All you need is LOVE

Blurry...Boo!!!

Ice Skating

I posted a few in my last post from our ice skating adventure last weekend with my little sisters and I am still sorting through them and editing my favorites but here are a few more.

Eean and Michaela

Leonard

Meet Leonard, our now 4 year old Bengal. 

Before:

After:

Little Miss Ellie

Before:



After:

Behind the Times!!!

Holy Crap! I swear I get busy and 6 days go by before I can get a grip. We get hit with a snow storm late last week that pretty much knocked out our internet so I wasn't able to update. Then we went to Arkansas with the Inlaws and I forgot my camera, so again no updating!

Arkansas was good, we didnt do a whole lot which isnt always a bad thing. I was really surprised at how beautiful the scenery is there. Is it bad that I was expecting shacks and hillbillies? We did see our share of hillbillies at the anniversary party, but no shacks.

On a very possitive note I finally got the correct version of photoshop elements so I have been playing around with that a bit. Not as much as I would like but with school starting this week I think I will have to take it easy with the pictures.

So since I owe myself six pictures that I didnt take, I am going to post a few that I played around with in PSE. In the future I will try to put up a before and after but for six pictures that would take me forever.

My First Setup!!!!

I went out last night and bough up some fleece to try out my first setup! I hope to in the future (when I actually have money) to by a backdrop stand, but for now we just tossed the fleece over the back of two chairs and laid down some plexi-glass. This was also my first "shoot" in manual settings. I worked mostly in Aperture Priority, which worked out well. Ellie wasn't wanting to work with us, but I think that we got a few good pictures of the two of them.

These are unedited :( I received my PSE 8 today but guess what, it isn't compatible with my older Mac. So I am sending it back and giving in to an older but still very capable version. Should be here by the end of the week. Editing here I come!

Here are a few from today...

Jayden

This is Jayden, Nolee's cousin. Peyton is in the background. They came over the other day and had fun terrorizing the house. Jayden was trying to put on the antlers but kept putting them on upside down.




I took this using the speedlight since it was late so no natural light. I bounced it off the side wall. I can't wait to play around with it and my photoshop should arrive today!!!! I want to adjust the curves (I believe this is where I do it) and tone down the reds a bit and brighten it up some. I am also going to try and play around with her eyes to make them pop. Shouldn't be too hard, she has beautiful eyes!

Snow Day

At the McCauley Christmas, Uncle Shawn was telling Eean and I a story about how he went to Target and saw a sled for sale. He said that he was going to buy it but Aunt Heather said NO. Well, two seconds later Heather comes and sits down and proceeds to tell us how she went to Target the other day. She saw a sled for sale and put it in the cart, but Shawn saw the price ($17) and put it back on the shelf saying, "That's too bad, Devil really would have like it!" It was hiliarious watching him get caught in a lie!!!!


Well two days later they show up with a red sled for Nolan! So of course we had to get out and test it out.





and my favorite from the day out in the snow





Both photos are straight out of the camera with no editing as of yet. Hopefully I can get them replaced soon. I didnt have many pictures turn out from this batch. For some reason I was having a focusing issue and a lot of them are out of focus. I also had my settings wrong for half of the play session so many of them are overexposed! I should have lowered my ISO to 100-200, i would have to go back and look at the settings but I am sure that my f stop was too high as well and by high I mean too wide open, but I did want a shallow DOF. I am still learning the mechanics of what does what and how to change my settings in different situations so we will see in about a month if I am improving.

Just like Daddy

Daddy bought Nolee a John Deere tractor for Christmas and he loves to ride around on it. Most recently he enjoys pushing it to the couch and climbing on it to get onto the couch! I can not believe how smart a 9 month old baby can be. 

Again this photo is SOOC and I am still awaiting my photoshop so I have not done any editing. I want to do some layers to adjust the curves a bit. It was in the evening and I was using a speedlight, bouncing it off of the ceiling. I don't think the exposure is too harsh for using a flash. Later on in the evening I tried playing around in full manual and tried reading the exposure meter and adjusting from there. Night time in a poorly lit house to begin with is not the best time to do this, though I will take any practice that I can get!

Please for give the snot nose, I just noticed this! We are in teething hell with a permanent snotty face!

Bubble Fun

We had fun with bubbles today. Nolan loved it when they would "POP"! It was a bright spot in day filled with teething terror! I love you Goo Goo.



Picture is SOOC with only minimal cropping done. I am still waiting for my Photoshop Elements to arrive in the mail so that I can play around with some editing to enhance it and fine tune it a bit.

If you a skilled photographer of any kind and reading this, please forgive me. This photo a day blog is a place for me to hopefully grow. I chose this picture because it captured a moment for me. I know that it is not a perfect picture but I think it is an OK starting point.

I had my ISO up too high and realized this after the fact. I know that it is a bit noisy. I will also crop a bit more to help with the composition.
An updated more polished photo is to follow.