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!

First Haircut

Today was my little ones first haircut. She is 20 months and I am just so excited she has hair! My first hardly had any hair and it grew VERY slowly! She did very well with the cut and actually smiled for me (which is unusual).

As you can see from the picture, we didn't cut very much off, but it sure makes her look different!

Tomorrows POTD will be with her new cut. Didn't get a good one today.

Self Portrait

I always find that self portraits are the hardest. I do much better behind the camera :) I did do the self portrait challenge earlier this year, but I always tend to do a shoulder shot (less of my face . Anyway, I saw so many great, creative self portraits, I thought I would give it a try. This is what I worked on this weekend. I used the Pioneer Womens PW's B & W action on them.
So what do you think. I actually didn't mind that my face filled the whole frame. Here is my shot at a creative self portrait :)


Couldn't decide on color or b/w version. Although I did like how the b/w blew out my blemishes :)

Another little baby

So all of my friends just had babies so I get to play with them.
I have a little game for all my POTD friends and any other followers that I might have.

Here is my problem:
All of my pictures seem to be on the orange side. Can anyone help me with this?

Here is the game plan and rules:
I am going to post the SOOC and who ever wants to play along can download it and e-mail me your fix. You need to send me all the details of what you did (being as specific as possible). The picture I like the best I will post and send them a special handmade gift from me :)
My e-mail: becky.an03@gmail.com
I need all edits 7:00 mountain standard time on Friday, February 6th.

I am hoping to learn a little from all of you on how to get rid of my orange skin tones. And if you think they look fine, let me know! Thanks for playing!!

SOOC:
RAW Image (posted as JPEG)
ISO 400
1/320
f 1.8
Natural light from north window. 2:00 PM



And here is my edit. lightened in ACR. Played with levels and curves.

Skintone correction

All of my pictures seem to have an orange glow to them, so matter how I adjust my white balance in my camera. I was searching on the internet and came across this article and I thought I would give it a try. I am on my husbands laptop (again) and these are the only pictures I have to play with. Here is my fix using his method. How does the skin tone look?

This is from my home sweet home!

So this picture doesn't really have anything to do with home, except that it was taken from my front porch. This is the first sunrise that I have seen like this. Don't get me wrong, they may happen more often, I just sleep through them or am too tired to notice :) I loved the colors! And just incase you missed it, this is a SUNRISE! It was breathtaking! It was gone as fast as it came.

SOOC:
RAW IMAGE
taken in sRGB color mode
ISO 200
1/100
f 4.5



And here is my edit. Just saturated colors more.

Taking the tip to my camera

So on 2 peas I read this post today. Wonderful post and article! Anyone interested in photography needs to read it! Anyway, I took it to my camera and this is what I got:

Here is my SOOC:
RAW image and I metered to my 18% gray card
ISO 800
1/160
f 1.8
natural light from south windows at 2:00. I also pushed her to the back of the room so I could see how much light I could get from there.



Here is my edit. (On my husbands laptop, which isn't calibrated. How does the skintone look? Too orange? Thanks!)
I lightened, sharpened and boosted color





I checked out my post on my desktop and the above picture looked WAY too bright. So I fixed it again. But it was on the laptop, so not sure what this will look like. It looks really dark on my laptop screen.