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