Still in Mourning

So, I am still trying to get over the death of a dear friend of mine, and it has been a little hard to pick myself up and get photographing again. Who is this dear friend, you ask? It is my beloved Laptop, more specifically my beloved laptop's hard drive. It suffered a nasty accident and my hard drive was pronounced dead, after getting two separate opinions. The horrible part of all of this is I had not backed up my photos in a really long time, so I have lost most of the pictures since I started taking photo's more seriously. Really really stupid of me not to back them up, lesson learned the hard way. Luckily most of the photos I either put on this blog or my family blog, so all is not lost. I won't be able to print anything bigger than a 5x7 but at least they are not gone forever. The moral of this story: go back up your photos now!!!!

We had a fun weekend in Zion National Park and Bryce National Park. I was able to take some amazing photos. Unfortunately most were casualties of my dead hard drive. I was only able to post a few to my portfolio on DPChallenge before my computer died. Here are two of the survivors:

The Watchman in Zion National Park

Bryce Canyon

Despite crying most of the day Monday, I was able to pick myself up and get photographing again later that week. There was a huge flock of Pelicans, around 200, all grouped together a little way of the main road where I live. I decided to walk out there to see how close I could get. I was knee deep in swampy marsh land and never could get close enough to take a decent shot. Here is the best I could do:

On Friday my neighbors thought I was crazy laying on the grass, trying to get some shots of these tulips for a challenge entry. I didn't even end up using them, I got something better today. But I still like them so I decided to post them here.

Today I took pictures of my girls in their Easter dresses. I ended up liking this one of Sydnie so much, that I decided to use it instead of the tulips for my challenge entry. The challenge is called "bokeh". Bokeh is a photographic term that means, blurred background. Really good bokeh has those circular or octaganal patterns.

Title:

Waiting

I also took photos of my other two girls. I like them as well but the focus is a bit off and they would get hammered in a challenge. Since I wasn't entering it in a challenge I took the liberty of playing around with the editing style a bit

Kaylee

Brianne

I had a lot of fun with this next challenge entry. It was an "expert editing" challenge so you have the freedom of combining multiple photos into one photo. Most of the time only one photo is allowed. For the photo below I combined 5 different photos to make this one shot. The challenge theme was "Visual Puns" a photographic play on words.

Title:

Haywire

This next one I was trying to decide whether to enter it in the "Empty Room" challenge or "Sadness" challenge. My intent was to show a girl in an empty corner in time out. It ended up looking more like a little girl who is left out of something and had a very sad feel to it. So I considered entering it in the "Sadness" challenge. I should have, it's doing okay in the Empty Room" challenge. But in hind site it is much more suited to the Sadness one.

Title:

Always Picked Last

Keeping Busy

I have started doing a little side work with my photography lately. I decided it was about time I put a price list together. If you look at the top of my blog you will see a new header entitled "Schedule a Session" in it you will see my prices and how to get in touch with me to schedule a session.

This photography stuff has been keeping me pretty busy lately. My friend Holly had me take some photo's of her cute kids. I had them edited awhile ago but wanted to try a re shoot of her littlest one. I'm glad we did he was in a much better mood the second time around and we were able to get this cute shot of him:

The rest of her cute kids:

I have also been really busy entering challenges. We have had a couple extra ones in the last couple weeks so I have been extra busy getting ready for them, shooting for them, and editing them.

This first one was my free study entry, it really is one of my favorite photos. I thought it turned out just about how I pictured it in my head. I did pretty well with it but the voters didn't seem to love it as much as I did.

title:

Alice: Through the Looking Glass

This one is sort of different. It was for a challenge called "between the neck and the knees" All I kept thinking when I was editing these is I wish I didn't have to cut off the head. I tried to figure out ways to show emotion or tell a story without seeing a face so I attempted to do it with her hands.

Title:

Just a Little Stage Fright

This last one was for a challenge called Black and White so it could be anything in Black and White. I ended up going with this one. I really liked it. I guess no one else does because it is not scoring well. Oh well you can't guess them all.

Title:

Grazing Peacefully

This was my other choice for the B&W challenge. In hind sight I should have gone with this.