It is time.....

I used to be an avid scrapbooker, however I haven't done a page since March of 2006. My scraproom has been sitting, unused, except when C goes in there to play piano and practice his vocal stuff. Since we're readying the house to put on the market, it is time to tackle the scrap stuff. Sheesh, what a chore! You should see the room right now, it is beyond a disaster. You know how things get worse before they look better, it's in the "worse" stage right now for sure! I'd love to just donate it all and be done with it, but I have a lot of money wrapped up in there and would like to get just a teensy bit of it back. So, I'm sorting for yard sale, trash, recycled, and to try and sell online.

Therefore, my POTD is my stack of cardstock. And yes, it is terribly embarrassing. And yes, it measures 12" high, I figure it's about 1,000 pieces of cardstock (gulp). If you scrapbook and know the price of Bazzill cardstock, you do the math (double gulp). And yes, it's just a snapshot in order to list it for sale. If anyone is interested in the things I have, drop me at note to: pixydust61@yahoo.com and I'll forward you a list as I start going. I think I'm pricing things pretty cheaply :) So far I have sorted all the paper and am starting on the stamps and embellishments, and then all the rest....



And my apologies for not being around much lately. There is just way too much going on around here right now. :(

If you know me at all....

....you know I'm a Starbucks junkie. It's just that simple :)

A few years ago one of my coworkers went to Hawaii on vacation, and was kind enough to bring home gifts for those of us she works with. So, what did she bring me you ask? Why, a Hawaii Starbucks gift card! Isn't that a hoot? Once she did that, I haven't been able to bring myself to throw any I get away, and in fact whenever I see a new one that I like, I have to get $5 loaded on it. Once a use it up, I always ask for it back. Why? I have NO idea. It's just one of those quirky things I guess. So, this is part of my collection of Starbucks cards. They don't "do" anything. They're not displayed. They just ARE.

My understanding is that there are special ones from various international cities and countries, Greece, London, and probably some other places as well. Maybe someday I'll get one of those as well, I need to travel more though!

Just like clockwork, it's that time of year again

It's the time of year I start feeling antsy for spring. The holidays are over, and the 3 month long, gray, dreary haul until the weather perks up is upon us. We hardly ever get snow here, so I can't even get excited about that. WEEKS will go by with no sign of the sun. It really is a tough time of the year for me.

So, just for a little photographic sunshine, here are a couple of primrose pics. I was too lazy to get out my tripod and really work at these, so they're pretty much a couple of quick snaps, but they make me feel just a little better :)

Last of the favorites from this session

I ended up with too many favorites, but this is the last one I'll post :)

We're getting ready to start remodeling our kitchen and 2 of our bathrooms, so I have not been shooting at all the last few days, just feeling a little bit consumed by all the details of planning this out. We won't have a general contractor, so that's lots of itty bitty details for me to worry about instead of him, and making sure I'm scheduling everyone properly (and hiring the right people). The thought of this starts making me hyperventilate just a teensy bit!

Anyhow, the photo of the day (tomorrow will probably be granite as I'm going to go look at slabs - woo hoo!):

So, I'm never on "topic" for my posts...

...but this week is Photoshop (before and after), correct? So for once I WILL be on topic, pretty cool, eh?!?

Believe it or not, I'm typically not much of a PSer (although after reading below, you may not agree with me...I have a feeling it's going to get wordy), I simply don't have the patience for it. However, with headshots I do need to work on them in order for the subject to look their best. So, I'm posting a SOOC and an after shot, along with the techniques I used for this image. I shoot jpeg.

SOOC (resized & sharpened for web only)


Fully retouched and cropped to an 8x10 ratio)


Ok, so this is my workflow on this one.
1. Almost every image is run through an action I made which runs noisweware on a very low setting, a defog, and it makes a levels layer for me (with no adjustments).

2. I did not need to adjust exposure at all, though much of the time I prefer skin tones a little brighter than how they were shot so I adjusted the middle slider in levels to about 1.10 or so, very slight.

3. Color balance layer, this shot needed just a bit more magenta in it and a little less green, I think shadows, midtones and highlights were adjusted on the green/magenta channel to about -2 each (see, I told you it was minor!) Be careful with color balance, it's easy to go overboard and then makes it tough to know what you did wrong and how to fix it.

4. Cloning. This is the tedious part. F had quite a few flyaway hairs that I didn't catch, so I had to go in and clone them out around and over her left eye and cheek. My fault entirely for not staying on top of the hair issue! I also cloned out a FEW skin imperfections and evened out the color of her lips - she had dry patches where her lipstick had adhered better than other parts. Lastly, I cloned out the little bit of the top of her right ear that was showing through her hair, as well as the dark spot where her earing hole is.

4. Eye enhancement. I do very little compared to some, and her eyes are naturally amazing (the camera caught all the wonderful detail in them) so there really wasn't much TO do! On this image I lightened the whites of her eyes just a teeny bit. Lassoed the whites, and brought down the saturation maybe to -4 and upped the lightness to probably about 10. Less in more in my opinion, I see so many images where the whites of the eyes are WHITE white, and that's not how they are in real life! I also minimized the darkness under her eyes slightly as well. Once again, for ME, I think less is more. I don't like it when the undereye area is all one tone. To do this I sample an area under the eye that is a good tone, then I brush it on "lighten" with a very soft brush at about 10% opacity over the areas that need lightening. The last thing I did was a very slight curves adjustment on her iris only to help a bit more contrast.

5. Softlight layer at about 15%

6. Portraiture. I LOVE this plug in. SERIOUSLY! I see images where it's been overdone and the skin looks plastic-like, but used correctly it just gives that final finish to the image. I try not to overdo it, but I know there have been times when I have. Still working on getting it perfect!

So, by now you're likely thinking, MAN, that's a lot of work. For this one it was, but only because of #4 - all the cloning. Had it not been for that, this image would have been processed in less than 5 minutes.

I do not do this for every headshot proof (nor do I do it for regular images), that would take a ridiculous amount of time! I'll fully edit one (occasionally two) files so the client can see what a finished image will look like. The rest of the proofs are uploaded to their gallery with only a quick color correction and sharpening for web. Once the client decides which image(s) they want, THEN I do a full retouching on it!

Is it fair that one girl is this photogenic?

I did F's headshots the other day, and honestly, I don't think I could have made her look bad if I tried, she is so darned photogenic! Flawless skin, amazing eyes, and beautiful, full hair. Plus she's just got the sweetest personality. This is one that for some reason I felt very connected with when looking through the files initially. I'll post a few more tomorrow :)

As a side note, I am now officially in love with the camera I got last month and after all the internal debate about upgrading, am thrilled I decided to go ahead and do it. Seriously. I shoot jpeg (the times I've tried RAW I just haven't felt like it was worth the added hassle) the SOOC images from this shoot are to die for. For the most part (except one location where there was a strong color cast from a brick wall) they are the best I've ever had. I've been fiddling with color temps in the various WB settings and think I am really on the right track with it.

Thanks for looking...

Display

I have a display of photographs going up for the month of February, so I this week I decided I'd better get on the ball and start planning it! The background I used is about the color of the wall these will be hung on. The hanging space is approximately 12' long by about 5' to 6' high on a much larger wall. It's been a little challenging to layout as there is a rail system from which wires hang and then the frames attach to those wires, so every "row" of photos needed to line up vertically.

I kept going back and forth as to sizes of the prints, did I want to go smaller to have more variety or larger to make a real impact? I finally settled on medium :)

Anyhow, I have the canvas at the top center completed (it measures 16x24), and am in the process of having the large square image custom framed (the overall measurement of that is about 36" square). The remainder of the frames are 16x20 except for the two smaller ones which are 12x18. One the lower right I also will need to rig some sort of plastic holder thing-a-ma-gig to hold promotional postcards.

Anyhow, I'm glad to have this planned out, I'll mull it over a bit more before making the final decision on prints and order the remainder of them in a few days. I'd love to know your thoughts on it, and you can be brutally honest, I promise!

Thanks for looking!

A few more rays of sunshine.....

A snap taken when DH and I visted Sequim last summer. Sure wish that other flower wasn't in the background though!


A couple I took on Whidbey Island:




And this was at the botanical gardens:


I think now it's back to my regularly scheduled winter pics unless I go pick up some flowers to shoot!

A little hope....

I've been doing some computer housekeeping and such today, deleting files, etc. I ran across so many files from last spring and summer that I never did anything with, and decided to edit a few of them for the heck of it. It gives me hope that this gloomy, cold, wet weather won't last forever...eventually it will be spring again, right? If it's going to be as cold as it is right now the least it could do is get a couple degrees colder so we get some snow...now THAT I would love!

Hopefully these give you some hope as well. If not, go buy yourself a bouquet of flowers, you deserve it!







More tomorrow :)

In memory of Romeo

Romeo was my sister's dog and the sweetest thing, one of those dogs who seemed perfectly happy wherever and whatever he was doing. He had just boundless energy and could be very funny at times, he acted like a puppy even though he was several years old. Poor baby was hit by a car the day after Christmas and passed away a few days later. Today I was looking through a few photos I had of him for my sister and ran across this one:



Hope this makes you smile a little Teri, and that you aren't missing him too terribly much.

Just one today

This is typically the extent of the "wildlife" we get in our yard. However last night we had a family of 3 raccoons hanging out. I sure wish I had had my camera handy to capture them! I think they were were as startled to see the 3 of us as we were to see the three of them :) This guy has a nest in a tree just out of the frame, so he's around quite a bit. It'll be interesting if there are any baby squirrels making an appearance in the spring.

Ok, the cooperative thing from yesterday? Just so you know, it's all relative....

I have to wade through a lot of this:


to get to this:


this:


and this:


Hopefully C won't check my blog for a while, otherwise he is soooooooo going to kill me for posting these!

He was helping me playing with lighting. Because we were chit-chatting while I was shooting, of the 18 photos I took, 5 he had his eyes closed on, 10 he was just plain goofy, and 3 were worth editing.

Oh, and obviously I'm having lighting issues. I believe it's due to the ceiling cans being too strong and casting shadows down on the subject. Hopefully the pics I'm going to take this evening will be better (with those lights off and a couple of lamps on to help the lens focus), fingers crossed!

Cooperative :)

It's amazing what being on school break will do for a teenager. C is so relaxed these days that he actually let me take pics today that were not for HIM, but for me :) Only got a few minutes, but I am so not complaining! Wish his life wasn't so hectic when school is in session, everyone needs to be able to unwind from time to time!



There's a little story behind this jacket. Actually, it's a long story. I started typing it out and realized you all probably don't want to hear it all. Suffice to say that C has been waiting for this jacket for a YEAR, and has been stalking the UPS website for the last 5 days to see when it would arrive. Imagine his happiness when this morning he saw that it was "out for delivery." Now that it's here he likes it just as much as he thought he would! Thank goodness! He decided the fur was too much (I agree) so it came off after a few minutes. I like the fur hoods on girls, but on guys, unless they're out in sub-zero weather I think it loks kind of odd, I dunno....

I am not happy with the darkness on C's neck in this first one, I am unsure what i did wrong. Maybe it's just the dark jacket reflecting onto his neck? What do you think?





Sara, the processing on those pics yesterday. All I did was do a levels adjustment and then a softlight layer, I don't remember the opacity, but it was probably about 30%.

Uncooperative

We've had this pair of woodpeckers living in our neighborhood for a year or more...unfortunately they are camera shy :( They were hanging out in the backyard on the grass today (which would have made a lovely backdrop), but of course by the time I got my camera and opened the door (slowly and quietly) they flew up onto the telephone pole. I sat on the back porch for a long time, VERY patiently IN THE COLD, waiting for them to come back down. Darn things never did! So, I decided to shoot them anyhow :) One of these days I need to get a good quality long telephoto for wildlife, this thing (Tamron 70-300) is just not the sharpest lens in the camera bag.

Oh, and you should see this pole in real life, they have pecked the heck out of it!







Thanks for all the comments about yesterday's post, you really made my day :) Someone asked which lens I used, it was the 105mm 2.8VR macro. I've been loving this lens for portraits, even more than my 85mm 1.8.