As I’ve been filling up the calendar with sessions for October, I’ve had a few people ask about what they should wear.  My recommendations are pretty simple:

• Comfort
• Casual
• Please, NO matchy-matchy, ‘lets-all-wear-the-same-white-sweater-and-blue-jeans’ outfits

It’s pretty simple to pull together coordinating clothes for the whole family that don’t match exactly but that go together well.

To help you out and give you some ideas, I’ve decided to post some suggestions on the blog every Wednesday.

I’ve still got some slots open in October and November for my free fall sessions.  Email me if you are interested.  I’d love to take your portraits!!!

This one just happens to be home with me all the time.

Today we scouted out some local parks looking for possible portrait locations.

And had some down-time at home…

(I know.  He changes outfits several times throughout the day.  The laundry is never-ending)

Look for my first “official” photography promotion the first of October…

Quite a challenge this week!

This little guy was extremely underexposed.  This happens to me all the time, especially when I forget to check my settings when moving from outside to indoors. Color fixing is tough when something is this underexposed.  But I did my best.

Here are my plays:

In CS4 I opened a curves adjustment layer.  I touched the white eye dropper tool on the white stripe on his t-shirt.  And the black eye dropped sampled his eyeball.

Then I sampled 4 spots on his skin and did some color adjustments in curves until he read and looked better.

Tweaked colors in color balance adjustment level

Adjusted contrast with curves

Filtered for noise reduction until it looked smoother

‘Color’ edit I used MZ XP colorful action

‘B&W’ edit I used The Secret Actions Black and White complex and pretty

‘Flare’ edit I used two different flare textures from Patti Brown’s Kaleidoscope collection

That’s it!

To see more edits, head on over to iheartfaces.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Today’s photo comes from the animator’s wife.  I’ve never known the animator’s wife to produce a single photo that needs fixing, this one included.  But it was fun to play around with anyway.

Here’s the original:

My workflow (in CS4) went a little something like this:

Levels adjustment to brighten it

Curves color adjustment for skin

Brighten teeth and eyes with soft white brush on 15%

Sharpen the eyes with sharpen filter then masked for just the eyes

burned and dodged her hair and the background a little

added my favorite texture MCP’s Sweet Light on hard light at 50% opacity

Added some fun sun flare brushes

Sharperned the mask

Sharpened for web

Flipped vertically just for fun

After:

I don’t like the B & W  nearly as much.  She has such beautiful coloring that gets lost in the B &W.  But I wanted to practice my black and white conversion so I did.

Go head on over to iheartfaces to see more edits.

I’m washing, packing, and cleaning furiously so I can hop on the plane to Dallas this afternoon to attend this!

All by myself!

I’m so nervous!!! And excited!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

When we were just married and planning a family, my husband and I had visions of Saturdays spent at the ball field watching our little ones running after the ball, passing, shooting, and scoring goals.

Now, 14 years later, our first 3 kids have, at one time or another, played soccer.

And each one of them, in turn, discovered each individual blade of grass, or butterfly fluttering by, or interesting cloud formation, to be much more fascinating than the game of soccer.

This year it’s Will’s turn.

We had high hopes for him, being our last kid and all.  We were prepared for a little 5 year-old aggression.  Maybe a little fire!

Last Saturday was his first ‘official’ game.

Guess what I caught him doing between plays…

Contemplating…

the blades of grass.

sighhhh….

Go on over to iheartfaces and check out the other contemplative photos this week.

HAPPY MONDAY

is the name of Will’s soccer team.

Guess who came up with that…

with me.

And my camera…

Happy Wednesday!

I think I’m getting in just in the nick of time this week.

School is well under way by now.

The kids are in 4 different schools this year.

I have 2 days a week when I have 4 whole hours, in a row, to myself.  Yay!

Life is good.

Go check out some other back to school photos at iheartfaces.

Happy Tuesday!

Move along.

My blog is in the serious depths of an identity crisis of which I, alone, can’t fix.  So I’ve recruited someone far more knowledgeable in this kind of stuff than I and we’re in the process of reinventing the blog.

Come back a little later for a look.

No rubber-necking now.

Move along, move along…