THE PESKY DONKEY

I stumbled upon a website this week that was having a theme challenge. I am new to the realm of professional photography and have come to love these types of challenges because it makes you try something new and outside the box. These challenges are helping me learn more about Adobe Photoshop CS4, which by the time I die I may have a grasp of 10% of it! Of course I will need a new version and I will be back to dumb, but I keep trying and plugging away. 

This weeks challenge with Good to WOW Photo Thursday was the theme "red." I am pretty sure I am the only person with a donkey. That is pretty typical of my life. Most people have cute composed hearts and children and I have a freaking donkey. Just for the record, he is not my donkey, but we have become fast friends the past few weeks as I have driven by his home. He often gets out of his pasture and then I have to shoo him off the road and he sticks his head in my car and I laugh at him. I am certain it wouldn't be as amusing if he were my donkey.

SOOC

Anyhow, I just snapped this picture as he withdrew his head from my car window last week. When I first began to edit it, I loved the bright red pipe fence adjacent to him. Here is what I did with Photoshop: PW Actions; slight lighten, boost, Vintage and removed the grain, extra oldness and black and white. I bumped down the warm tone, midtone bump and contrast torture. I also backed off the edge burn and blur. Then I used the hue/saturation as covered in Ashley's blog today to adjust the red. Finally I did a high definition from MCP Actions.

FINAL PRODUCT

I really have no clue what I am doing but thanks to tutorials, challenges and demonstrations, I am having fun playing and slowly learning.

http://fnaphotography.blogspot.com/

http://ashleysisk.com/



iheartfaces - People's Choice

 Voting has begun! click here to vote --->>>     People's Choice - Best Face in January 2011Vote for # 70 THANKS!!!!

Shoot and Edit

 So I stumbled upon this website today Shoot and Edit - week 4 - Red that has weekly challenges. I am really enjoying learing and having weekly learning photo projects! So the idea is, take a picture that goes with the theme "red" and then edit it. Here is the SOOC picture and on Thursday I will sumbit my edited picture. I thought I would give it a shot.

I Heart Faces - People Choice

 

iheartfaces

“Best Face Photo from January 2011″

This weeks submission theme for iheartfaces is Best Face Photo from January 2011. I did not have to think long to decide which photo I would submit. I knew right away it was the picture of my favorite subject, Avery I took a couple weeks ago. It was a stretch outside my comfort zone shooting this and editing it and I just love this picture.

Voting begins tomorrow ~ # 70

Fix it Friday

 

Iheartfaces is a fun website that offers weekly challenges. This is my first time participating in their Fix-it-Friday! This has been a fun challenge for myself to try to edit the photo and keep it natural and create a better picture.

While the picture has a lot of great elements, the shadows cast on this darling babies face as well as her face being washed out created some major challenges. I love the colors of the baby legs on her arms, the coral hat and the colorful shrubs in the background, so given those parameters, I thought a vintage overlay after I made the corrections to the lighting on her face would accent it perfectly.

I think my final product is soft and pretty and I did the photo justice by sticking with what was working, the beautiful colors and the sweet cherub face.

Week 3/52

When I read this weeks them for this weeks MCP Actions Project 52

I immediated thought of a photo I took last spring that I named "shades of grey." Four cows and calves together, the one in the middle littlerally a "shit head!" Not the greatest photo, but it captures my beautiful cows in the spring grass and adds a little comic humor with shit head there.

So when I started thinking about how I would illustrate "shades of grey" I immediately went back to my grey cows. The greys are my favorite, I'm sorry to all the black and red cows. Most all of our greys we have raised and kept as replacement cows. They are mostly pets, pickup followers and good mommas.

So now that my brain was stuck on my grey cows, I snapped some photos while working up at our ranch. I didn't think any were spectacular... but I focused in on this photo for a while trying to make it the one. I was never completely happy with my editing nor the composition, while the photo does have four different shades of grey!  

Finally I pulled up this nondescript photo of this grey cow heading back to get her calf. Originally the photo lacks a lot of character or interest. So I cropped it in a long rectangle giving the picture of sense of direction and movement.

I am pretty happy with the final outcome. I think this would look lovely on a canvas on the wall above a sofa!



52 week challenge

I have decided to challenge myself a bit and do the MCP Project 52! So I am a week late to this party, but I will do 51 gosh darn it! MCP Actions Project 52

So this weeks theme was "Illustrate a Song"

When my husband and I went for a Sunday drive up to our ranch (where he would make me work bucking brush he was cutting for 6 hours) we had to stop atop roller coaster hills so he could take a very important phone call. In this specific area, cell phone coverage is a hot commodity and since the call was work related, he pulled over while he had 3 bars. I hopped out and snapped away. I have always loved roller coaster hills, or thrill hills as they're also know as.

So my submission for week two is "country roads...." the road to my home-away-from-home, our ranch.