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!