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.

2010

It has been quite the year! Our youngest was born at the close of 2009 and we have had a fun ride with a little one in the house again. Being older this time around we are really enjoying the baby and in no rush for her to grow up...

Launching my new business Rustic Photography has been a scary and exciting venture. From naming my company to my first photo shoot, I have really had fun learning, meeting people and developing my own style. I am certain it will be a process from now to the end with changing styles, progression and whimsy.

Every family brings something unique to a photo shoot and trying to capture that personality and spirit is what I strive to do. I never want to get stale with the stick the family on a rock or in front of a white backdrop. I want to be creative and clever when photographing people.

It isn't always easy, little ones are a lot of fun AND a lot of work to wrangle. Thankfully I have years of experience as a cowgirl and corraling kids is part of the fun and excitement. Although sometimes a wild one gets the better of me (usually my nephew! LOL)

I look forward to progressing my business, improving my skills and starting to sell my own prints, metal art, cards and more in 2011!

Addy & Carter

Kind of hard to take a bad photo of these gorgeous kids I got to photograph last week!

Before and after

 

Two year olds

Today I had the fun chance to photograph my niece who just turned two! What a fun morning we had playing in the barn, climbing ladders and playing on the tractor. Could I have a more beautiful subject to photograph? Boy does she look like her daddy when he was a little boy.

We had fun sliding down the car ramps, playing on the tractor, climbing the old corral fences... it was a great day playing around, oh yeah, and capturing her precious two year old spirit. CHEEESE!

You can fix a plain picture

Many of the pictures we take are just plain. The lighting may be bad or there might be a distracting background. Even these pictures can be fixed by trying some fun techniques. Here is a photo taken of my beautiful niece. I didn't take this picture, but noticed how sweet her little face looked when perusing through my sister in laws pictures. I decided to play around with Adobe Photoshop which is how I am slowly learning this program. Don't be intimidated by Photoshop, it's an amazing program. I am only beginning to learn some of the ins and outs of PS4!

Before:

First, I cropped the picture in closer around her sweet face. I use many of The Pioneer Womans actions (which she offers two sets in a free download on her Photography page). I lightened the picture, used bring out the eyes and used "sharpen this" around her eyes and face. Finally I used poster edges to give this picture a funky painting look.



Rustic

When decided what to name my fledgling photography business, I kept coming back to one word: rustic. It pretty much sums up me and my life. I live in the country, always have. I like old things. I prefer a worn old table to a new one. When it comes to my photographs, I like my pictures more natural, earthy.... well, rustic!

While many have their great talents and abilities with props and backgrounds, I have always gravitated toward natural light and beauty. So when I kept coming back to the word rustic, which virtually describes most elements of my life, I looked the word up.

Definition of RUSTIC http://dictionary.weather.net/dictionary/rustic

Rustic (adjective)

1: of, relating to, or suitable for the country : rural <rustic rolling farmland>

2: a: made of the rough limbs of trees <rustic furniture> b: finished by rusticating <a rustic joint in masonry>

3: a: characteristic of or resembling country people b: lacking in social graces or polish

4: appropriate to the country (as in plainness or sturdiness) <heavy rustic boots>

Rustic (noun)

1: an inhabitant of a rural area

2: a: an awkward coarse person b : an unsophisticated rural person

Yup, that's me in a nutshell.... rustic. I have tried to work on the social graces and polish a bit.

Bring your camera ding dong

I am a slow learner, it takes dozens of mistakes before I clue in and make the changes necessary. I go up to our ranch regularly to feed cows, check cows, meet the tree trimmers, escape for a day of solitude (shhhh, don't tell anyone), whathaveyou.. I never know what I might come across up at the ranch. I have learned over the years that if I don't bring my camera, I will most certainly come across something amazing or exciting. Because of my failure to bring my good camera, I have taken lots of really bad photos over the years with my iPhone or my old beater camera. Occasionally I have had the wherewithal to bring my camera only to discover a key component like a battery or memory card is at home on my desk.



I have bumped into pigs, cats big and small, deer and even a bear. I have never been very lucky with my camera and photographing the wildlife I come across. I have really bad blurry photos of all sorts things.



Never have I been so disappointed as last spring when I was working up at the ranch. I was closing up the gate to the hay barn and out of the corner of my eye I see a bird fly. So I look up and the bird has landed on the telephone pole about 30 feet up and just a few feet from me. As I focus my aging eyes I realize, holy crap, it's a bald eagle. Not only is it a bald eagle, which are a spectacle to see in these parts, it is holding what appears to be a 2-3lb large mouth bass in its talons. I grab the only camera I had, which was my iPhone 3G and snap a couple photos and the eagle flies off. When I got home I uploaded my pictures and did everything I could to salvage the missed opportunity. It was a definitely lost moment because I captured a blur of a bird holding something. If only I had my good camera with the zoom lens locked and loaded I could have captured this never to be repeated opportunity I had.



 I will keep trying, although wildlife photography is definitely not my forte, I can only improve! If I can remember to take my camera, make sure the batteries are charged and the memory card is loaded and be ready to shoot, I will have a better chance of improving. What amazing photo opportunities have you blown?