Wow! What a weekend!

Let me say that again.. Wow! What a weekend! You may have seen my post awhile back about the class I signed up for. Well, after much anticipation...the weekend finally came! And let me tell you...Debbie did not disappoint.

We meet on Friday night and got all our camera's set to the setting Debbie wanted us to shooting in on Saturday. Which were apeture priority and manual...yes, I said manual! We used the manual setting a lot! It was awesome.

We meet at the Dallas arboretum early on Sat. and got started. In an out of the way corner, we started with some flowers. During this our focus was really working on our depth of field. Trying to make sure the flower was in focus while blurring the background.


The 2 I have chosen to upload have a preset applied from Pixel Fairy Princess.


The presets give them the dreamy fairyland appearance.

Also attached are some of my favorite ones from the model shoot we did. Ana, our model was amazingly easy to work with. Very professional requiring little to no direction from us.

Another contest...

I am entering one of the pictures of Kylie for this weeks silhouette contest. This picture is straight out of the camera with no editing....

Holiday off....I think not!

Another graduation collage...Case made it through!


How about a pet project?


Meet Gracie Mae...

This is the comparison sheet for a minor photo restoration project that I did today. I love working with old photos. I didn't want to over work it and make it completely new again. Just removed the scratches and some stains. I left in a tad of the unevenness caused by time and wear.

Jaiden Thomas

Some of you may remember meeting Jaiden's parents here back before he made his big appearance. Well, today I got to take his first "real" pictures. They weren't really planned so his Nana is a little disappointed about his attire, but I don't see what the problem is...I think he is adorable! But as we all know, if Nana ain't happy ain't nobody happy...so we will soon be having another session where Nana will be picking the outfit! ;)

Return appearance

Trevia's Aunt requested a collage as her graduation gift to him and to be displayed at the get together they are having for him. I love the manly feel it has. My goal was for it to have a bulletin board feel, so I added the snapshot white frame look and the staples.



I can't wait for him to see it...

Photo Contest

Well, I struggled and struggled trying to decide which photo to use as an entry for a photo contest at I Heart Faces. They are publishing a book of all the winners. I finally decided I wanted to go with one of my newest favorites (I have too many favorites) and submit one of Bella. Wish me luck! The winners will be announced next Sunday. To see it full screen, just click the picture and then the back button to get back here...

My entry...

"I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites."

Mary's Impromptu Mother's Day Session

This is a first time appearance of this little cutie on my blog...

Ms. Mary did really well..

Bella Jade

You may think you have seen this dress on here before...and you would be correct. This is Bella and she is the cousin of Brighton who was recently featured here. These pages were designed to coordinate with each other to be printed and hung side by side on the wall or placed in a photo album or scrapbook.



Just look at this girls' eyes!

Brighton

Lil' Miss Brighton's photos taken on Easter of this year...

The learning never ends...

Well as with anything we do, there is always more we can learn. I am soooo excited about a photography class I am taking the weekend of May 31st. Debbie Layden of Pixel Fairy Princess Photography is coming to Dallas and I will be spending pretty much the whole weekend with her. Her classes are not like some of the ones you see where you and 500 of your closest photographer friends show up and squeeze into a room too small, fight for the front row seats and strain to hear and take notes of what the oh so talented photographer is saying.

In this class we will actually USE our camera's with Debbie right there beside us to give us tips and pointers as we go. We will work with a live model and we will learn more about her post processing techniques as well. Anyone want to buy me CS4 for Mother's day tomorrow? Debbie will be teaching us to use lightroom...I am ignoring the must have it feelings welling up inside me for now!

On another note, the proceeds from her classed are donated to a orphanage in China! How is that for a RAK? (Random Act of Kindness) I can't wait til the end of the month!

Trevia Project

My day today was spent making Senior Graduation cards for Trevia. This was another project involving a picture that I did not take. While this young man is quite good looking, for some reason he had the "cool dude" squint going on in the picture I was provided. This may be cool for his school buddies, but his relatives want to see his eyes. So I did a little work on the picture before I did the card.
Below is the end result and this will be used as his graduation announcement. You might be saying that some important details are missing..and you would be correct. In an effort to keep from taking away from the size of the picture on the card, we decided to add a second sheet containing all the necessary particulars. This keeps the picture a nice viewable size on the card and also keeps the card more like a senior picture that could be framed or placed in a photo album by friends and family. This was printed as a 4 x 6. Thanks for looking!

A new editing project...

One of my newest favorite things to do is edit photos. It doesn't have to be photos that I have taken necessarily. I just really enjoy taking a good photo and making it into a great photo. In this project, I have taken my daughters new school pictures and worked on them. I have to say these are 10 times better than her last school photos, but there is still some room for editing. I have attached the edit comparison for your review!