Portrait Time!!!

So, this weekend was an portrait taking and editing marathon for me. It started out with my friend Amber and her little girl Breelyn. She wanted me to take some indoor studio shots of Breelyn in her Baptism dress. It was fun and she was my very first paying client, it sort of made me nervous, but I think they turned out cute.

Next, my sister Nancy came for the weekend so I could take some pictures of her cute kids. Then I spent most of the rest of the weekend editing, partly because I wanted Nancy to just take her photo's with her instead of me having to e-mail them to her, and partly because I have a busy week ahead of me and I knew I wouldn't have time later.

In addition to the photos below, I also edited some cute photo's my friend took. She did a great job taking some newborn photos of her baby and wanted me to edit them. They turned out really cute, but since they are not my photo's I won't post them here. Between editing all 3 photo shoots I think I will be glad to have a little break from editing.

So enough talk, here are the photo's I took. I had an easy job with such cute kids. I think I will stop writing and let the photo's do the talking.

Chloe

(she was a tough one to get to smile this weekend, but we still managed a few really cute shots)

Hannah

Hayden

All Three

(This was another tough assignment, there was no way I could get them to all smile and look at the camera at the same time, so we had to do a little swap with the heads.)

Breelyn's Baptism photo's

Happy Valentines Day!!!

Normally I would wait a little longer to post, but most of the photo's I took were so fitting for Valentines day I wanted to post today. These are mostly for Challenge entries I have been working on. I don't have a lot of time right now to go into details, so I hope a short description will be good enough.

This one was for a speed challenge announced last night at midnight, and due tonight at midnight. I had to shoot it today and enter it today. The theme was Valentines Day .

Title:

I can see the love burning in her eyes so blue...

The next two I shot for the rule of thirds challenge. I went with this one:

Title:

My Funny Little Valentine

This is the one I almost went with. I liked it so much I copied it for the speed challenge above. They are a lot alike but they were shot on different days.

This one is for a challenge called Photo Shop terms. You pick a term from the software Photoshop like: Layer, Highlights, Contrast, etc. And find a creative way to show them in a photograph.

My Photoshop term and title of my shot:

CROP

Here is another shot. I liked it but ended up going with the first one:

Hope everyone had a Happy Valentines Day!

Hooray! I won at last!

I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere with my little hobby. I finally won a ribbon for one of my photos! I entered this photo of Kaylee in a challenge called "Got Milk" and I got 3rd place! I got this little ribbon next to my picture and my photo is on the front page of the dpchallenge website for a whole week! So check it out http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

My ribbon winning entry:

I am also entered in two other challenges at the moment. This one is doing really well. I am a little surprised because I made a huge mistake when photographing it with my settings. It caused the photo to be really grainy. I had my camera tied to the basement ceiling so I wasn't aware I had it on the wrong setting until the photo shoot was over. I did my best to fix it in editing, but the quality just isn't right. I think its a good idea though, and probably why its getting a pretty good score. The challenge was called "what doesn't belong"

Title:

Which one of these kids is doing their own thing?

This next one is for a challenge called "leading lines" there is suppose to be a line in the photograph that sort of moves you through the photograph. I took so many pictures for this, of all sort of different subjects, and just wasn't happy with any of them. This one was finally the one I settled on. It's doing reasonably well. I actually entered a color version but this was the version I would have liked to have entered. I just couldn't get it right, and ran out of time before the deadline was up. Oh well.

Title:

Around the bend

Here is another shot of the same area, this is what it looks like in color.

This is the one I really wanted to enter. I love it! But some of the friends and mentors didn't think it fit the challenge theme well. It's kind of different but I think this would make a great wall hanging. In fact I think I am going to print this out and hang it in my front room. I love that it is neutral and will go with my decor.

Here is another one they didn't like. I like it, but not as well as the one above. Mostly because of the building in the background. I may edit it out and see what I think.

This is one I took just for fun. I was trying out a new (used) lens a friend gave me. I really played with the editing on this one. Different but fun.