I’m starting a photo scavenger hunt this week (throughout this month) through the clickin’ moms forum! So excited! I think it’s going to be so much fun! And this post earns me 2 bonus points!
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Bridal Shower!
I know… I know…
I haven’t posted in a REALLY long time… but I do have an excuse!
I bought a house!! Anyone who knows about that last week before closing will know things got pretty crazy here at my house… and then this past week we were happily painting walls and making plans for how to make the house ours. It’s been fun. And busy! And it’s also winter guard season – and while I’m not coaching I am writing on my coaching blog, had an article due for Halftime Magazine, and have done some consulting at various rehearsals. So… not excuses… just explanations.
But I’m back! And excited to share one of the events that kept me busy – a very fun bridal shower for my good friend who is getting married in VEGAS in April! It was great fun getting to document her day for her and know that I could use my growing skills to give her the gift of memories. She said it would be okay to share some of my faves here … so here they are!
First… the cake topper… this was the most popular decoration of the shower… and while her fiance had not yet seen it… she was insistent it would be going with them on the trip (though admitted it might not find it’s way to the top of the cake…lol).
The bride and her fiance have an ADORABLE little beagle named Hannah. Hannah was THRILLED to have so many people sitting around with plates FULL of food. Actually… it drove her quite crazy. But there is nothing like a piece of pepperoni dangled atop a camera lens to get an adorable portrait… look at those precious eyes. No wonder Hannah is their little baby!
As with all bridal showers there were party games. The hit of the party was the toilet paper bridal gown challenge. The guests were split into groups of four, given a 12 pack of toilet paper and asked to create a beautiful gown (with a time limit of course). Toilet paper bride number 2 (my group of course) had a bit of a mishap during judging… the entire back of her gown just fell plain off… every time I see this picture it makes me giggle remembering just how the room erupted in laughter. Let’s hope that the real bride has a better constructed gown on the big day!
Then there was all the usual opening of presents and showing off of bridesmaids dresses…
And finally a portrait or two of the bride and her stepmom. I’m so happy for her and so happy I got to share in this special day!
Why photoshop makes me happy…
This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to meet my younger brother’s girlfriend for the first time. I was excited to snap a few pictures of them because she lives in another state and I knew it would be a while before they saw each other again. But they arrived at my house after the sun had set… I suppose you’d call it during “twilight.” You could still see outside but the sun was clearly below the horizon.
I’m also a bit nervous in these types of situations… and my brother isn’t the type of person I would expect to really want to pose for a lot of pictures … so I stood back, enjoying seeing them together, enjoying watching his girlfriend play in the snow (she’d never seen snow before this weekend) and enjoying watching them play with my 5 year old daughters. We did a couple “stand here and smile” shots and I tried to take some candids… but the light was very low, the ISO’s were very high and I was worried when I came back inside that there wasn’t a single keeper.
Fortunately… I’m learning a little bit about editing…
Let me stop here and give a quick disclaimer. I don’t profess to be an expert at ANY of this. The pictures I’m about to show are HORRIBLE examples of my photography (I promise, I can do better!) They are pretty much “throw away” shots on first glance. LOTS of technical errors and I know that (so please, I hope no one feels the need to point that out… I’m admitting it now… I chose to show these 2 shots BECAUSE they were bad… BECAUSE the transformation was dramatic (at least to me…).
And I’m no processing expert either… just as my blog title says, I’m “learning as I go.” Over the past few months I’ve gathered a solid collection of editing programs and I’m slowly learning how to use them, one picture and one challenge at a time. The “after” shots below are probably also just “average,” especially if any experts show up here on my tiny little blog. I’m sure there’s more I could do… I just don’t know how yet.
SO…
Why am I choosing to “share what I know,” then?
Well, because I’m thrilled that in terms of my family’s memories I was able to take 2 shots that would have been total “throw-aways” one year ago and make them keepers. Maybe they wouldn’t be good enough to sell. But they captured a moment and an emotion for me, for my brother’s new girlfriend, for our family. And it was all due to post-processing. And because I’m sure there are other moms with cameras out there who have been thinking that maybe they should try photoshop or lightroom but just aren’t sure yet whether it’s worth the time and trouble to learn it. So here is my experience and why I think it is more than worth it for me.
The more I learn, the more I’m FALLING IN LOVE with post-processing. Here they are:
BEFORE:
I TOTALLY messed up this shot… I should have shot it in manual and metered off the hands… instead I used aperture priority and let the camera meter on it’s own with evaluative metering. The sun was set and the ISO was at 3200 ISO so it has a lot of grain in the underexposed portions (which also happen to be the part of the picture I was hoping to focus on… the hands). There are also a bunch of distracting trees and bushes in the background. Overall… I saw it and I was like… “aw, man… that stinks…”
But just for fun I decided to see what I could do.
Here’s the AFTER:
What I did: I imported the raw file into lightroom, converted to black and white using a preset (purchased from the Kevin Kubota website) to remove the distraction of the blue coat sleeve. I moved into photoshop where I removed the noise with the Topaz deNoise Filter Plug In, cloned out some of the distracting trees and bushes, and probably adjusted the photo with autotone (can’t remember if I did that or not). Then it was back into lightroom and some work with the adjustment brush to brighten the hands a bit more – and cropping to make it a bit more interesting. Topped it off with the dark edges present, also from Kubota… and then decided that was all I could do for now.
AND NOW I’M KEEPING IT!!
I’m hope that in 2 years I look back and think I could do so much better… (actually… I hope that in 2 years or less I get the shot RIGHT in the camera and don’t have to do so much processing). But for now I am SO happy that my growing skills have allowed me to “save” this shot for my brother and his girlfriend – and to capture a small representation of that moment in their lives… of this visit… during this snowstorm… of these emotions – and basically in the dark! And despite the time it took – it was well worth the work for the memories it captured for them.
Here’s another example:
Before: (Bad photography…technically….composition…lighting…uck!)
She had drawn this cute heart in the snow with their initials… such an adorable symbol of what they are feeling right now. As an old married gal… it really brought back memories of those exciting days of young love. I took some pictures of them standing above the writing holding hands… but it was tough to see the heart in the zoomed out view. So I tried to focus in just on the heart and hands but was having trouble explaining to them exactly how far apart I wanted them to stand (and they were both standing in the snow with no boots… and wanting to get out of the snow sooner rather than later)… so I pretty much just snapped a shot and gave up… knowing I didn’t get it… but sure they’d be happy with some of the “stand here and smile” shots… so it wasn’t that big a deal. You can see the sun was really low here… and again it’s 3200 ISO…and white balance is totally off.
THANK GOODNESS FOR SHOOTING IN RAW!
AFTER: Here’s what I came up with after I played for a while… intending this to be a cute “avatar” for facebook perhaps!
Here I also imported the raw file into lightroom – did auto white balance and auto tone I’m sure (I do that a lot right now) – then probably adjusted exposure… took it into photoshop where I ran Topaz deNoise and over-smoothed the hands (purposely this time) to get more of a painterly effect. Cloned out the jackets and boots, smoothed out the holes in the snow, ran auto-tone… then back into lightroom where I tilted the photo to get the hands and heart on the diagonal and cropped to square for use as an online avatar.
And I’m really happy with the result!
Perhaps one day I’ll be embarrassed that I posted these… and that’s okay because it will be evidence that I’ve grown in skill and experience. I hope that does happen!
But for this moment in my life I’m so happy that I can do now what I wasn’t able to do a year ago. I am so happy that I can turn “throw-away” family photos into something worth keeping – perhaps even worth cherishing for the moments and emotions they have captured.
And THIS is why I am in LOVE with photoshop (and lightroom…and topaz denoise…and Kubota presets…lol).
Yay for editing!
Ready for Round 2… Do you think it’s “Sn-overkill?”
As I sit here to begin this blog entry at 4:30 p.m. the snow has already started to fall again outside my office window. After the 31+ inches of snow we got last weekend, reports are saying that we could get anywhere from 8 – 20 more inches of snow. Funny thing is … we were completely snowed in until this morning. The plows didn’t make their way to our neighborhood until today and even then the roads are only passable with 4 x 4. We know that because my husband tried to get out in the minivan… no such luck. We got stuck.
But despite the comedy of errors, thanks to the generosity and togetherness of neighbors who offered help, plowed and snowblowed for one another, dug out stuck cars, and called VDOT to remind them we are all back here… the van is back in the driveway, our neighborhood is now plowed (albeit rough…), we made a trip to the grocery store to restock… we cleared a path to our gas access in case the gas company needs to stop by… and we’re hunkered down to enjoy the pretty views outside our window once again.
Capital Weather Gang has coined this new storm “Sn-overkill.” I LOVE it! lol… too funny… With 30+ inches did we really need more? But really, as long as we don’t lose power here and nothing dramatic happens – like our roof caving in… I’m kinda happy!
I’ve had my husband and kids home for days. We’ve had some great family time watching movies, playing board games, sledding in the front yard, even attempting to clear the driveway. (I say attempting… because it really wasn’t possible with just one little shovel…) and we’ve come to find out that our neighborhood has an email list that neighbors use in situations like this and there are many generous people in this new neighborhood we’ve just recently moved into. We feel blessed to know we’re surrounded by such nice people.
We created this cool sledding track down our front yard's hill - complete with dug out path to walk back up.
the kids were light enough to sled without sinking in by Monday afternoon.
I also feel a little bit like I’m living through a historical moment. I imagine that this is the storm we’ll be talking about for years. There was one in my early childhood that I remember looking at pictures of as I grew up – all other storms were compared to that one… those pictures showed me next to snow banks much higher than my little 4 or 5 year old self. This is the storm (or series of storms) we’ll be talking about for years to come. This is the one we’ll be comparing all others to (“Oh! This is nothing! Remember the blizzard of 2010!”). These are memories we’re making for our kids.
And these are the moments I’m SO drawn to and thankful for my camera.
I’m excited to preserve these precious memories for years to come so that my now 5-year-olds can look back at their own snowstorm of a decade and remember all the fun we had as a family.
I had so much fun following last weekend’s storm with my friend Colin on his blog that I’m all set up to report on this one too (Oh and definitely stop by his blog – he has a cool time lapse video of the blizzard posted there – worth the 15 seconds). I’ll post updates on his blog (you can too!) and post updates and pics here about what’s happening out in Western Loudoun (a D.C. suburb in Northern VA). I’ve got the square ruler dug out of the snow (see below! It reappeared yesterday as some of the snow from the last storm began to melt!)
Look there! The square ruler was poking through by Monday afternoon, after a bit of snow melt.
And here’s my new set up – just outside our garage door so that I can safely take pics from the shelter of the garage.
So… here goes “sn-overkill.” Wanna follow along?? Or maybe just leave a comment to let me know you were here? I’m starting to feel like a loser-blogger… wondering if anyone ever looks at my page or if I’m just talking to myself 
I’ll update throughout the next 24 hours as things happen so please stop back from time to time!
5:57 p.m. – quick update… was browsing around on Flickr and one of my contacts posted a snowy picture that STILL has me giggling… you have to take a look!
10:00 p.m. – Just came in from a bit of shoveling (which with a driveway our length really seems kind of pointless when you’re out there… my husband is getting a snowblower for his birthday next year… I’ve decided that now). Anyway – we have approximately 2 inches. My snow measuring set-up is a major fail… the snow had already drifted up the side of the plastic container… not sure why this happened… but instead I just took the square out to a part of the driveway that had been plowed as well as the top of the car… both were somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 inches right now.
11:25 a.m. Wednesday:
Well – I slept in this morning. When I woke up around 9:15 I could hear the wind whipping against the side of the house. All instincts told me “run for the shower before we lose power!!” We are on a well – so if we lose power we also lose water and I just couldn’t be stinky for who knows how long! So I grabbed a shower, brushed my teeth, took a few pictures of the weather and am just now finally ready to update.
I can’t tell how much more snow we have because the wind is blowing SO hard that when I opened the front door the snow was blowing into my house and straight for my camera. I had great intentions of keeping up with the shoveling today but when I saw the wind I decided it’s best to stay inside. These winds are much worse than what I remember from the last storm – at least for the daylight hours. So here are some pics…
Here's our "stick" ... the snow had melted a bit before this storm started (you can compare to the pic above where the ruler was peeking back through) but it appears to be piled back up now.
These are the windows that are aside my front door - you can see the snow is blowing high up on the windows...despite the fact that we have a covered front porch.
Here's a side window of my house. You can see the snow blown across the screen in one direction and then the grass blowing outside in the other... strong winds!
Of course… we’re having some fun being snowed in too… You can see we finally got around to making “Chef Rock-cicles” (any mom who watches Playhouse Disney with their little ones has probably heard of these). My kids have been begging to make ice cube tray popsicles since they saw the Disney short months ago so my husband helped them make their ice pops last night.
"Chef Rock-cicles"
And these are the yummy goodness I woke up to this morning!! I hate to cook but when my husband is home he often makes yummy breakfasts… today he baked some Duncan Hines Blueberry Streudel Muffins.. HEAVEN!!
If you’re in our region I hope you’re staying inside, warm and safe! I’ll update again later today! Thanks for stopping by!
12:41 a.m. Thursday – just heading to bed now. I can’t update on the snowfall because the winds have been so strong that we just decided to stay inside and wait until tomorrow to venture out and take measure. We had great fun today building a huge cardboard box house with our kids and watching a long movie. Will update tomorrow, hopefully, with some more pictures as we start digging out! Good night all!
7:52 p.m. Thursday - got outside today for about 5 minutes before the chills sent me back inside… but did take a few pics… haven’t yet sorted through. I will post when I get a chance. But I wanted to share this one… another creative “mommy” moment to keep the kids busy. We recently moved into our new home and we have a TON of boxes in the basement. So yesterday evening we set out to use them to build a clubhouse. It may look like just a stack of boxes to you – but it was major excitement for my little ones! Taped together with duct tape, it has multiple rooms – and they decorated it with marker and crape paper… Fun, Fun!
10:30 p.m. Thursday – Okay… here are the last few pics for this way too long blog post! Any more snowy pics will have to go in a new post.
The wind has blown huge snow banks around our house - kind of neat to see the wind patterns marked out in the snow.
The banks are quite high in some places from drift... to the right of the playset you can see a small patio set covered - just the tops of the chairs sticking out...
The snow bank aside the front walk just keeps getting higher and higher... but I'm happy to see the sun has helped the concrete to peek back through!
And finally... I think this expresses how we all feel about shoveling at this point... it is hard work and after 7 full days it's time to be done with it.
So… it’s been a nice “staycation” here… Tomorrow my husband goes back to work and by Saturday the house has to be clean again for guests. So, I suppose it’s back to “real-life.” They’re forecasting more snow next week… I just hope the sun can melt the driveway before that happens and that the next snowstorm is much, much smaller. We have plenty now, thank you! :)
Where in the www: Lightroom Adjustments for Drama
Came across a video tutorial (via the Lightroom facebook page) for how to use the adjustment brush and develop panel in lightroom to create a really dramatic image. I’ve been playing with this a lot lately so it was really nice to see a step-by-step before/after video to demonstrate all that lightroom can do….which is really a lot! If you use lightroom I highly recommend checking it out!
“Processing for drama in Adobe Lightroom v.2” by Joseph Rossbach
Snowy Sunset
Just wanted to share a snowy, sunset picture from this evening over our peaceful landscape.
I haven’t used my Sony Cybershot point and shoot in a long time… mostly my kids play with it these days. But I didn’t want to take the DSLR out and risk it falling in the snow so I grabbed it and headed out for a try at some sledding (which was good, because it DID fall in the snow). The sledding wasn’t all that successful… snow is just too deep and not yet packed down. But I was so happy with my little cybershot and the pics I was able to get with it. So… here’s one of my favorites – enhanced using Lightroom.
Blizzard of 2010
Usually the deer can walk beneath these trees (9:30 a.m. Saturday)
I am in the D.C. area and in the midst of the “Snowpocalypse” as some news stations have coined it…(**** update and correction at noon on Saturday! According to a friend I got it wrong… apparently the Snowpocalypse was our December storm and this one is the “Snowmageddon” – she sent me this link as proof of my error…lol)…a bit overdramatic… but I suppose that is how people around here act when we get this much snow in the forecast. Around here we get snow… but we don’t get 2 – 3 feet at once! And this winter we’ve already had one “blizzard” snowfall with 17+ inches. Never before in our history (apparently) have we ever had 2 snowfalls of this magnitude in the same winter. So… I will post some of my observations here. I’m posting now but will update with new pics throughout the storm (or just after) so even if you’ve read once you might want to revisit for the full picture. Here goes:
_____________________________________________
My friend from high school Colin Beaven, lives in the Baltimore area and is a weather enthusiast… on his blog he’s asking for people in the region to leave their observations and snow totals. So I’m joining in the fun. Here’s his blog address: “Local News: Breaking News and Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalism (NOT)” by Colin F. Beaven.
So we set up a nifty little measuring station on our front sidewalk. It’s a bit sheltered on one side by the house so maybe not the highest snow totals but it’s a place that had no snow to begin with (the grass still had leftover snow from a small storm earlier this week). We took a square ruler and propped it against a flower pot and began taking pictures. Here’s the progression:
3:30 p.m. on Friday
3:30 p.m. on Friday measuring 1 1/2 inches on the sidewalk (in the far Western suburbs of D.C.)
6:30 p.m. about 4 1/2 inches
9:30 a.m. Saturday morning... see that dot? That dot is the only thing left visible of the 24 inch ruler...lol
Photo taken 12:30 p.m. on Saturday - at 1:00 p.m. measured this spot near our front door at 29"... see bottom of post for more photos added!
The driveway at our home is REALLY long… and we’re new here so we don’t yet own a tractor or a snow blower… just one tiny shovel. So yesterday I shoveled (proof in the pics below because you can’t tell today…lol). And thankfully our neighbor has a tractor and is a very giving and generous person – so provided he doesn’t run out of gas we should be okay with snow removal so long as we’re patient. Here’s some pics of the driveway.
This was at 3:30 p.m. Friday
This was me shoveling (and windburnt...) around 5:00 p.m.
and here's the driveway at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday... somewhere between those trees...
Then this space below will be for a variety of other snapshots from around our home to document this historical storm!
We call this "The Ugly Tree" but we think it's super cool! (9:30 a.m. Saturday)
our playset (9:30 a.m. Saturday)
The hammock (9:30 a.m. Saturday)
The car (9:30 a.m. Saturday)
The Little Tykes House (9:30 a.m. Saturday)... this one did have a mound of snow in front of it from shoveling the driveway throughout the week.
More to come throughout the storm. I will update this to let everyone know when it’s a final draft at the end! Hope you’re staying warm and safe out there!
1:15 p.m. Saturday Update: We measured 29″ of snow in our spot on the sidewalk (picture of “the stick” posted above). Here’s a couple more pics from around the property…
finally opened the garage door to start shoveling... this had already been shoveled once last night at about 6 inches
the car... which was also mostly clear about 6 inches into the storm last evening.
the digging out begins (though it is still snowing) 12:30 p.m. on Saturday
UPDATE: Photos taken between 1:30 and 2:15
Our front walk - shoveled... and it's still snowing!
Just a pretty snowy picture...
my husband spies an icicle on his hood after playing with the kids in the snow.
Then we took a break to make some SNOWCREAM! Yep - yummy vanilla flavored ice cream made from snow! Got the recipe from my friends Colin and Cindy on their blog. Check it out!
Here’s the link to the snowcream recipe!
FINAL UPDATE FOR TODAY: 9:45 p.m.
Well – it stopped snowing in our area sometime between 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. so we headed out to shovel. Well… that was a bit foolish… we are going to have to wait for a plow. But we had a great time playing and taking some pics as the sunlight poked through the afternoon clouds. Here are a few final images for today.
27" - Our final snow measurement at the spot we've been tracking was 27". In actuality this spot was close to the front of our home and thus a bit sheltered... our neighbors measured 31" and certainly drifts took the snow much deeper in many spots. Whatever the finals - it's going to be a lot to dig out!
The trees from above, now illuminated by the afternoon sunset.
