Pet Edit

Original photo. I took this picture a couple days ago during a hands-on portion of a class I taught on pet photography. I've been working with a group of wonderful homeschool students this fall. We've been studying the basics of photography. On this particular Monday we studied pets and animals in general. Several of the students brought pets to be our models. This sweet little puppy belongs to one of the students.

All the students know to watch for background distractions, but due to the circumstances of our shoot, some distractions were necessary. I used photoshop for my edits. I brightened, I sharpened, and I used brushes to take out the owner's legs and shoes in the background. This is a relatively new technique that I am trying to perfect and I am happy with the way it really makes the animal stand out. What do you think?

Pansies Are Her Favorites

My mom's favorite flower is the pansy. She used to grow them in her yard, in every color.
These particular pansies were at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
I began by sizing the photo in photoshop and reducing any noise. Voila! You have the first photo.
Then I used the Pioneer Woman's free action set #2, ran the Strawberry Fields action, and ran the faded edges action.
This is what you see in the second photo.




My mom would love to see these pansies first hand, but she's going to have to be happy with just my photos.
I think she will like these, almost as well :).

Blue Ridge Mountains Senior Photo Shoot

We met this young man a couple years ago through debate. And let me tell you - he is an excellent debater! It's been interesting watching him grow in intellect, logic, and abstractness, and also as a young man of God. Congratulations on your upcoming graduation! And thank you for switching over to Team Policy this year! :)




My daughter and this young lady tell everyone they are twins :). Actually, she is a twin - just not with my daughter. A talented debater, a sweet young lady of God, a good friend, a loving sister, and I expect one pretty terrific daughter! Congratulations on your upcoming graduation!




This is the real twin :). She just returned home from an overseas mission trip. She enjoys spending time with children, loving them, and being God's servant to them. A devoted sister and daughter - she has a real knack for drama and went all the way to national competition last year with her partner (the guy you see in the pictures just below) where they presented their dramatic performance of Finding Nemo. Congratulations on your upcoming graduation!




So, technically he doesn't graduate until next year. We were planning on doing senior pictures for his sister - who graduated last year - and he asked if we could do junior pictures, so that's what we did! Hahaha! He was so much fun! Willing to try anything - including climbing trees - which you can see in my previous post. A super sweet spirit, everyone loves him! Congratulations on being one year closer to graduation - hehehe!




Isn't she gorgeous? She is the only sister to the fellow just above. She graduated last year, so we were just catching up her pictures :). My daughter loves her! We met through speech and debate - of course - we met all our friends that way, pretty much! Congratulations on college - I understand you are doing a great job there!

From my comments I am sure you can tell each of these students participate in speech and debate activities. They are all competitors, as well. And they represent Christ every time they compete. We are members of a Christian speech and debate league. Knowing that God is a huge part of who each of these students are - I asked them to give me their favorite Bible verse. This is what I did with them:




I did not plan the order to post these verses in. I posted them in the order of the photos of the students above. Do this for me: read the verses in the order you see them in. I dare you to tell me that God didn't orchestrate this post and put these together in exactly this order.

Congratulations, Seniors! You rock! I love you! Go be awesome!

Fix-It Friday #66, I ♥ Faces

It's Fix-It Friday at i heart faces. They post an original, straight-out-of-the-camera shot for us to take and edit however we wish.
Above you can see the original they gave us this week. The immediate problems I found with the picture were the sleeve of his buddy in the shot, and the washed out tone of the entire photo.

I don't know that I like my first edit. It looks like a school photo. I edited it to a 4x6 portrait size, and did all my basic edits in photoshop. I brightened the photo, brought up the saturation, used a brush to bring out the outline of the irises, sharpened the lines in the photo, angled it a little to the left, and used mcpactions.com magic skin/magic powder action to smooth the face.

Next, I cropped the photo into a landscape 4x6, again removing his buddy from the shot, and angling our fellow a little to the left. I used the same edits as before and added to it. In mcpactions' Quickie Collection, I used the Snap action to sharpen the features up a bit more. Then with mcpactions' Bag of Tricks I used Magic Dark to take down the brightness of the face.

Then, I took that same picture and opened the Pioneer Woman's Action Set 1, and ran the lovely and ethereal action, followed by the soft and faded action.

And last, I opened mcpactions' Frosted Memories set and ran the faded edges, low res action, followed by the toasted edges, low res action. I love the way this one turned out. I think it's my favorite of the group - a little old-fashioned looking, soft and sweet. Just like I imagine the little boy to be :).

You can find out more about mcpactions HERE.
You can find the Pioneer Woman's free actions HERE.
And to see how everyone else edited this shot, or to post your own edits, go HERE.

My New Logo

Jason helped me out by making me a logo! I have a new editing program through mcpactions.com that allowed me to add this cool frame and place the logo wherever I wanted it. Isn't it nifty? Thanks, son! You're the best!

Merry Christmas Photo Cards

The morning of Bobbie and Jason's wedding, we went to a local hair salon to get Bobbie's hair styled. The salon had done a lovely job of decorating and I ended up taking pictures of the ornaments in various locations around the shop. Now that I am back home, I've been playing with those photos, editing and seeing what I could do with them. I ended up making two photo Christmas cards that I plan to email out to a bunch of people. They were really simple to make. Here is what I did:

This is the original photo I took. I opened it up in Photoshop CS3.

Next, I opened up the Pioneer Woman Action Set I, that I downloaded for FREE from http://thepioneerwoman.com. I highlighted the lovely and ethereal action and ran it.

Next I ran the soft and faded action. I like the antique/vintage look it gives.

I brightened up the photo some with the slight lighten action.

Text is easy to add using your editing program. Place it wherever you want it on your card.

Lastly, I wanted to add some texture to my card. In PSCS3, I opened filter, then texture, and selected the mosaic tiles action. This is the final product.

Easy to do. If I can do it, so can you. Go to the Pioneer Woman's blog and download her two sets of FREE actions and get started.

This card was just as easy to make. For this one though, I used actions I purchased online from MCPActions.com.

Here is the original photo from the hair salon shop.

From my MCPActions, I opened MCP Frosted Memories and ran the gold locket action.

I gave the photo some texture by running the Next Monet action.

The faded edges - high res action, does just what it implies.

Then I ran the toasted edges - low res action.

I finished off the card with some text.

Easy to do and the results are beautiful! Let me know if you try your hand at a card - we can post your results here if you'd like! Merry Christmas!