Here is my entry for the week:

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

I ♥ Faces is giving away a $40 gift certificate to Prop Insanity.

They have so many cute things.

I love the Cocoon Pods, which you can see here.

I’d also like to have one of these Fringe Blankets.

I hope I win!

P.S. Sorry I have not posted much in the last few days. I have been busy working on my new photography website. I’ll publish the website just as soon as I get it launched. Stay tuned!

This was a fun photo to play around with.

First I opened the photo in Adobe Bridge. I bumped up the exposure and decreased both the color and luminance noise. If I had a noise reduction program I would have used that too. I still think this photo needs more noise reduction than what I did.

Next I opened the photo in Photoshop CS3. I used the spot healing brush and the patch tool to clean up some of the flaws in the skin and around the nose.

I ran ProRetouch from Totally Rad actions and softened the skin a bit.

I sharpened the eyes a little bit, and I was pretty happy with how the photo looked.

Then I decided to play around with it a bit more and I ran some more actions from Totally Rad Actions.

Here is Prettyizer:

Grunge Rock:

And SX-70. This is normally not my style, but I liked how it looked on this photo.

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

I took this photo of my youngest daughter on her second birthday. We were camping with our good friends at Lake Powell. I made the cake at home before we left and kept it in the cooler the whole time. I knew we weren’t going to be able to do anything big on her actual birthday, but I still wanted to be able to sing to her and have a birthday cake. It was almost dark by the time we finished dinner. I love how the only light in this photo came from the candle. I love how it casts the glow on her face. I smile every time I look at this photo and remember her special birthday at Lake Powell.

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

This week’s photo was fun to work on. The little girl was so cute, and the photo didn’t need too much work. The eyes were sharp and the expression was cute. The composition needed a little bit of work, so I cropped it to make the girl the focus of the photo and to take out the distracting wall.

I opened the photo in Adobe Camera Raw. I lightened it considerably and applied some fill light. I adjusted the color and luminance noise and then opened it in PhotoShop CS3.

In Photoshop I adjusted the skin tones. I found a new way to adjust skin by called Color Correcting by the Numbers. I think it does a really good job for skin. You can see a tutorial for it here: http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=532. By the way, that site has some awesome Photoshop tutorials and lots of them are free.

Then I just boosted the contrast a bit and burned the edges slightly.

Here is what I came up with:

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

This week’s theme at I ♥ Faces is Silhouette. Unfortunately for me I already entered my favorite silhouette photo in another week’s contest. You are not allowed to enter the same photo twice. Darn! I don’t think this one is a good as the other one but it is from the same photo shoot. It looks very similar to the other one, but it is a different photo, I swear

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

This is a special week at I ♥ Faces. This week we are submitting our very favorite face photo. I ♥ Faces is putting together a Blurb book and will publish this weeks winning photos in a photo book.

I had a really hard time deciding which photo to pick. In the end, I still think this one is my favorite. I did a little more editing to it, and now I think it looks much better.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

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

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

Here is my photo for this week’s theme: laughter

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

Today at I ♡ Faces they are having a special day. Instead of the regular Fix-it Friday, where I edit one of their problem photos, today I can enter one of my own and get constructive feedback from the pros.

I had a hard time deciding between two photos, but I finally settled on this one of my niece. I think this is a pretty nice photo, but I still think the skin needs some editing. I especially think the skin between her eyes needs some work to take out the blue. I just couldn’t get it to look natural. Maybe a new crop would give it a little something?

I took this photo in my living room in my makeshift studio. I used only natural light. I use Photoshop CS3 for my editing.

f/2.8
ISO 200
1/125 s
50 mm

Here is the original:

I can’t wait to see what some of you can do with it. I’d love any and all constructive feedback! Should I have framed it better? Used more DOF? Anything will be helpful. Thanks!

I ♡ Faces is having another great giveaway. I love using Photoshop actions. MCP Actions is a great supporter of I ♡ Faces and they have some really nice actions. This week I ♡ Faces is giving away gift certificates to MCP Actions. They also have some online photoshop classes that I have been wanting to take. Maybe one of these days I can fit it into my schedule! Go take a look, then you might want to enter the contest at I ♡ Faces, too