving right along.

After backtracking through what I had done (or NOT done) with the action, I started poking around in the area just above the layer information. The circle that’s shaded 1/2 gray and 1/2 white lets me change things like brightness and contrast.

Hallelujah!

I’ve been trying out how to do that on this program for AGES now! After adjusting those few things, I poked around a bit more and found out how to warm up the image using the photo filter adjustment.

So WHEW! Let’s take a look. Shall we?

By no means perfect… but I’m a happy happy girl.

I’ll keep working thru some of these actions as I am determined to figure it out. If I get any farther, I’ll let you know.

IHeartFaces is one of the many places I’ve been going to learn. It’s chock FULL of information. And, as I have learned, it’s best taken in small doses while using your own photo to walk through the learning process. I’m a hands-on kind of gal. IHeartFaces rocks.

Also?

Darcy over at My3Boybarians has been doing her 31 Days to a Better Photo series.  It is worth your time to go start at the beginning of the month and work your way through them. I’ve printed every day so far. Darcy has a knack for putting things in a way that even I can understand them… Darcy is also a rock star.

Happy shooting!

Future Tigers – Wordless Wednesday

 

Trying to be as wordless as possible…

Sometimes you’ve got to get on your knees and just go for the shot.

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UPDATE: I am so happy to have just stumbled into the iheartfaces post today. I edited this shot and I am TERRIBLE at editing. I used the Canon Digital Professional software that came with my point and shoot to work on this one. I have PSE6, but I know squat about how to use it. I KNOW it can be a better picture, but I just don’t understand Photoshop Elements.

iheartfaces has a linky set up for constructive criticism. I would SO appreciate some help. I’m still a newbie on my first DSLR and only on occasion am getting the kind of shots I want. Heck. Most of the time they look AWFUL.

The original photo information:

ISO: 400

Tv: 1/160

Av: F13.0

Flicker Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25332409@N08/5062637576/

I SO wanted this to be a more vibrant shot. The sky color was BEAUTIFUL that day… it just doesn’t show in the picture. I will say that I was LITERALLY on my knees shooting behind me so that the girls didn’t know I was shooting them.

Any help offered is greatly appreciated! Thanks iheartfaces for this opportunity!

Geaux Tigers!

Hubs and I both went to LSU. We loved, lived, and breathed LSU. Our babies’ birth announcements were both LSU themed.

We brought 9 as an infant to a tailgate party. I was still breastfeeding at that time and had to escape to my car to pump. It was sheer misery. It was so much Hell that we never took them back.

Until this weekend. You know… for the Tennessee game that ended in one of the most effed up victories I’ve ever seen or heard of. Yeah. THAT game :-)

I called my sister and she met us in Baton Rouge. It was awesome to see her. I’m sure my girls chatted her ear off and probably even scared her a little. My kids are… insane exuberant. A bonus to having your sister meet you? You get to be in pictures :-)

      

         

Boy did they have an awesome time. The look on 9s face when the Golden Girls marched down the hill… Priceless. 6 got so crazy and into it that she yelled “Tiger Bait!” & “Peace out! Tennessee!” at some of the Tennessee fans… Sorry folks… We didn’t teach her that one… 

    

And because my sister is a genius at coming up with clever pics we got THIS shot…

What a weekend. We are still trying to recover. It was so amazing to have our girls walk around campus with us and have them actually enjoy being there. At one point we realized that there’s a good chance both of the girls will be there for a couple of years together… in that crowd… as students… I nearly got teary until one coed sloshed up next to us and told us how cute the little Tigers were through liquored up breath. That’s just NOT something this Momma is ready to think about… Especially with THIS one…

Yeah. She’s a lil crazy. She’ll need a very VERY short leash.