I Heart Faces - Let's Hear it for the Boys

Our Father's Day dinner out (hub's favorite burger joint) and I ask to take a nice photo of the 2 of them... instead, I get this. Dumping straws full of ice water on each other's heads. It's so them though! :)


This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Fix-It Friday #103

My Fix-It Friday edit for I Heart Faces.
Original image shown at left. I do not own the copyright on this; that remains with the original photographer. Only the edit is mine.

I Heart Faces - Bright & Vivid

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

I Heart Faces - Yellow

From my Max's 3rd birthday photo shoot... lots of gorgeous yellow-ey light and grasses!
One of my favorites from the shoot (and just moments before he fell off the chair... oops!)

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

I Heart Faces - May Flowers

Up close and personal with one of my Mother's Day flowers!
I didn't even get this one from Jamie or Max... it came from the restaurant where we wet for lunch; a sweet treat for all the moms who came in!

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

I Heart Faces - Motherhood

Hey I Heart Face participants! My handsome hubby actually snapped this shot for me today, please leave him a kind word! Thanks! :)
Mother's Day. Isn't this what it's about? My amazing boys took me out for lunch and hike today, and we just enjoyed the lovely day and each other. The especially amazing thing to me is to compare this Mother's Day photo to our first Mother's Day together, just three short years ago.
I never thought this is what it would be like... and I love him more every day.

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

I Heart Faces - Slice of Life

We've had ten straight days of rain these last couple of weeks, so Max and I were desperate to get out of the house on Saturday morning! We got all of our rain gear on, boots, raincoats and hats, and headed out for a walk, splashing in every puddle between our house and the doughnut shop!
Coffee for me, chocolate milk for him, with a chocolate doughnut and some doughnut holes makes for a wonderful Mommy-Son date!

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

I Heart Faces - Sun Flare

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Stop, Drop and Shoot

The challenge is to get down (and get funky! LOL) Down to ground level.
For these, I actually set my camera on the floor, and shot from there.

February Favorite

I knew, as soon as I heard that this week's I Heart Faces was for your favorite shot of the month, that I'd choose something from this wedding.
I'm a fan of couples (and families!) who don't always take the traditional route to happiness. Like Jamie and I. We were friends for FIFTEEN YEARS before we ever became a couple. Friends since high school, it wasn't until the time was right that our lives meshed forever.
Our dear friends Ray and Jessica are much like that. They dated in high school and had a baby. She's now 19, and stood up as the Maid of Honor at her parents' wedding less than a month ago. I told you non-traditional route!
I snapped this photo moments after the ceremony, as 200+ people milled around or made their way to the bar. Musicians were tuning their instruments, hugs and high fives all around, but none of that interfered with *them*. This moment of peace between the two of them makes my heart pitter patter every time I look at it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Fix it Friday #89

Edited in Photoshop CS3

Here is the original image; it's not my shot, I only did the edit as part of I Heart Faces Fix-It Friday challenge. Copyright on the image belongs to the original photographer.

Want to see more great submissions? Head on over to I Heart Faces and check them out!

Furry and Feathered Friends

Anything but a face

My husband, making "scotch and cigar music," using his hand-built cigar box ukelele and scotch box amp. Yes, they really work, and yes, I think he's ridiculous! (In the very best way!)

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Fix it Friday #88

Edited in Photoshop CS3

• Opened in ACR and made adjustments there (adjusted exposure a bit, bumped up contrast)
• Cropped
• Adjusted brightness, contrast and saturation
  
• Added haze layer
  
• Sharpened for web

It's funny; I love this hazy sunlit look, but every time I try it on one of my own photos, I'm never happy with how it looks, but here I love it! I realize it's my issue and not the photo's, but I figured I'd give it a try with this and see what happened, and voila! Happy warm photo! LOL
Here is the original image; it's not my shot, I only did the edit as part of I Heart Faces Fix-It Friday challenge. Copyright on the image belongs to the original photographer.

Want to see more great submissions? Head on over to I Heart Faces and check them out!

I Heart Faces - Cell Phone Photo

I don't have a fancy iPhone or Android or anything, and am impatiently waiting for our contract to be up so I can replace my several years old phone... it has a camera, but it's so slow, it's hard to take any really decent pictures with it... but I LOVE having it so I can capture moments like these! Max looks *so much* like his dad here; right down to the crossed leg, it just warms my heart to see our little boy turning into a kid, and thanks to my cameraphone, no matter how laggy, I can capture unexpected moments like these!

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Rear-Curtain Flash

I read a tutorial on my photo board about how to get this effect, and thought I'd give it a try... it was super easy to do, and I can't wait to try it with a better subject that our stereo equipment! LOL
Shot with my D50 and using an SB-600 Speedlight; the flash settings were all default; the only change I made was to set my camera's flash setting to "rear," which means the flash pops at the *end* of the exposure instead of the beginning.
I set the camera to take a 3 second long exposure and pressed the shutter. I made the figure 8 shape, and then the flash popped, freezing the image in the same frame as the blurries, and as the flash popped, the shutter closed.
Ta dah! Cool light effect!

I have some ideas to do some outdoor nighttime portraits using this, but I might need to wait until we get warmer nights... stay tuned!

Larger Than Life

Max and the giraffe. Actual sizes, 37" and 8", respectively.
Composited from two images:

Fix-it Friday #87

Edited in Photoshop CS3

• Opened in ACR and made adjustments there (lightened exposure a bit, reduced the red)
• Cropped and added extra black background at the top.
• Ran Cherry Cream (freebie!) by My 4 Hens action
• Adjustment layer to darken background to solid black, masked baby back.
• Sharpened for web

Here is the original image; it's not my shot, I only did the edit as part of I Heart Faces Fix-It Friday challenge. Copyright on the image belongs to the original photographer.

Want to see more great submissions? Head on over to I Heart Faces and check them out!

Now you see it....

Now You Don't!

I Heart Faces - Red

Just a playdate at the park with some friends, snapped a couple of weeks ago. Max looks great in red, so he wears it often, and then popping out of this playground train was just a bonus!

This photo is my submission to this week's I Heart Faces challenge. Want to see more amazing photos? Click here:

Excavating King Tut

Lego man in ice; shot every 20 minutes over about 6 hours, then edited down.

Fix-It Friday #86*

*It's #86 according to the IHF website; this is the first week I've participated!


Edited in Photoshop CS3

• Opened in ACR and made adjustments there (lightened exposure a bit, reduced the red)
• Cropped and added some background to the left edge.
• Curves and Contrast adjustment layers
• Added heart background texture (Found here on Flickr)
• Added parchment texture at low opacity, masked to clear her face
• Duplicated background layer and desaturated it, reduced opacity then masked everything but her hat, to bring back some detail.
• Sharpened for web

Here is the original image; it's not my shot, I only did the edit as part of I Heart Faces Fix-It Friday challenge. Copyright on the image belongs to the original photographer.

Want to see more great submissions? Head on over to I Heart Faces and check them out!

Resolutions

Take a photo that represents one of your New Year's Resolutions, and put the resolution itself on the photo.

ETA: Featured on Clickin Moms blog!

Peeping Tom

Take a photo through an open door, preferably without the subject knowing you're there.
Due to the lack of doorways in the common areas at home, I hid at the bottom of the stairs behind a bench to snap this picture of Max playing...

Black and White Conversions

From scratch, with no actions or presets!