Check out the Giveaway!!

Came across this giveaway today. These camera straps are SO cute and so many other things to choose from. Join me (or not :) to try and win!!

Sugar Pop designs

Pretend and Dream,,,,,,I have a Macro lens :)

A long shot to get on topic, but using my creative side :) Playing with my little point and shoot in my flower patch. Not too bad for a point and shoot :) Thanks for looking!

Just a few from my town

Here are a couple pictures that I snapped at UNL East campus the other day. One thing I LOVE about Nebraska that I don't remember seeing much in Utah is the BIG BLUE SKY with WHITE PUFFY clouds. Seriously, the blue sky here is SO blue! I love it!! Also, love all the vegetation at the Campus. They are an Agricultural school so the grounds are beautiful!

Long time......But on theme :)

WOW IT HAS BEEN FOREVER!! I have missed the challenge that the photo of the day gives me :) I have actually been working on sunburst shots, but am completely lost. I took some pictures of my liitle sis and her hubby and tried to get a sunburst shot.

My first question: Are the red circles towards the bottom normal? Am I trying to get too much sun in the picture? I took a million pictures of this and this was the best one because the circles are off their face and not as dark as the rest.

Does anyone have some advice for taking sunburst/sunglare pictures? I would LOVE to hear it! Thanks!

Here are the settings (thanks janett)
ISO 200
SS 1/160
f 4

All I did to edit was a LAB color pop and lighten them a little.

BTW, I have missed you all! Hopefully I can get back in habit of the POTD!

Oh Baby......

......No more baby!!

So I am trying to be on theme. Since My little Baby, just got POTTY TRAINED I thought I would share that. She is 21 months old and officially a BIG GIRL. It took about 1 rough week, but it is done and it feels good!

SOOC:
JPEG Image
ISO 400
1/60
f4



And my edit. Didn't do much, so hopefully it looks better :) Couldn't figure out how to get the orange cast off her legs, oh well.




And then this picture helps me remember she is still my little baby. look at those squishy little toes! LOVE them!


Enjoy :) and thanks for looking!

Great Giveaway!

Heather Ward Photography is doing a great giveaway with Cute Like Me. Check them out and maybe you could win :)

My word it has been FOREVER! So much for a couple posts a week. Things have been crazy, we have all been sick, and well, photography was the last thing on my mind :) Anyway, I am back for the time being.
Emotions. That is the theme for the week. Well DD number 1 is FULL of emotion (more than I can handle most of the time). And she always has a big bright smile for the camera. DD number 2 is a little different. She is a lot more mild in temper, but this also means she doesn't always give me that 'big bright' smile. This is her. Just a little lift of the lips and that is good enough for her.



Excuse the poor quality of picture. It was stormy today and I didn't feel like getting out my flash, so I used 1600 ISO.

Thanks for looking!

Spring Tease

So we have had some great weather. Here is what we have been up to:

JPEG Image
ISO 200
1/500
f 7.1


MY EDIT:



Here is when I am upset that I wasn't in RAW. I had it on shade WB and it turned out.....well you can see. I tried to fix the color, but am still not happy with it. Also underexposed. The filtered sunlight is a tricky place to photograph!

JPEG Image
ISO 200
1/320
f 2.8


MY EDIT:

A few of my favorite things.....

Besides my 50 mm lens. Seriously, I love my 50mm 1.8. I could only imagine what the 1.4 would do. Anyway, these pictures were taken at about 6:30-7 with NO flash. You heard it right, NO flash. I did up my ISO, but still I would have NEVER got this with a bigger aperture (bigger number is what I am going by ;)

Here is my SOOC:

RAW Image
ISO 800
1/60
f 2
No flash, light from ceiling.



And my edits:

And of course my favorite things:

You gotta *LOVE* licking the beater! I don't care how old you are, it still tastes better off the beater!


And my other favorite, Graham Crackers with homemade chocolate frosting. And I *LOVE* how the frosting some how ends up all over the face :)

Another before and after

Hmmmmm.....I am really not satisfied with the final product. I need a different texture, but it is late and I didn't want to search anymore. Took this picture by mistake. I think that it would have some great potential. May have to work on it another day..... :)

Before


After: I think the background is too dark for the picture. Oh, well.

before and after.

So for this weeks challenge we get to post our before and after. I am so excited for this, but sad that the week is halfway over and I am just starting. It was such a warm day today, I took my girls downtown to find some fun urban areas (although we don't have the clothing to match the setting). They were very uncooperative. Here are some pictures that sums up our outing :)

Here are my camera settings for both pictures.
JPEG Image
ISO 200
1/320
f 5.6
natural light taken about 4:00 on overcast day.

I didn't do much to these pictures. It is getting late :) Enjoy and thanks for looking :)

Before:


After:
High pass sharpening, levels and curves adjustments, vignette.


Before:


After:
Same edits as above. Also dodged her face.

What a Mess!!

So my hubby bought me a new video card, hoping to enhance my pictures. Well I have finally gotten to the point that I am appreciating it (after tinkering with it and fretting over it all weekend). I am having the hardest time calibrating it. Either, my last calibration with the old card was way off or something is funky with this new calibration.

ANYWAY, please help me. For those with and without calibrated monitors how do these pictures look? I edited them, and on my screen they look good. So please tell me what you see. This is starting to sound like a beg.....pretty, pretty please help me out!

I am debating getting a calibration software. I would rather not if I can do it myself, but after this weekend I am exhausted with trying to fix this darn thing. And almost bought Spyder 2 today.

Thanks for listening and if you got this far in reading, congratulations! Here are my pictures from the other day. Let me know how they look.

One I edited with old card.


Here is a side by side comparison. First was edited with old card and old calibration. Second was with new. Which one looks better? Is either correct?




Here is my SOOC on this one. Please let me know how the exposure looks on this. I am so not trusting my computer right now.

JPEG image
ISO 400
1/200
f 2.2
Natural light coming from south window.



Here is the edit I did a few days ago with my old set up.


And this one I did a few minutes ago with my new set up.


Thank you for your help and honesty! You guys are the best!!

My poor Livvy

Here she is, so sick. Olivia does not sit still, so to see her out (and it not being bedtime) is unheard of. Unless she is really sick. Poor little girl! Thanks for all your get wells and warm wishes! You are all gems! Hope everyone is healthy :)


Aubrey wasn't near as sick, just a runny nose. So it didn't slow her down. This is the only picture I snapped of her yesterday. Not the greatest, but creative, right?! Don't know how I managed to get her eye in focus. Just a lucky shot!

Finally back

So my last post I wasn't feeling well and it only worsened over the week. So I am finally feeling good, but my little ones are now sick. The good news, I have time to put up a post. These pictures are from a few days ago, and I finally got around to posting them. When I didn't feel well Olivia and I had a Pretty Pretty Princess Party while Aubrey napped. We started with painting our nails, I even let Olivia paint mine all by herself. Don't they look lovely? By the way, my Pictures of the day are at the bottom. I just thought you would all love to see my lovely toes! :)







After, we played Pretty, Pretty Princess (the game) which Olivia won and was SO excited. When Aubrey woke up she wanted to join in the fun :)

And these are my photos for today. My two little sweeties, when they were nice and healthy :)



Aubrey's picture was a little washed out, I tried to save it :)

Also, here is the SOOC for the above picture. I was proud of the way it turned out. I think it is one of my better SOOC. I think I nailed the exposure. What do you think? Maybe I am still sick :)

JPEG Image
ISO 400
1/250
f2.2
Natural light coming from South Window, which she is facing.

Rub a Dub Dub...

Two little girls in the tub.


Today is a sick day, I am feeling a little under the weather. So I put the girls in the tub to entertain them. They always want me to make their hair 'really high' when I wash it. So I thought I would use this as my picture of the day. I do this everytime they are in the tub and have not taken a picture yet.

I have posted one SOOC, because all the picture were taken with the same settings. The rest have post processing.

JPEG Image
ISO 400
1/100
f 7.1
50 mm lens
used Nikon sb400 flash, bouncing it off the ceiling.

Picture seems to lack contrast. I find this a problem when I bounce my flash. Is this a normal problem?


Here are my edits:

I LOVE my husband

I love my husband for many reasons, but here is one of them:
This is what I came home to today. An early Valentine's present (along with my new 50mm lens). He also took me to dinner tonight, no kids. What a sweetheart! Tomorrow we will have a family Valentine with our girls. I am thinking heart shaped pizza, red bread stick, pink punch and a good movie :)

A little Sugar cookie love

So these aren't the greatest pictures, it was just one of those days. Plus Olivia wasn't in the greatest spot for lighting and I didn't feel like making her move.
This is what we got up to today, making cookies and getting belly aches from eating WAY too many! My friend and I made one batch of wheat sugar cookies that actually weren't too bad. Don't get me wrong, the full unhealthy bleached white flour version is still the best, but it felt good to eat a cookie that wasn't totally unhealthy.

Decorating cookies:


She was napping during the decorating part, but jumped in for eating them :)


And here is what was left. Of course they had to try a little of every cookie they decorated :)

We LOVE daddy

So when I asked my girls about love this is what they said. So we went to the side walk chalk to spell it out, since daddy has school late tonight.

And here is the reason I love (or not so love) sidewalk chalk:

With the post processing I had NO idea what I was doing, plus I didn't have much time. I wanted to have a little fun and make them look funky. Maybe I hashed the photos, but you get the idea :)

Also thanks to all of you for your sweet comments on little Aubrey's hair. It is starting to grow on me, she looks older, not my little baby anymore :(

Lunch time at our house

P B & J is the lunch of choice today. Gotta love that! The girls are very particular about their sandwiches. They have to have the crust cut off and one needs to have 4 square sandwiches while the other one will only eat it if they are cut into bite size pieces. So I think this fits into this weeks them of love. What else says love more than making lunch exactly how they want it :)








Also my little Aubrey. Here is her new cut. What I was afraid would happen, did happen. I was hoping the cut would enhance her curls, but instead it cut them all off. What a sad day! No more wetting her hair and heading out the door. This picture was taken right after I tried to revive the curls. Notice the above picture of her eating lunch, gone. So sad! My little girl is growing up!