All dressed up and nowhere to go.

I haven’t had much of a chance to get out and get some good pics lately, but I did manage to snap some shots of the 3 of us after our niece’s baptism.  When I put on heels and J puts on a tie, it’s camera time.  I set an ottoman in our front hallway, opened up the door, set the camera on a tripod, and used the remote to snap the shutter.  Turned out pretty good, so I didn’t have to do any post processing on it.  Well, Colt’s face is a bit blown, but I can’t fix that.

Cousins.

My brother needed a babysitter this past weekend, and of course Colt and I jumped at the chance to spend some time with his sweet cousin, Kenadi.  She’s a little firecracker, and a total joy to be around.  She’s just learned how to give ‘kisses’, and she obligingly gives you one if you ask her.  Not only is it one of the sweetest things you’ll ever see, she apparently doesn’t mind giving hundreds of them away at my whim.  I think I broke her kisser yesterday, but I couldn’t help myself.  I love baby kisses, and hers are some of the sweetest!  I can’t wait until Colt can give kisses on his own…he gives me tons of smiles every day, and I’m sure kisses will melt my heart even more.  Ahhh, my babies…how I love them so.  *sigh*

I really wanted to get some good snaps of Special K and her smiley cousin, but it just wasn’t in the cards. I’m not used to following a fussy toddler around with a camera while holding an infant, so I guess I have some learning to do!  I did manage to get a good close up of her without her paci, though.  I played around with it a little in PS, and I like my play with it.  Here are the before and after.  As for Colt, I did get a funny shot of him while grandma was holding him.  Love the bubble!  I’d forgotten to bring my graduated neutral density filter, so you can see that the sky is blown in the background.  I remembered I have this action I’ve been wanting to play with on how to make clouds, so I thought this pic was a perfect time to try it out. Here’s my play:

Before:

f/8, 1/50s, ISO 400, 18-55mm @ 48mm.  

 

After:

PP – Added catchlights in Colt’s eyes, dodged mom’s catchlights, teeth, bubble.  SIYH, Punch it!, extracted them and the trees on the right, made clouds in separate layer, dragged peeps onto new layer, erased parts of top layer (people) to see more of bg (clouds).  Bumped sat on trees. I like the new bg, but I think it’s too blue.  Wish I knew how to lower opacity of background without revealing negative space.  Will figure it out and get back to you on that one. 🙂

 

And now, I give you the forever-pouty-lipped Special K:

 

Before:

f/8, 1/50s, ISO 400, 18-55mm @ 38mm.  No pp.

After:

 

PP – Clone the drool off her cheek, Portraiture at 48% (masked hair and features), dodged eyes and catchlights, bumped up sat on her shirt, TRA’s Punch It, Burn It at low opacity, color boost.  Cloned in some trees where the sky was blown.

Then I decided to take the above pic and turn it into a b&w:

 

PP – Fudge x2

Boys.

We took our son to the Arboretum to get pictures of him in the pumpkin patch.  I got some really great shots, but I was saddened that none of them had me in them. That’s the down side to being the one with the camera…you’re always behind it, and you have a full photo album of pictures of your life without you in it.

My two favorite boys.  Grammy Pammy will love this picture. 🙂

 

f/5.6, 1/125s, ISO 100.  18-55mm @ 55mm.

PP – TRA 2’s Punch Out!, SIYH, dodge catchlights and whites of the eyes.

 

Unfortunately Colt can’t sit up on his own quite yet, so we just propped him up against some pumpkins, then ran like hell to get the pic before he fell over.  I might be a bad mom for that, I’m not sure.

f/5.6, i/80s, ISO 100.  PP – SIYH, TRA 2’s Punch Out!, dodge catchlights.

Super J volunteered to take the obligatory family picture, and here’s the result.  I know we look orange, and I can’t do a darn thing about it.  I’ve tried, but when you’re in the middle of a sea of orange, you’re going to look like an orange.  A fat orange, at that. I see mama needs to get her buns outside and exercise.

f/5.6, 1/50s, ISO 100.  PP -crop, SIYH.

Just a smirk, part deux.

I hate that picture.  More specifically, I hate that I don’t know how to correct skin tones yet.  No matter how hard I try, no matter how well I think I did, it still looks off.  So I looked around the ‘net and found a program called Skin Tune.  Downloaded the demo and I really like it.  I just started playing with it, so I’m not really proficient with it yet.  Here’s an example using the original of the pic of my son.  Mind you, I was changing him and happened to have the camera sitting there.  He smiled at me, and I just grabbed the cam and shot a few off before I could change the settings to what they needed to be.

Before – underexposed, skin tone way off

 

After:

 

PP – Skin Tune, OSIYH, contrast boost, dodge catchlights.

 

Now, I’ve always thought that babies looked so ethereal in black and white, and I finally found a b&w action that fit this photo perfectly.  Well, I think so, at least.  What do you think?

PP – OSIYH, Rocky Road.

Grandma.

I took Colt to Uncle Kirby’s shop to say hi one day.  Grandma happened to be there, and I just happened to have my camera (as always), so I snapped a pic of her holding him.  She adores the pants off that little guy, and he just loves her to death, too.  Frankly, I’m not sure what I’d do without either of them.  I hope I never have to find out.  Whoo Lordy.

f/8, 1/8s, ISO 200.  PP-SIYH, dodge catchlights

Just a smirk.

I was changing Colt yesterday and snapped this shot of him when I was done.  I just love the little smirk!  I’m lucky, he’s a really smiley baby.  I have been playing with my 50mm prime lens lately, trying to get better at manually focusing.  I wish I’d remembered that this lens isn’t an AF lens on my camera.  What a dolt.  I hate manually focusing.  I thought my eyes were better than this, but I think I need to get them checked.  Ohhh, how I’d love to upgrade my camera.  *sigh*

 

 

F/1.8, 1/25s, ISO 100, 50mm prime.  PP- Clorix, Cooling filter, web sharpen, dodge catchlights.

Tradition.

When I was pregnant, my mother in law gave me an outfit that my husband had worn when he was an infant.  He even had his picture taken in it when he was 3 months old.  It’s a white knit onesie with blue trim and a belt with pom poms on the end.  Honestly, it’s cute…and it’ll be a perfect blackmail picture when my son runs for President.  I figured that I’d start a tradition with this outfit, and take his picture in it, too.  I thought I’d even try to recreate the same pose, too. Well, Colt can’t hold himself up with his arms quite yet, so he had to lay in a basket.  Pics came out cute, and I even got a couple of smiles.  Hope my MIL likes them.

f/4.5, 1/60s, ISO 200, 18-55mm @ 18mm

PP- SIYH, contrast boost, crop, dodge catchlights

I’m really not that smart.

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself how I come up with the settings for each picture, right?  I promise, i barely know what I’m doing, but when I explain this to you, you’ll thank me for it being so easy.

I just meter, and set my settings for the correct exposure.  That’s it.  Nothing special, no lists to remember, no particular rules to live by.  Just…metering.

Okay, there are rules, but they depend on what you’re trying to achieve artistically.  Par exemple, if I’m trying to freeze motion, I know I need a faster shutter speed.  Therefore, I set whatever shutter speed I want (manual mode, of course…always use manual), set my ISO, then point the camera at what I’ll be shooting, meter, and adjust my aperture until the meter says I have a correct exposure.  Easy as pie, I say.  It’s helped me tremendously in getting my exposures correct.  Now, you can throw all that to the wind if you want to get artsy fartsy with you pictures, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.  Just remember that the meter is your friend, and it’s tres useful, so use it!

Making a silhouette

One of my class assignments was on making a silhouette.  I’ve always thought that silhouette pictures were pretty cool, so I was happy to oblige.  I figured it would be much harder than it actually was, which was easy.  The hardest part is figuring out the exact window of opportunity in order to get it just right.  I gave it a shot at sunset instead of sunrise, because well, I like my sleep.  I haven’t been able to play with trying again since this shot, but I will now that I know how easy it is to do.  You just have to remember to put your subject in front of the sun or you’ll get the lens flare on the pic.  

I call this one ‘Father and son’.  I love how you can see my husband’s smile.  Very cool.

 

f/11, 1/80s, ISO 100, 18-55mm @ 55mm. PP – blacked out his feet a little bit

Can you write my name with that?

My husband is starting a new company with his cousin.  An engraving company to be exact.  He wanted me to come out and take pics of the laser while it engraves. “Suuuure” I say, knowing that it will be a huge waste of everyone’s time, b/c trying to catch a laser beam is like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.  So I go out, lug all my gear and set up in front of the machine.  Mind you, it’s in a room with no windows (bye natural light, I’ll sure miss you), backed into a dark corner, and the only lighting is a very green and ugly flourescent light. Ah, heaven.  Fortheloveofallthat’sholy, God help me on this. I took 127 pictures and came up with about 4 that I liked.  But then, I did get a jewel out of it.  I’d like to say that it was due to my mad photographic skilz, but no.  Sheer, blind, dumb luck.  It turns out to be one of my favorite pics.  Ever.  And I do believe it was engraving ‘Jen rocks’ on a piece of stainless steel.  How cool is that?

By the way, when my instructor critiqued my photos for this assignment, he said that this photo was phenomenal, and that he’d put it in his portfolio if it was his.  Holy crap!  Well that’s a feather in my hat, for sure! *squeal*

 

f/5.6, 1/25s, ISO 400, 55-200mm @ 200mm.  PP- blacked out a little area around the laser beam, boosted the blue saturation, crop