Monday, April 25, 2011

Pet Photo Challenge


I snapped this picture of my hubby a few weeks ago.  Those of you who follow me on facebook have probably seen this one.  I LOVE IT!!  The crop, the light, the color - it all works to make this amazing picture.  I debated about entering my favorite one of our Chili-dog as a baby riding around in Dan's pocket.  Her eyes are so sad and mysterious in that one.  It's really cute, but haunts me and saddens me after what happened.  This picture is the opposite.  It's a fresh start and makes me intrigued in the picture.  I want to see more.  It's also one of the 1st pics I took with the new D3.  The ISO capabilities on that camera are amazing!  The puppy's face is in the shadow, but I have not lost any of the details.  I also think my hubby looks incredibly sexy in this pic!!  That's not always an easy task for a busy father of two young kids.  I love this picture so much that I ordered a metallic print of it to hang in our bedroom.  Yup!

So here it is.  My iheartfaces photo challenge entry.  Wish me luck!  I hope I make it farther this week.  I love checking out all the different perspectives and interpretations of the photo challenges each week, and some of the winners have had some truly stunning entries.  So head on over there and check it out: http://www.iheartfaces.com/


 

Pet Week

I always have all these wonderful ideas in my head of lengthy blog posts I want to write, photo tutorials, and photoshop before and after examples.  But I'm pooped.  The children are taking up about 95% of my time and our dogs are taking up another 4%.  That means I'm spending that remaining 1% sleeping and trying to squeeze in photography.  Yup.  That's it.  It's bad when even other moms start asking me, "When do you sleep?"  Well, I don't know.  And here I am yet again with no sleep.  (This time it's thanks to sick children.  Asthma is dangerous when combined with bronchitis.)  So my lengthy posts about the photography business and editing ideas are out the window.  Hopefully I can revisit it on a day when I have gotten all 40 of my winks.

Add to this a ton of computer problems, and I think Monday just smacked me in the face.  My old, ancient laptop that I LOVE has Vista on it.  It needs to come off and be replaced with Windows 7.  Only I can't find the disk for one of my photo editing programs, and it is too expensive to lose it.  So I keep dealing with crashes and the slowness of it all while being frustrated.  Then my hubby went to install Adobe Lightroom on here, and I don't have enough space to do it.  It all needs to be wiped clean and then I can start over. 

So in the meantime, I have been using the hubby's computer.  (Much to his disliking.)  Well, it turned on and gave me an internal drive error!!! DOH!!!  No idea why.  Dan pulled the hard drive out and it is working properly, so all of our pics and everything else is safe.  Whew!  (And yes, we do back up everything - multiple times.  But still!)  Only my hubby can usually fix these sort of problems pretty quickly.  It's one of his hobbies.  However, this one has him stumped.  Fingers crossed he can get it taken care of so I have access to Lightroom again by the end of the week.  Thanks Monday for a great start to the week.


Of course one way to cheer up is to look at beautiful pics of puppies!  How can anyone be frustrated or upset when you look at these faces?  Yes, it is that time of the week for another http://www.iheartfaces.com/ photo challenge.  I am determined to win one of these things!!  In a house with 4 dogs, there is no shortage of pet photographs.  And yes, some of them have come and gone, so if you count you'll see more than 4.  And a few were just visiting.  Oh how I miss my fury babies in heaven!  They are all certainly my best friends.
 













So which one is a winner?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Wind Challenge Runners-Up

Here are my other pics that I considered for entry in this week's challenge.  It's a bit strange to see them all put together in this fashion because there is no consistency to the edititng.  Some of them were meant to be individual portraits, and the dandelion portrait is part of another set that I did with my kids a few weeks ago.  So colors, textures, and style are all over the place. 

I seriously debated submiting the dandelion picture, and that was even my husband's first choice.  However, there were many entries that looked like this, or were at least similar in concept, so I thought it was best to avoid this.  I also love the one with Mackenzie's hair blowing all crazy!  Her expression is great, but again, this seemed to be a common theme.  In the end, I still chose one with blowing hair, but the way the swing cuts diagonally across the picture made it interesting.



Then there is the Super DrewMan.  He is so stinkin' cute!  Look at this face in this pic!!  I love his expression and almost entered this, but I didn't feel his cape showed enough "wind".  I even offered to get out a fan to help blow it, but he said Super DrewMan was fast enough that he didn't need a fan!


This led to my lil super hero then running around in circles. 

This was my first choice for the competition since he really had that cape a flying!  Dan disagreed because you can't see his face clearly.  Typing this blog post, I almost wish I could change entries because I have fallen in love with this picture all over again.  It just screams childhood innocence to me.  It also looks very different from some of the other entries. 

This set is just too cute!  His cape, his super hero shirt, and his lack of glasses make me giggle.  (Ya know, Superman doesn't wear his glasses when he flies Moooom!)




Then there is this pic:


For some reason where we live, we hardly ever get wind.  Really.  Unless there is a storm a comin', it is just hot, humid, and calm.  I thought about flying balloons, and flying kites, but our lack of wind makes any kite flying attempts a disaster.  Then I thought about Mila's Daydreams.  (I think a lot of the pics are taken down off of her blog now b/c of copyright issues :( but they were these amazing pics taken from above while her baby daughter napped.  She used fabric to create these great scenes.  Check it out.)  I thought it would be a brilliant idea to try this with my kids.  HAHAHA! Right!  My kids wiggle and move. 

I spent a bit laying this whole thing out thinking I could make "fake wind" and create the illusion that it was blowing.  Of course I'm doing all this while my hubby is laboring over washing the cars.  My kids, who normally love to take pics, were much more intrigued by getting to play in the water and "help" wash the cars (aka squirt anything and everything in sight).  There was no lying still for pics.  See Kenzie's wet hair??  Ya, I got 2 clicks.  That's it.  2 crummy shots with Kenzie making a face in one, and Drew making a face in the other.  And then they were up and back in the water.  Ah, such is life, right?  Even with the faces, and the wrong angle, I still LOVE the colors on this pic.  Can we say my new D3 rocks!!!??? (Oh ya, more on that later.)  Again, I almost submitted, but Dan thought it was awful, so I didn't submit it.  So much stress for a little photo challenge! 

So here is my hodpodge collection of pictures.  I love them all.  I love my children.  And when anyone asks us what did we do over the weekend and we say, "Nothing really.  The usual."  This is what we are doing. 


Monday, April 18, 2011

Wind Photo Challenge


Ah, yes, the redhead always wins when it comes to photo challenge selections!  She is the most vivacious, beautiful creature with blue-green eyes that sparkle and curly red hair that never ceases to amaze me.  It's like someone put pure sunshine into a soul and created the Kenzie Kay.  She is just as beautiful and free spirited on the inside as she is on the outside.  I feel so blessed to have her in my life. 

It was certainly a tough call this week, and my Super DrewMan almost won running around in his homemade cape, but the red hair really shows the wind blowing.  I love my animated son's facial expressions and silliness, and I will have to show them next in a runner up post because they are just precious too.
 
So here is my iheartfaces photo challenge for the week.  There are already some AMAZING pictures up in the photo challenge and you really should head over there and check them out.  I have learned so much in a short amount of time from my involvement over there on their site and in their community.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

A Very Disney Engagement

 This is Tenille and Kevin.  Tenille was one of my roommates in college forever ago at FSU. (Wait!  Did I just say forever ago?  I meant yesterday.  Really. I am not getting older.  I am not getting older.  I am not getting older.)  I had completely lost touch with her for years after Dan and I were married and moved to SWFL.  Thanks to the power of
we were reunited and discovered we didn't live that far away from each other.  We also don't live far from Disney either!  Having a love of ALL THINGS DISNEY, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph her engagement pictures there. 
I was really hoping for some great weather that day.  In fact, we were supposed to have sunny, warm weather.  Instead we got cold, dreary, rainy weather.  Did someone forget that this is supposed to be FL??  Ugh!  It made shooting a bit difficult, and we ended up waiting around a bit and missing some of the best light.  BUT this was the first time I got to use my 50mm lens for the studio and my flash on the light stand and off camera, and I couldn't have been happier with the results.  We also snuck in a few family pics along the way, and their 3 kids were so adorable, well behaved, and helpful.  I probably should have given them a paycheck by the end of the night for all of the tripod/lightstand/purse/bag/camera toting they did for me.
I adore these pictures and was so happy for the opportunity to do them. 
 It was a blast and I can't wait to go back and do it again.  I feel a trash the dress session coming there after their New Year's Eve wedding...
 



































You can see all the pics from their session in my gallery.