He Had His Own Photoshoot And Boy Do I Love Him!

You'll have to bare with me on this post...mainly because there are a lot of photos! There are a lot because they contain my 2 favorite living beings on this planet....My Tom (hubby) & My Lucas (my Lab).

After I was done with my self portraits the other night I invited my buddy Lucas to join in a few shots with me...check us out!:











And by this point it's like he's saying "enough, enough already!"



Then Tom joined in the fun with Lucas:



Converted to B&W:



And then we dangled his favorite rubbery purple toy over his head to get him to take these! And I love them!

Experimenting Photographing Snow at Night

It started snowing late in the day while I was at work today and by the time I got got close to my town it had actually started to stick to the road.

Normally my commute is about 40 mins the MOST in traffic but today it took well over and hour. It gave me a lot of time to think and one thing that popped in my head was the idea to photograph the snow coming down tonight on the bulb setting to see if I could capture the snow with a streaky look as it streamed down.

I put the light on by my back door and set my camera on the tripod under the awning (to keep it dry) and I captured this:

ISO 100, f5.6, Shutter 15.2 on BULB setting



After the exeriment was completed I couldn't resist getting a photo of Lucas enjoying "sniffing" the snowflakes:



I tried multiple shots...this one I liked the best. If anything it was a neat experiment. :)



Tonight I worked on these 3 images of a "side of the road" barn & silo that my sister and I loved so much we had to pull over to photograph on our trip to the Mulica River & the Pine Barrens on October 28th (I'm still trying to catch up on 2007!!):



The same photo (above) converted:





And just to show you how funny the two of us are on these photo trips.... Here is my sister taking her version of the shot and my shadow as I take the shot from behind her to the right. We must look hysterical on the side of the road and that's why I like to document us while we're out...my sister tries to do the same for me and those are many of the photos you'll see running along the right side of my blog.





The other thing I tried tonight was a "gritty" Photoshop technique I found while googling. I tried it on a "Lee" photograph and this is what I got as a result. Kinda neat if you're going for this kind of effect:





Found this photo from November.

My Dad moved away and we went to clean out the attic and I found a box of my old stuffed animals...my sister was there with her dog and we had some fun. Can you tell which is a stuffed animal and which is not? LOL. The Jack Russell is hers. LOL!




In other news....

I'm flattered with a phone call I just received while I was writing this blog post. A local Photography club found my website through a web search and asked me if I would be interesting in judging their bi-monthly photography contest. The did a search on local photographers in the area and came across my site.

I declined the offer because I didn't feel comfortable judging, critiquing, and providing detailed feedback on technique to others while I'm still learning myself.

Even though I wasn't comfortable with judging their bi-monthly contest the phone call at least provided me with information about a very local club that I didn't know existed. The person I spoke with shared information regarding the club along with their website so I could review it. Thanks to Cranbury Digital Photography Club for the offer! :)


On another topic:

A few photoshop tutorial site links that were shared on my forum tonight:

http://www.worth1000.com/tutorials.asp

http://www.pslover.com/

http://www.good-tutorials.com/

http://photoshopcafe.com/

Gotta Shoot Something, Right?

Well...it's dark when I leave work so no pictures on the way home for a while.

That leaves indoor shots as my only option for photography at the moment and I haven't decided to set any indoor macros or still lifes up yet.

Today my only photographic opportunity was when I noticed my Lab Lucas playing tug-o-war with his sleep-over pal for this week (my Mom's dog Emma).

I found it humorous that they were fighthing over a giant Shamu! The Shamu is the size of Emma! LOL!



*Of course, photographically, I wish the coat and Marshalls shopping bag were not in the photo but what can you do on a minutes notice. These were just for fun.

Here's my buddy...love those big brown eyes:



And of course I had to get my hubby greeting Lucas and our cute little houseguest when he got home from work:

Portrait Day

I took my mom's portraits today at the local park. We had a great time but the sun was very harsh so a lot of the shots looked good on the LCD until I got home and they had a lot of blown highlights and washed out areas.

I'm going to try to work with them and correct them where I can. The positive about the situation is that my mom had a good time with the shoot so I'm sure she would be up for a re-do anytime.

This is one of my favorites from the day (no editing was done to it at this time):



And this one is edited and I love how it came out...very "mysterious mom." I did some similar to this of my self-portraits down below:



When I got home from taking her portraits I decided to take some self portraits in my backyard.

The sun was SO bright (even at 5pm) that it washed out a lot of my face in the shots.

So I tried to salvage them. I converted a lot of the colored ones to B&W and then I was playing with the levels and decided to go really dark on some of them and ended up with this effect which I like a lot





To view the rest of my self-portraits click HERE.

Couldn't help taking a portrait of *Lucas* :)



More of my "people & portrait" photography can be seen HERE.

Practiced Panning & Stop Action Today

With the help of some friends I got an idea of settings I should be using to take stop action and panning shots of my dog Lucas today (September 4, 2007). I asked for help because the shots I took on Monday came out terrible.

The settings I was given really helped and I got some really good results compared to Monday. At the end of the session I had a lot of shots and a tired pup.



(click to view larger)


To see more from this practice session today click here.

A favorite shot from Monday's panning & stop action practice:

(click to view larger)