A little natural light

In the past I've shown you how I setup my shots and I think all of them were examples of my late night shots using my handy bedside lamp. However, I don't always wait until the late hours of evening to get my shots...actually I typically shoot during the day, utilizing the natural light flooding in my backdoor window. Normally I just use the table cloth on my table as the backdrop, its a nice neutral color and fades quite nicely into the background, but this time I wanted something on a fresh white backdrop, so of course I pull out my handy dandy...FOAM BOARD! I'm telling you this stuff is great and tucks away in my coat closet and is a super cheap way to manipulate light.

So, here is the setup...

Sometimes a little shadow works well with a photo and gives it the creative feel you are going for, but for my photo the natural shadow lost some of the detail on the cars..so I simply used the third piece of foam board (laying under my phone) and placed it on the left side of the cars at an angle to soften the shadow...here is the resulting photo...

Now if you follow the Project64 blog that I host you've seen this gray colored photo, but if you don't follow Project64 you should head on over there and check it out. There are more photos on my color reveal post using the same exact set up, one with more shadow (a result of not using the third piece of foam board). This week we are accepting submissions for robin's egg blue and hunting for gray to share on Sunday. I hope you join us in our colorful journey!

On another note, I received two blogger awards over the last two weeks from two of my favorite bloggers! Tammy Lee Bradley from Bliss and Folly passed the Stylish Blogger Award along to me and Faith from Simplicity awarded me with the Trendy Treehouse Trendy Blogger award! Thank you ladies for including me among a list of wonderful ladies! I am honored and grateful for your kindness!



Well, the rules for the trendy blog award are to tag 10 more bloggers with this award and for the stylish blogger award the rules are 1. Link back to the person who gave you the award, 2. Share seven statements about yourself, and 3.Award fifteen bloggers....

I'm going to modify the rules just a little bit and pass BOTH awards on to 10 bloggers. while I could easily pass this along to many bloggers, several of my favorites were on Tammy and Faith's lists (I linked the post about the awards to their names, so go check out their lists of fabulous bloggers).

Alright, I've linked back to the lovely ladies who awarded me...now seven statements about myself...hmmmmm....

1. I'm a mom to two crazy energetic monkey boys that are both under the age of four and drive me crazy most days, but wouldn't trade being their mother for anything!

2. I'm currently on the road to finally losing four years of to busy to take care of myself my boys are two years apart baby fat before my 10 year high school reunion this summer, wish me luck, there's a lot of neglect to this young body of mine!

3. I'm currently turning my hobby into a business

4. I hate doing dishes and pretend not to see them pile up in the sink

5. I secretly like watching the tv shows meant for kids and tweens

6. I have yet to finish my 2 year old son's baby scrapbook, but have all the pictures printed off

7. I dream of traveling the world, but love cuddling on the couch just the same!

Now, to pass the awards along...some are bloggers I've followed for awhile, but many in my list are new bloggers I found through Project64 that have joined my journey though the crayola box!

ArtsyBelle

Allie Photography

Diane's Everyday Moments

Kristin's Notes

No Wooden Spoons

Katie Lloyd Photography

The Bonnie 5

Home on North Fillmore Street

Traci Lord Photography

Blue Elephant Photography

Hope you all have a great day!

Brooke

A little Valentine fun...

I have been busy to say the least! We are only 4 weeks in at Project64 and I think it  is finally starting to flow a little bit better. Besides trying to get buttons made and answering questions for P64, I've been doing assignments for Faith's Simplicity e-course (which I'm behind in, but almost caught up) and this past weekend I spent the whole day Saturday doing photo shoots!! It's weeks like these, when I have four sessions to edit and a huge to do list that I'm glad I chose to do 52 weeks of photos instead of 365 days!

Well, one of my shoots this past weekend was more of a fun shoot with my beautiful niece. She has become the face of my emerging business. Mostly because she such a good willing model and always up for my crazy ideas and can I say that after I got home and started looking at those photos, that the face of my business is starting to grow up! Its not a bad thing, just one of those things that make you realize you are getting older! Anyway, back to the shoot...we did some fun Valentine photos and I thought I'd share some with you!

 This one was my favorite from the session and I'm linking it up with Sweet Shot Tuesdays

Made this for the Vday photo card challenge at Paper Mama, I made some more that were wallet sized for her to pass out as her Valentine's to her friends!

Don't forget to head on over to Project64: Out of the Box, we are accepting submissions for Chestnut and hunting for Robin's Egg Blue! I also made some new buttons for the weekly favorite and monthly winners and we are looking for any sponsors who might have an item or product they'd like to donate for the monthly winner giveaway item.

Hope everyone has a sweet day!

Brooke

A day in the life...

One of the assignments for my photography SLR e-course was to capture a photo the communicates a day in my life. Well, this the photo I submitted...

My days are filled with little boys and a crazy dog! Oh, and yes, when I took these last week we still had our Christmas tree up, but thanks to a three day weekend and having my hubby home it is now packed away and waiting for next Christmas. For the assignment we were suppose to share one, but with a crazy little boy who runs when the camera comes out, one was out of the question! So I created this little dippy, including our family dog who shortly after had the stuffing from that toy all over the floor!

Well, I had more from that day, so I thought I'd share them here!

The light on our dog Kira was great that day, I couldn't help but get some of her too, after all she's part of the family too! All of these are SOOC, I liked them the way they were so I left them alone, something I'm trying to do more often.

My youngest watching the guys across the street build a new house. Poor little guys is a little under the weather here and his eyes are a little watery, but he's doing better now.

What squirrel!?! Ok maybe that is my trick to getting her to pose, it drives her crazy but it made for a good pic.

Another quick snap of the camera shy little boy! I'm definitely getting faster, it's all about patients and faking him out by making him think I'm taking pictures of the dog.

I love these pictures, they are definitely real, no posing here, well except for Kira looking for that squirrel. The are SOOC and moment from our everyday, playing with hats, watching the builders, hanging out in our pj's, and just taking it easy. These moment make me happy!

That's why I'm linking up with Sweet ShotTuesday's and Simplicity (the challenge is happiness)

Hope you have a great day!
Brooke

Getting back to basics...

A while back I signed up for Faith Raider's photography e-course, and well, now it's here! It kind of snuck up on me, I had filed away the date in my mind and turned my focus onto lumberjacks, turkeys, monkeys, and jingle bells. Class began this week and so far I've quite enjoyed it!

I like that, even though I have a pretty good grasp on ISO, shutter speed and aperture and it's relation to a good photo, the class has made me slow down and ACTUALLY pay attention. Making me slow down and get the best picture I can in camera...

Well, I just thought I'd share one of my pictures from this week in a little side by side comparison...

For the class we only submit the SOOC version, but I loved the picture so much I just wanted to give it a little tweak...and honestly I really did only tweak it slightly. I gave it a PW boost and lowered the zing layer to 20% opacity then gave it a little PW lovely action at 20%opacity, that's it, oh and I cropped it slightly.

Then I thought, "Hey, I haven't don't a texture in awhile"...so here's the textured version!

Here is my SOOC collage I submitted for my homework

And a few more edited versions of my favorite images from my session with our beat up pear

So there you are! Hope you are having a great week! Don't forget about Project64:Out of the Box, we will be sharing our Carnation pink photo finds and open the linky for you to share yours on Sunday. We will also be featuring our favorite Yellow Green from the submission last Sunday!

Out of the Box: Yellow Green

Project64: Out of the Box is officially started! If you haven't heard about it you can read about it here...

This week our color was Yellow Green...

I hunted for my color everywhere, came up with a couple of ideas, but when I went over to my parents house to help celebrate my mom's birthday, there was a bunch of limes whose rind wasn't quite colored right. Almost like they were faded and it just so happened the color was pretty darn close to yellow green. Good thing my dad ALWAYS has limes on hand!

So, what do you think? I've been playing around with light and solid color backgrounds lately and I liked how this one turned out...I liked the moody shadows that fade into the background.

I thought I'd share my set-up again, don't mind my messy desk or the bad photos of the set-up.  The setup below is the exact environmental settings I used to take the lime pictures. It was night and the only other light available was the light from the ceiling fan. Just like my pictures of the box of crayons, I did not use a flash on the lime photo, just the lamp you see here. The first photo I took of the lime had super dark shadows, so I used the white foam board to bounce some light onto the left side.

I took the pictures straight on and I used my 35mm 1.8 set at f/2.4, 1/30 shutter, ISO200. I used the Incandescent White Balance setting. In Elements I did a little contrast boost and slightly faded the surface under the lime into the background.

So there you go, I am really having fun experimenting with light, so this week I choose my lime photo as my sweet shot for Sweet Shot Tuesdays! Also, don't forget Darcy is hosting a group on Flickr for those who are attempting to complete a 52 week project. I'm one of the moderators, so if you've already joined the group I may have already left you some love on your photo!

 

If you have a Yellow Green photo to share you can link it up until Saturday over at Project64's blog.

The new color for week two is Carnation Pink and the linky for it will open up on Sunday, Jan. 16th, 2011. If you need a visual for the color head on over here.



Hope everyone has a great day!
Brooke

First snow

Our first snow finally arrived! I know we are behind alot of you out there, but our poor state is a little slow when it comes to winter weather. While I hope it doesn't turn bad, it truly was a beautiful thing to watch while cuddled up on the couch. Me and my little family spent most of the afternoon watching the large fluffy flakes twirl and dance as they fell from the sky. It wasn't a heavy snowfall, so we had to wait awhile for the fluffy stuff to start to show it's white blanket on the ground. There is something kind of cozy about spending a Sunday afternoon in your pj's with your family while the snow quietly falls.

Some good quotes I found about snow, just thought I'd share...

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” -John Ruskin

"Kindness is like snow-it beautifies everything it covers"

"The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event"

"When it snows, you have two choice: shovel or make snow angels"

"The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show."

Project64: Up and running!

Just stopping in to let you all know that Project64 is up and running! We have posted our first weeks photos and the linky is open so you can share yours too!

Creatures, past and present...

The upcoming theme over at Mortal Muses gave me a chance to feature some pictures that I rarely share and blog about. All the creatures big and small that I've come across since I started on this digital photography journey.

Some I meet at the zoo when my lovely Nikon first entered my life...

Others were late night visitors in my garden...

Some were sunbathing on my back porch...



Some are recent finds we found during our visit to the aquarium...

Then there is a familiar face, name unknown, that stops by for a visit when we go out to play...

And of course, there is the warm little body I kick out bed every morning, who strings animal stuffing all over my living room floor,  greets us with wagging tail when we return home, and is loved by the whole family.

Don't for get to head on over the Mortal Muses to see their musings. Also if you want to see some more creature features or submit your own then head on over to their flickr group.

Have a great day

Brooke

White on White Flourish

Just wanted to participate with Faith over at Simplicity and Meagan over at Madeline Bea. The photos challenge over at Simplicity is "white on white" and The Sunday Creative prompt is "flourish". Well it just so happens I have a cute little white Fleur de lis that fits the noun part of the definition of flourish...an ornamental touch or decorative detail. Here's my take!

Be sure to check out the other entries here:

 

I also wanted to share/participate in something I read tonight over at Ramblings and Photos by Ashley Sisk...Its about paying it forward and I think we all need to a little more of that! This particular pay it forward idea originated here, now I'd like to follow Ambrosia and Ashley's lead! Here's the details

Pay it forward 2011: I promise to send something handmade to the first 3 people who leave a comment here.

To be eligible, you must also post this in your blog,offering the same thing to 3 other people.

The rules are that it must be handmade by you and it must be sent to your 3 people *sometime* in 2011.

I will try to get all my stuff (most likely a print or set of note cards made from my photos)

out by the end of January but definitely no later than the end of February

 at the latest so that I don't forget about it!I suggest if you are playing along you give yourself an

approximate *due by* date so the people that signed up aren't waiting terribly long.

I think this is a great project and hope you join in! Ready, set, GO!

Have a great day,

Brooke

P.S. I decided to add a weekly linky to project64 page for those of you who might want to join our colorful journey...all the details can be found here: