This week at I ♥ Faces they are taking a break from the usual contests. This week they wanted us to post some photos from when we first got interested in photography. As soon as I heard about this theme I immediately thought of a photo I took of Nora. I remember I had just started reading about composition and how important it was to “get close”. I started practicing that a bit and I was just thrilled with this photo I captured of Nora.

I look at it now and I am a little bit embarrassed The flash lighting is terrible and the photo is over-exposed in a bunch of places. I was so excited about her eyes, but now when I look at it, I don’t even think they are very sharp.

I was also really proud of these next two photos. I remember thinking that I had done such a good job on them. Now I look at them and I see so many places where I could improve.

The first one of Nora in her pumpkin costume is underexposed and out of focus. The framing on the second one is terrible–my subject’s face is in the center of the photo with a bunch of wasted space at the top. Also the lighting is not very good. Her face is in the dark and there are shadows and bright spots on her skin.

But it was a fun exercise to go back and look at my old photos. First it was fun to see how much my kids have grown and changed. But it was also fun to see how much my photography has changed.

Here are some of my more recent images.

This photo is similar to my first one of Nora. This one is outside, but I paid attention to the light so that I could get some good sparkle or “catch lights” in her eyes. This photo is properly exposed and very sharp. I also learned about white balance recently and started correcting the skin tones. This one looks so much better to me than that first one I took of Nora!

Just for fun here are a few more of my recent photos. I can see in all of them that I have learned how to “see the light”. Now when I take a photo I pay attention to how the light looks and how it will effect the photos. I watch to see that there will be light reflected in the eyes of my subjects because it really helps make the person look so much better. I have also gotten so much better at the framing and composition of my photos.

My photography journey has been a great learning experience. I have really enjoyed reading and learning. I hope to keep learning all the time and I hope my photography continues to improve.

Go check out I ♥ Faces to read about the photography journey of some other great photographers!

I did a photo shoot this week for some really good friends of mine. They are such a cute little family. Gage is 18 months old and they didn’t have ANY family photos. My goal was to get a good family shot of all of them. I have to say that this was a really hard shoot. Gage was so cute, but he didn’t want to do anything that we tried to get him to do. Even though he didn’t want to look at the camera, I still think we got some cute shots that captured his personality.

This one is my favorite and just shows the mood of the whole photoshoot

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to view all the Weekly Winners participants.

I can’t believe a whole week has gone by and I only posted once since the last Fix-it Friday. I am trying to be better about posting, but I guess I didn’t do a very good job this week

Here is what I did:
1) Ran Noiseware on a new layer. Lowered opacity to 25%
2) Increased the brightness using curves
3) Corrected the color using curves
4) sharpened the eyes using MCP Action’s Eye Doctor
5) Sharpened for web
6) Rotated the photo just a bit to straighten it out
7) Cropped

Here is my final image:

Go check out I ♡ Faces to see all the other Fix-it Friday participants!

I read a post from a photographer a while ago about documenting everyday life with photos. I wish I could remember where I read it so I could post the link. As I read it I realized that I have been guilty of not capturing the little things. Since I have become more interested in photography, sometimes I am more worried about the quality of my photo than I am about capturing the moments. These moments while my kids are still young are flying by. This week I tried to capture a few more of our everyday moments.

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to view all the Weekly Winners participants.

First I opened this photo in ACR. I bumped up the exposure and then used recovery to bring down some of the blown out areas on the right side of his face.

Then I opened it in Photoshop CS3. I first did a defog and then started working on the color correction. I use the CMYK method of skin tone correcting. I took a great class from Jodi at MCP Actions called Color Fixing. If you want to learn about how to color correct skin, you should definitely take her class!

Then I did a hue saturation layer to bring down some of the reds. I inverted the mask and just painted on the parts where I wanted to erase the redness.

Then I used MCP actions eye doctor to sharpen the eyes a little.

I cropped it and here is what my final results look like:

Go check out I ♡ Faces to see all the other Fix-it Friday participants!

The morning of Emma’s surgery went really smoothly. Emma woke up in the morning in a really good mood. I am firmly convinced that the surgery class was a life saver. It helped her feel so much more at ease with the whole surgery ordeal. Ian and Nora spent the night at my parents house so that we could have a nice calm morning. We all got up and got ready. Emma couldn’t eat, so Scott and I skipped breakfast too so that Emma didn’t have to watch us eat.

We got to the hospital and spent some time in a few different waiting rooms. Emma was happy and calm the whole time. She brought her surgery buddy and spent time doing one of her favorite things–coloring.

After about an hour, they were ready to take her back into surgery. They loaded her into the wagon–which she was really looking forward too.

I was a little worried that when it was finally time to say goodbye, Emma might have a hard time. But she didn’t at all. They wheeled her down the hall and we said goodbye at the “See ya later door”. She chatted with the anesthesiologist the whole time about the pictures on the ceiling. We gave her a hug, but she barely noticed that we left.

While she was in surgery Scott and I ran down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. Emma was gone about a half hour before they said she was ready for us to come back and see her. When I got back there she was still kind of out of it, but she was asking to watch TV and she already had a slushee.

The next few hours were kind of rough for her. She was crying and complaining that her throat hurt. She was also nauseated. They gave her some anti-nausea medicine and some pain meds. But it didn’t help much with the nausea. She started vomiting and pretty much didn’t stop until she went to bed that night. They kept us longer at the hospital hoping to get it under control. I think they finally realized that she wasn’t going to stop vomiting and they thought she would be more comfortable at home.

We got her home and got her tucked into our bed and put a movie on for her. She spent the rest of the day in our bed and we let her sleep with us just so we could keep an eye on her. The first day was rough. She felt terrible the whole first day and threw up until she finally fell asleep for the night.

Luckily the next day she was like a new person. She had hardly any pain and the vomiting finally stopped. Over the next few days she took Tylenol a handful of times and she was back to eating close to normal by the 3rd day.

Right now she is 10 days out from surgery. It seems like we are in the clear and that the worst is over. I know that at day 7-10 the scabs are supposed to fall off and the pain can be pretty severe again. I looked in her throat today and I can’t really see any scabs. Maybe they already fell off.

I’m really glad that we went ahead and did the surgery. I could tell the first night that her breathing was better. She slept silently for the first time in her life. She is also keeping her mouth closed and breathing through her nose. Hopefully both of these things will help her sleep and help to give her a better quality of life.

I just signed up for another free PhotoShop class. I have heard really great things about the guys who teach this class. It looks great and how can you go wrong for free.

It starts September 3rd.

You can sign up here: http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/free-6-month-photoshop-course/

Be sure to check out I ♡ Faces to see all the amazing photos that were entered in this week’s contest.

I didn’t take these photos of my kids. Unfortunately, they just don’t cooperate for me. I’d much rather photograph someone else’s kids–it is a lot more fun for everybody. These were taken by my awesome photographer friends, Katie and Dan, at Peekaboo Photos. I know I have put quite a few photos on this blog lately, I thought I better put some up of my own kids too.

I know I already posted these same photos this week, but they are still my favorites I didn’t take many more this week since Emma was recovering from having her tonsils and adenoids out.

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to view all the Weekly Winners participants.

By the way, I just created a photography Facebook page. Come check it out!