Live, Love, Travel

I Heart Faces - Beautiful Black and White

2012-03-07T14:11:00.002-08:00

I really liked this photo in color, but I decided to try it in black and white for I Heart Faces' "Beautiful Black and White" photo challenge.

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Shooting Silhouettes

2012-03-05T21:48:00.002-08:00

Hey everyone, I'm guest posting today for Tutorial Tuesday with Ashley and Sarah. My tutorial is on shooting silhouette shots like these:

Update: One tip I forgot in my tutorial is an editing tip. It helps when editing your sunsets to increase your blacks in Lightroom or your contrast in Photoshop. Increasing contrast will help brighten the sky while darkening your silhouettes--insuring your silhouettes are a true black.

So click over to Tutorial Tuesday to read my tutorial, and then come back here and link up what you've been shooting!

Spring Is In The Air

2012-03-04T12:45:00.003-08:00

Spring has sprung--which in LA means a lovely 85 degrees and still no rain. But despite having one of the driest winters I can remember, flowers and beautiful greens are sprouting everywhere. It's a great time to have a macro lens!

Hope your having a great weekend!

Portrait Session with Jake and Brooke

2012-02-29T19:08:00.005-08:00

These are the final pics I'm sharing (probably!) of my shoot with 3-year-old Jake and his 2-year-old sister, Brooke.

And I think they're my favorites. I just love her little princess dress and his little hat.

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That last one of Brooke on the right is my favorite :)

Come back Tuesday for Tips & Pics to see some editing before and afters of these shots!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Expanding Your Canvas

2012-02-27T20:33:00.004-08:00

Welcome to Tips & Pics! My tip today is how to expand your canvas to change a vertical picture to a horizontal picture.

I was editing pictures from my session with 2-Year-Old Brooke and I realized that the vast majority of the pictures were vertical. I forget sometimes to shoot horizontally because I like to fill my frame--but negative space can work so well! So I started with this picture of Brooke:

First, I decided to put in black and white, because all my pictures of her were starting to look the same!

Then I went to Image-->Canvas Size. I hit the middle right arrow, to anchor my image to the right side and I expanded my width to 6500 pixels.

Then I used the clone stamp to start filling in the white space. But first, I duplicated my layer. I always do my cloning on a duplicated layer. And then I can create a layer mask, that way if I mess up my cloning I can paint in black on my layer mask to erase my mistake. It was a bit of a painstaking process, because I you can see there wasn't a lot of background to work with! But once I got a little bit of it going, it was easy to keep copying it to finish.

Once it was all filled in I darkened it a little and added a touch of texture to help my cloning blend better (and used a layer mask to remove the texture from Brooke.) This was my result:

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It's a helpful trick to know how to do, but the time it takes to get it right reminds me of the importance of getting it right IN camera first! I need to remind myself to take more horizontal shots!

What have you been shooting?

Portrait Session with 2-Year-Old Brooke

2012-02-25T22:54:00.007-08:00

Last week I posted a session with 3-Year-Old Jake. Here are some shots I got of his little sister, barely 1 year younger! As I mentioned with Jake, this was a difficult age to shoot, and Brooke was about 10 times more difficult than Jake! She was an adorable little ball of energy that would just not sit still for the camera! I was actually worried after that I didn't get a single shot in focus, but luckily I managed to get a few!

Next week I'll post some of them together and the last couple of them by themselves, which happen to be my favorites!

Orange and Mascarpone Creme Brulee

2012-02-24T10:25:00.004-08:00

I confess. I found and made this recipe for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only. 1, we had leftover mascarpone cheese we didn't know what to do with, and 2, it sounded like it would be pretty and I wanted to take pictures of it!

Ingredients
-1 Cup Heavy Cream -3 Egg Yolks
-1/4 Cup Mascarpone Cheese -1/8 Cup Brown Sugar, solidly packed plus 2-4 tablespoons
-1 tsp Vanilla extract brown or white sugar for the topping
-The Zest of 1 Orange -3 shallow ramekins, or 2 deep ones

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Put cream, mascarpone, and vanilla in a pan and heat until almost boiling. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks, sugar, and orange zest until fluffy. Slowly add the hot cream mixture to the yolks, constantly whisking. Pour mixture into ramekins.
Bake for 30 minutes, but check after 20 minutes to ensure you don't overcook them. The should just set, but still be a little wobbly. Some like to set their ramekins in a large roasting pan with enough water to come up the sides of the ramekins before baking. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, then cover the tops with sugar and use a blow torch or a very hot broiler to caramelize the top. Top with orange slice--we used blood oranges.

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By the time we finished making these the sun was almost gone! I went into panic mode because the whole reason I wanted to make these was to photograph them! When they were done, all light was gone from the house! I had to take my little shooting platform outside and find an area of yard that was still getting a scrap of sunset sunlight on it! I also had to use a little bit of a higher ISO than I generally prefer and was super rushed trying to get these pics! I had literally about 5 minutes before light would be gone completely! But considering the circumstances, I think they came out ok! Also, I really wanted to crack into and take a picture with a spoon showing the custard, but we had decided to actually serve them after dinner that night and I don't think anyone would've liked being serve a Creme Brulee with a bite missing!

Water Drops Part 2

2012-02-22T22:16:00.005-08:00

I was so happy to see that Ashley and Sarah chose my Water Drop tutorial for Tutorial Tuesday. I've been wanting to try it again anyways, using what I learned to improve, and this gave me the perfect excuse.

I've been having so much fun see everyone try my water drops. I have a few extra tips to share. First, if you haven't already, check out my first Water Drop Tutorial.

The one thing I didn't like from my first attempt is that when I got the pattern to show up in the water drop in focus, then the outside of the water drop was blurry. I wanted both in focus! So this time I shut my aperture down all the way to f/16 in order to get both the water and the pattern in focus. Of course by doing this, the background fabric isn't as blurred out, but because I used a macro lens and macro lenses have extremely shallow depth of field, it still worked. It was blurred out enough for me.

This background is actually one of my sun dresses draped over the back of the sink! I shot these at f/14.

Because I was shooting with such a small aperture, a low ISO, and a fairly fast shutter speed (around 1/200 I think) a flash was absolutely essential! The exposure on my camera would have left me with a solid black photo so I used the manual settings on my flash to control my exposure.

I closed down to f/16 for the rest of these shots. You can definitely see more of the background show up, but I don't mind it.

To take these, I autofocused right where the water was coming out of the sink, and when the camera focused, I flipped to manual focus without moving my camera (a tripod would've been SO helpful, but it didn't fit close enough to my sink as I needed) and with my focus and exposure both locked off, I could hold down the shutter and take as many photos in quick succession as my camera would allow! With fresh batteries, my flash can fire about 6 or 7 times in quick bursts. My batteries weren't as fresh this time so I was only getting about 4 flashes, but still helpful to catch the water drops!

This background is a fabric scrap I picked up at the fabric store.

I love that the closed down aperture allows the edge of the water and the pattern inside it to be nicely focused.

Lastly, I grabbed a gift bag I had lying around from a birthday. I liked the bright diamond pattern. I propped the gift bag up behind the water drip. Also, I tried increasing the speed of the water dripping from my faucet. To the naked eye it looked like a steady stream instead of a drip, but my camera was still able to catch drops I couldn't even see, and this helped with timing.

I love how these came out! The one thing I didn't anticipate is that it was a shiny background instead of fabric which caused the flash to reflect off the background at certain angles. I changed angles to help minimize this...and also masked a bit of the glare out in Photoshop! :)

These are my favorites!

I love this last one the best!

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This is the perfect thing to play around with when stuck inside on a cloudy or rainy day, or when you're home at night--because you don't need any natural light to get this affect! Check out Tutorial Tuesday to see other water drop shots!

And don't forget to come back here on Tuesday's as well for my Tips & Pics link up!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Easy Eye Pop Tutorial

2012-02-20T17:40:00.003-08:00

Hey everyone! For this weeks Tips & Pics I wanted to share a really easy way to make eyes pop in pictures--without getting zombie eyes! I think its really important to edit eyes carefully so they don't look unnatural and glowing!

Here's the pic I started with which has had basic Lightroom adjustments only.

Because he was facing me and I shot this at a really low aperture, the eye closer to the camera is sharper and the far eye is a little soft, but this tutorial still works.

I use both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements depending on which computer I'm on. I did this on Elements, but it works fine in either. I start by zooming in on the eyes so I can see them nice and close up. And I use my magic wand tool and a low brush size to select both eyes. I love this tool because it has a plus and minus option, so if I select too much I can switch the minus and un-select a bit. Then it's important to feather your selection--this keeps there from being a hard line where your edits are done and helps your edit blend.

On Elements simply go to Select-->Feather. On Photoshop, you have to go to Select-->Modify-->Feather. I set my feathering to 20 pixels for this shot but if your feather makes your selection circle too small you can make this number smaller.

After it's feathered, hit Ctrl-J on a PC or Command-J on a mac to create a new layer. Your new layer will simply be the eyes. Make sure you stay selected on your new layer and even though your selection circle disappeared your edits will only apply to the eye, because thats the only thing in your new layer. At this point, you can also adjust the brightness/contrast and saturation of the eyes but be careful doing this too much or it can look unrealistic.

Then you're going to apply a High Pass Filter.

Go to Filter-->Other-->High Pass. I set mine to about 15 but you can play with it to see what you like.

When you hit OK your picture will look like it has CRAZY ZOMBIE EYES. Don't worry, we aren't done.

Change your blending mode to overlay and then adjust the opacity of the layer. Soft Light blending mode works nicely too and is slightly more subtle than overlay, if that's what you prefer.

For this picture, I left the opacity at 100% but on others, I've had to lower it to about 50% to get the affect I liked. Here's the comparison.

I really like how defined the eye looks without going over the top. Then I ran Pioneer Woman's Boost action at about 30% and added a touch of vignette and I was done.

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Share what you've been shooting below, and remember you are welcome to link up even if you don't have a tip to share because we can learn just by seeing each others work!

I Heart Faces - Hugs & Kisses

2012-02-20T10:03:00.005-08:00

The theme at I Heart Faces today is Hugs & Kisses! What a fun theme. I picked this shot of my good friends Staci and Andy, we took this the day after they found out they were having a Boy!

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for my Tips & Pics link up!

Session with 3-Year-Old Jake, Part 1

2012-02-16T21:02:00.002-08:00

I have soooo many pictures from my session with 3-year-old Jake and his 2-year-old sister Brooke and I've really just barely made a dent on editing them. But I just couldn't wait to get some pictures posted.

Also, I'm experimenting with a new way to storyboard my images from my sessions, what do you think?

I had so much trouble with this session--little ones don't listen to direction, plus the sun was going in and out clouds CONSTANTLY changing the lighting wherever we were--so I'd love to hear your input!

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This was my first time shooting this age group, so let me know what you think of the shots! Happy Friday!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Valentine's Day Candy

2012-02-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day! I just have a few Tips & Pics to show you today, while I'm busy editing a session I shot this weekend with a 2 and 3 year old!

Tips
There's been a lot of food photography talk on the blogosphere lately. If you missed it, read this post showing my trials and errors with food photography and what I've learned. One tip I forgot to mention was to utilize your craft and fabric stores for styling. Buying linens and table cloths for every set up you want will get expensive! Go to a fabric store and buy cheap yards of fabric. I've been using these a lot lately. I also buy scrapbook paper to use as backgrounds. I used scrapbook paper for my Fruit in Bubbles shots to create the blue background. For these shots I used fabric to "set" the table and pale purple scrapbook paper in the background.

Pics

I Heart Faces - Hearts

2012-02-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

I had a shoot yesterday with a very energetic and charismatic 2 year old girl and her 3 year old brother! I got my work out chasing them around! I've just begun sorting through the pics but I came across this one and thought it was perfect for I Heart Faces theme this week, Hearts.

Come back tomorrow for my Tips & Pics link up--perfect day to share your Valentine's photos!

Poetic Winter Challenge - Warmth

2012-02-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

Phew, I almost didn't get anything up for the Poetic Winter Challenge! I've been having trouble with these challenges since LA hasn't really had a winter this year. I mean its never quite as cold here as some other places but it still usually feels like winter. But this year its pretty much been the 70's all season, which is unusually warm, even for LA!

So when the challenge for the week was Warmth, and most people were posting hot chocolate, scarves, and fire places, I had a different interpretation come to mind. To me Warmth is the perfect word to describe my experience of winter this year. I still wasn't sure what to post, but while visiting a friend downtown yesterday I looked out her window and saw this and to me it perfectly summarized my winter: Blue skies, patchy clouds, warmth in the air, and sun-kissed buildings.

Oh! And I had a shoot yesterday with a 2 and 3 year old! Man, I got a workout chasing those two around! I'll try to post a preview later tonight!

A Year in Food Photography

2012-02-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

I've been really bad about taking pictures this week and sadly, I have nothing new to post. But since the theme this week for Tutorial Tuesday is "Foodtography," I thought I'd show a little of my journey in this area.

This is one of the first Food Photography pictures I ever took, a little over a year ago.

Looking back on it, what I notice first is the vintage actions and texture applied. Today, I would probably never think of doing that to a food photo. I'm ok with it in this particular shot because its sorta like a still life painting that way, but its not exactly the look I'd strive for today. I also notice black on the edges where my white poster board background ended!

I think back then I also relied on heavy processing to make up for an otherwise boring photo. Today I strive for interest within the original image through styling, use of textures, textiles, patterns, and height levels.

Next, I have this. Cringe. Ok, I was working more on styling and set-up, but still cleary relied on actions and textures to make the image (sorta) work. I took this almost one year ago to the day.

About a week later I tried it again with cupcakes I made...

Now what I notice most is focus and light.

I believe I shot this at night with my overhead dining room table light as my light source. Yuck. Also, the focus isn't super sharp.

My next attempt came a few months later with these blueberries.

Improvement! What I notice here is natural light pouring in from the side from my window, lighting the blueberries nicely from the left. Also my focus is sharp. I didn't need to apply any texture or actions. I used red fabric to create a backdrop, had different heights, colors, and textures. The image is clean and crisp.
However it is also very simple. One bowl of blueberries. Simple isn't necessarily bad, but I was ready to try a more stylized set-up. Also I wasn't super happy with how my natural light left half my blueberries in a shadow.

This is my first attempt at a completely stylized, set-up, food photography shot.

Here's my set-up for the shot above. It was my first time using a reflector to help light my shot. You'll notice between the shot on the left and the shot on the right below that I learned I needed to move my reflector closer to my set-up. Click here to see the rest of my Apricot Rugula shots.

I was really happy with this set-up and the result!

I used a similar set-up for this Apple Tart shot below.

This time I tried to create more of an "action" shot, by incorporating a fork, crumbs, and a piece cut out. I read once that food in food photography shouldn't look too pretty to touch, but like you want to dive in and take a bite. I'm still working on this technique! I think I like the "pretty" shots better! In the same set-up I also tried this muffin shot with my Berries 'N Cream Muffins.

Not quite as good as I hope to achieve, but I think its a vast improvement from the above Cupcake shots!

Next I tried to steer away from fruits and sweets and try a main course. I opted for this Shrimp and Pesto Pizza with Goat Cheese.. Click that link for the recipe.

I used the same set-up as above for this shot.

I thought it looked yummy, and the light and focus was good but I had a little trouble with styling and thought it lacked color.

My next savory food shot attempt were for these Artichokes.

Three things were different with this shot. One, my friend made me this awesome shooting platform, basically by attaching and painting wood. Second, I shot this at his house when he cooked this awesome meal for me, and I forgot my reflector. I quickly covered a piece of cardboard with tin foil, and it worked just fine! Thirdly, this is my first time using my 85mm Macro Lens for food shots. I previously had used my 50mm 1.8.

I love the extra detail the Macro lens allowed me, and I love the light and color in the shot.

Here's my set-up for the shot above.

Window light on one side, and light from the reflector on the other.

The last picture I want to share was done with the same set-up as right above, but shot with my 50mm lens again. I think its my favorite.

My previous shots have all been looking straight towards the food or angled slight above it looking down. Having my camera angled completely straight down from above has always been a challenge for me. I think it worked in this shot because it was well lit, and incorporated many different textures, colors, height levels, and shapes, creating lots of visual interest.

Check out the rest of my Cranberry Bliss Bar shots!

I hope seeing my progress has been helpful. It's so interesting to look back and see how you've grown as a photographer. I can't wait to see how I progress in the year to come. Who knows maybe I'll look back on these images and cringe this time next year!

What People Say to Photographers

2012-02-08T12:03:00.000-08:00

If you've ever taken pictures of someone, you NEED to watch this video. I'm not kidding :)

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Editing Fruit in Bubbles

2012-02-06T21:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another week of Tips & Pics. Remember, if you don't have a tip to share you can still link up! We can learn just by seeing each other's work!

This week I wanted to show how I used a fill layer (and my other steps) to edit one of my Fruit in Bubbles shots.

Here's my favorite lime shot, SOOC.

Obviously, it was REALLY under exposed. I started in Lightroom and adjusted exposure, fill light, blacks, etc. Here are my settings:

Here's my image when I brought it into Photoshop.

I decided it was still too dark, so I ran Pioneer Woman's Slight Lighten Action, and then I ran Pioneer Woman's Boost Action. I was happy with the result but noticed all these smudges on the photo.

I'm not sure if it was on the glass I was shooting through (though I cleaned it carefully) or if was a blur of other bubbles in the water. I could've cloned them out but I wanted to try using a solid color fill layer since my background was a solid color and I thought it would help lots of little imperfect spots, as well as even out the edges where the blue got a little darker.

I used the eye dropper tool to select the blue background, then opened a fill layer that color.

That created a solid blue layer on top of my image with an automatic layer mask built in. I lowered the opacity of the layer so I could see the lime through it. I used a black brush on my layer mask to remove the fill layer from the lime.

I started with a large brush to go over the bulk of the lime and then moved to a smaller brush to go around the bubbles on the edges. I didn't have to do it too perfectly, since the background around the bubbles was the same color as my fill layer, but if I messed up I could just switch back to the color white and go over it again on my layer mask to erase my mistake.

When I was done I put the opacity back to 100% and here was my result. I really like how even the background is.

Here's the before and after:

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Link up what you've been working on below!

Poetic Winter Challenge - Solitude

2012-02-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

I'm a few days late with the Poetic Winter Challenge! Its been difficult because we haven't gotten much of a winter at all in LA this year. Its been in the 70's almost every day! So I went back through my Big Bear pictures and picked out a few more that I felt fit the "solitude" theme for the week. And thank you to Kristy who provided a free texture to use, found here. I used it on a lot of my shots!

Water Drops

2012-02-01T22:20:00.000-08:00

After my Fruit in Bubbles shots, there was one other tutorial I've been wanting to try ever since I got my macro lens. And that was capturing water drops dripping from my kitchen faucet!!

The tutorial I first read on how to do this suggested using a tripod with your focus manually locked off. However my awesome 85mm Macro Lens didn't have a long enough focal length for this to work for me. I just couldn't get my camera close enough to the water on a tripod for the shot to work out how I wanted.

So I ended up merely resting my camera on the edge of my sink. I used my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash for these shots. I played with the settings and ended up bouncing it off the sink a bit to get the right exposure. I shot all these at f/5.6, sutter speed 1/200, ISO 400. With those settings in my dark kitchen (I shot these at night) the flash was definitely necessary to get an exposure!

I picked up a bunch of cheap fabric scraps from the JoAnn's to use as backdrops. I started with a blue patterned fabric.

I liked the shot but I was disappointed with how the background became this gradient blue. Pretty, but I wanted the pattern to show up a bit more in the background and a lot more in the water drop.
So I switched to a purple fabric I picked up.

The pattern showed up much better in the drop but I still wanted more pattern in the background.

Next I tried a teal fabric I picked up merely because my bathroom is this color and I thought these water drops would make nice prints for my bathroom! haha :)

I liked this best so far! This will go up in my bathroom for sure! But what I really wanted was something bright and colorful. But alas, I was out of fabric choices. Not to be deterred I scoured my closet until I came across a bright polka dot skirt. Ding, ding, ding! These were my favorites for sure!

This last one is my favorite.

Because I wasn't using a tripod, focus was really tricky. I auto focused right where the water was coming out of faucet (and later cropped the faucet out of the shot) and tried keep the camera still on the counter, flipped to manual focus, and held down the shutter for a few shots. My awesome speedlight can usually flash about 5 times in a speedy row without having to recharge, so once my focus was locked off I just held down the shutter for a few shots and hoped I grabbed a good water drip. Then, in case my camera moved, I auto focused again and started over. Yes, this would've been much easier with a tripod, but it just didn't work in my case.
Here's my set-up and my favorite resulting shot. I love how a certain perspective and the right lens can turn my ugly kitchen sink into art!!

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I didn't use live view when I took the pics because it slows down my shutter timing, but I used it in my set up shot to show how I was focusing the camera. You can see I still have my tripod mount on the camera from my failed attempt at using my tripod! But the edge of the sink worked out just fine. I can't wait to try this with lots more patterned fabrics!!!!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Guest Post by Mira Crisp

2012-01-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

I'm so happy to welcome Mira Crisp from Crisp Photo Works as my first guest blogger! I hope you enjoy her fabulous tutorial, and please leave her some comment love! And don't forget to link up your week's pics a the bottom! If you have any tips you'd like to see covered on Tips & Pics, or if you'd like to write a guest post, send me an e-mail, or let me know in the comments!
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Editing Portraits in Camera Raw

Hi There! My name is Mira and I blog over at Crisp PhotoWorks. I'd like to thank Jaymi for hosting this post and I hope all of you will enjoy it. Today I will show you how to edit your portraits in Camera Raw. I use CS5 so certain things may look different on your screen. I have learned many Photoshop techniques and tricks from watching and reading Scott Kelby's videos and books, and this is one of my favorites.

Don't worry, you can use Camera Raw even if you are not shooting raw files. If you are working with jpeg images, you can open them by going to File and selecting Open As instead of Open. Once the Open As dialog pops up, select the Camera Raw option in the format bar. Be aware though, all changes you make to jpeg image in Camera Raw will apply to your original file and you will not be able to reverse that (unlike a raw file). So, always work on a copy of the image so you don't ruin your original file.

If you are shooting in raw, all you have to do is click on the file and it will open in Camera Raw by default. Once your file is opened in Camera Raw, you can start working on it. There are three steps to editing a portrait this way:

1. Remove skin imperfections.

Spot Removal brush at the top of the menu will remove smaller imperfections by cloning the skin around it. As you can see in the photo below, the red circle is the area you've selected to heal and the green circle shows the area that will be cloned to heal that red circle. Just make sure the "Heal" option is selected. You can change the radius size and opacity too.

2. Soften the skin.

In the second step, we will soften the skin. To do this, double click on the Adjustment Brush and tweak the numbers in the Adjustment Brush window. The only value that needs to be changed in this step is the Clarity value. We will set it to -100. Make sure all other numbers are set to 0. The more you zoom in the face, the smaller brush size you will need. So, adjust the brush size as needed.

Check the Show Mask box to see which areas you are actually painting. Now, we will use this brush to paint all skin areas that we want to soften avoiding eyes, lips, hair line, and the bottom of the nose. In my experience, the results are the best if you move the mouse the same way you apply foundation to your face: inside-out. That way heavy touches will be around the nose and under eyes where you usually need more retouching. You can see an outside-in stroke I did on her chin on the right side of the photo and how visible press point is.

I also tend to paint the neck and other exposed skin to avoid obvious differences. The little pin (image below) is there to help you remove strokes you would like to delete. Try to avoid eyebrows and hairline since this brush will blur them and you usually want them to be as sharp as possible.

3. The third step is to brighten and sharpen eyes.

To do this, we will use the same brush. The only thing we will do differently is to select NEW (instead of selected Add option in the photo below) at the top of Adjustment Brush window. This will load a new brush selection and it will not add to the already used skin brush in step 2. The values we need to change this time are Brightness (around +50), Clarity (around +60), and Sharpness (around +60).

What you need to do now, is to paint the whites of the eyes and teeth. I usually paint loosely over the eyes to include eyelashes too because this brush will sharpen them. Same goes for teeth, if you make the center of the lower lip a little brighter, the effect is the same as you would apply a dot of shiny lip-gloss to your lips. Again, if you don't like the result, select the tiny pin and hit delete. It will delete the layer.

And that's it! While this pretty girl did not necessarily need all this heavy editing, I used her photo to show you how to edit portraits in Camera Raw. Of course, the values I used in this example will depend on your taste and the photo you are editing. I hope you found it helpful!

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Fruit in Bubbles

2012-01-29T10:48:00.000-08:00

I first saw this shot done by Karli at The Bonnie 5. Click that link to see her tutorial. I've been wanting to try this ever since I got this awesome macro lens! I set up my shot pretty much the same way as Karli except I did use all natural light and I know she had better luck with a flash.

Here's a cell phone snap of my set-up. Basically I filled a square glass vase with sparkling water and hung some fruit by toothpicks on the edge. I set up my reflector on the right (held up by any heavy bottle I could grab!) and had my set-up right next to my window to get as much window light as possible.

I tried it with a cherry and with a slice of lime--these are some of the shots I got.

And do you guys use instagram? Its currently my favorite iPhone app. Just for fun I edited two of my fruit shots on instagram! Who says you need expensive editing software?

I can't wait to try this with more fruit and different backgrounds!

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Big Bear, Crisp and Clear

2012-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been a ghost on this blog all week! I was off work and decided to escape the 80 degree So Cal winter weather and head up to Big Bear for a couple days. One of the things I love about LA--in 2 hours you can hit just about any climate you want--desert, mountains, beach, city, wine country, and even Mexico! But I was feeling the need to see some snow since we've been having an unusually warm winter, even for LA--so Big Bear it was!

And since we've been having such a dry winter, it wasn't covered in snow, but it was crisp and clear with fluffy snow covered trails here and there.

I just got home a bit ago but wanted to get some shots up since I've been neglecting my blog as of late...

And, I rarely do this, especially with zero makeup, but here's a quick shot of me, just to show off my new (8 inches shorter!) hair cut!

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday Tips & Pics

2012-01-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Today I'm guest blogging over at Courtney's blog, Click it Up a Notch!!!

So for this week, my Tips & Pics are over at Courtney's, so click over and read my article on how to get sharp focus, and then come back here and link up your pictures for the week!

Tips to Achieve Sharp Focus

Let me know what you think of my post!

Macro Dandelion

2012-01-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

I am loving my new macro lens. It makes the most simple of things look other worldly.

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Hope everyone's having a great Sunday! Click HERE to link up for this week's Tips & Pics.

Beef Braciole and Artichoke with Mint and Chile (and Macro Food Photography)

2012-01-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

First of all, if you don't already, please click over and like my Facebook Photography Page. I always try to post helpful photography articles when I find good ones!

Now, as you know I've been practicing my food photography lately. I've been reading this awesome food photography book, Plate to Pixel, which I highly recommend, and I was surprised to see that most of her shots are done with a macro lens. So since I have my awesome new 85mm Macro Lens, I thought I'd try it out with some food photography. I normally use my 50mm 1.8 for my food shots. When a friend offered to cook me this amazing Italian meal from Mario Batali, I knew I had to take some pictures of it!

First the pictures and recipes, and if you scroll to the bottom I'll talk a bit about the photography challenges of this shoot!

Beef Braciole "Pinwheel Style"

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic, finely minced
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cups chopped fresh Italian parsley
4 ounces thinly sliced salami
8 ounces Italian Fontina cut into cubes (we used smoked fontina)
1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano
1/2 cup toasted bread crumbs
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
One 10-inch long beef tenderloin roast (2/12-3 lbs), butterflied
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparations

1. In a medium bowl, combine the garlic, scallions, parsley, salami, Fontina, Parmigiano, and bread crumbs and mix well. Add ¼ cup of the olive oil and mix well with your hands or a spoon. Set aside.
2. Cut six 15-inch-long pieces of kitchen twine. Open out the beef, season on both sides with salt and pepper, and place it on a work surface so a long side is toward you. Spread the bread crumb mixture evenly over the beef, leaving a ½-inch border along the side farthest from you; press and gently pack the stuffing mixture onto the beef to keep it in place. Starting from the side nearest you, roll up the meat like a jelly roll, and tie tightly with the twine, spacing the ties evenly. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap to make a compact roll, and place in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or as long as overnight.
3. Preheat a gas grill or prepare a fire in a charcoal grill. Put the piastra on the grill to preheat.
4. Carefully unwrap the beef roll and, using a very sharp knife, cut it between the ties into six thick pinwheels. Brush gently on both sides with the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

5. Gently lay the pinwheels on the piastra and cook, unmoved, for 5 to 7 minutes. Using a spatula, carefully turn each pinwheel over and cook for 4 minutes longer for medium-rare. Transfer to a platter and serve.

On the side we made this AWESOME artichoke recipe!

Grilled Artichoke with Mint and Chiles

Ingredients

6 large artichokes, preferably with stems
2 lemons, halved
1 bunch mint, chopped, stems and all, plus about 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves cut into chiffonade (thin slivers)
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup dry white wine
2 to 4 red jalapeños, diced or thinly sliced
Coarse sea salt

Preparations

1. Fill a large bowl with about 6 cups of water and add the juice of 1 1/2 of the lemons; add the 3 lemon halves too. Snap off the tough outer leaves from one artichoke until you come to the leaves that are pale yellow toward the bottom. Cut off the top 1 inch of the leaves. As you work, rub the cut surfaces with the remaining lemon half. Trim off the bottom of the stem and, using a paring knife, trim away the tough outer layer from the stem. Trim any dark green parts from the bottom of the artichoke. Halve the artichoke lengthwise and, using a grapefruit spoon or small sharp spoon, remove the fuzzy choke. Pull out the small purple inner leaves. Put the trimmed artichoke in the bowl of lemon water, and repeat with the remaining artichokes.

2. Combine the chopped mint, garlic, olive oil, and wine in a large pot. Add the artichokes and the lemon water, along with the lemon shells, then add more water if necessary to cover the artichokes. Put a pan lid on top of the artichokes to keep them submerged and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until just tender, 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the artichokes. Drain and allow to cool.

3. Preheat a gas grill or prepare a fire in a charcoal grill. Place the artichokes cut side down over the hottest part of the grill and cook, unmoved, for 3 to 5 minutes, until nicely charred. Turn and cook for 5 minutes more, or until golden brown on the second side.

4. Place the artichokes on a platter and strew with the remaining mint and the jalapenos. Serve with a bowl of coarse salt.

We served it with some herb rice and it was one of the best meals I've ever had!

Both of these recipes came from Mario Batali's Italian Grill which I highly recommend--it's an awesome cookbook!

Now a note on the Food Photography with a macro lens.

The Pros - this lens got AMAZING detail. I love how much much texture I could capture in the food. And although they don't typically recommend using actual macro shots for food, it can be fun to get some shots like this, just to really show the texture.

The Cons - it being an 85mm on my crop sensor Nikon D90 camera, you definitely need a lot of room to get far enough away from the food for your shots. Also, macro lenses tend to have extremely shallow depth of field so focus was tricky. Probably what would be ideal for this lens would be to shoot at f/7.1 and use a tripod. I know a lot of people use tripods for food photography, but I find them really restricting!

Conclusion - I really find that the clarity and detail overrules the cons. I think I just need a little more practice to really nail my focus with this lens and I'll need to always make sure there is plenty of light so I won't have to use a tripod. But I will definitely be using this lens again for food photography!

The Set-Up - Here's how I set up my shots. I forgot to bring my reflector with me, so I simply covered a piece of cardboard with some aluminum foil. It worked really well! I grabbed this pull back on my cell phone so you could see!

Ok and one more shot of the artichokes, because they're so colorful and I couldn't decide which one to post!

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I hope you enjoy these recipes and food photography tips!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - My Favorite Actions

2012-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another week of Tips & Pics. I haven't been posting favorites, but I wanted to point out Jill Wellington's post from last week--she created a great and super easy home photo studio!

I got a request during last week's Tips & Pics to go over some of the actions I use to edit pics. Almost all the actions I use are free, so I highly recommend downloading them if you don't have them.

By far, the action I used the most often is Pioneer Woman's Boost action. I use this on almost every picture I edit!

I should point out that all the "before" pictures in this post are NOT SOOC. They have basic Lightroom adjustments already. I just want to point out what the actions can do too.

This is one of my favorite pictures from my trip to Maui last September after Lightroom.

And again with Boost.

Its a simple, but to me very important change. It adds just the right amount of contrast and sharpening.

Pioneer Woman has lots of really helpful actions, all free!

Another great resource of free actions are Isabelle Lafrance's Soulful Vintage Actions and Garden Glow actions. She has tons of free ones but these are the one's I tend to use the most often. They are by far my favorite set of vintage actions!

Here's a shot of my friend Lindsay.

I ran Everyday Vintage from her Vintage set and Primrose Glow from her Garden Glow set.

Here's the side-by-side.

Another great resource for free actions are the Coffee Shop Actions. And the one I use the most often is the Baby Powder Room. They have lots of great portrait retouching actions and I love them because they give you a lot of control. When you run it, it creates a set of layers and you can edit each layer to sharpen eyes, smooth skin, remove red spots, etc.

The only actions I've paid for so far are the Florabella Luxe II action set but I tend to run them at pretty low opacities so my photos don't look over edited.

Here's a "before" shot of my friend's baby, James.

I ran Boost, and Envy from the Florabella set to get this:

Then I ran Baby Powder Room to adjust his eyes and skin and also cloned out a few marks. Notice the difference in his eyes and skin in the version on the right.

Ok, and real quick because this post is getting long, here's a few more before and afters.

Here I ran Boost at 50%, Love from Florabella at 30% and Edge Vignette from Florabella at 15%.

This after is Boost at 80%, Envy from Florabella at 30% and Edge Vignette from Florabella at 15%.

Here I ran Boost at 50% and Posh from Florabella at 50%.

Posh is probably my favorite action to use on flowers and objects. I tend to use Envy and Love on people.

I hope this post was helpful! Link up your pictures below, and share a tip if you have one! If there are any tips you want to see covered in next week's Tips & Pics, let me know in the comment section!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2012-01-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a few weeks since I participated in a Scavenger Hunt Sunday but I thought I'd give it a whirl this week. I needed a little practice with my new 85mm Macro Lens that I love oh so much, so I took it out and went exploring for the themes this week. These are my interpretations.

1. Stacked Up

2. Winter Wonderland

Ok I had the most trouble with this theme as its been in the 70's every day since Christmas! It's green and warm and sunny, so when I looked around outside for a sign of winter, this is all I came up with. The only difference in the plants in my neighborhood during winter is that all the roses are gone, leaving bare thorny bushes.

3. Sweet

Some candy left over from Christmas. I liked shooting these with my macro lens.

4. Hole

I really don't know what these spiky little balls are with holes in them but they always seem to be all over the ground this time of year!

5. Frozen

I love using frozen berries to make smoothies!

Have a great weekend, I hope everyone gets tomorrow off! :)

Union Station Shoot with Lindsay Crolius

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I shot my friends Ashley and Lindsay and Union Station in Los Angeles. A while back I posted Ashley at Union Station and I just realized this morning that I never posted the shots of Lindsay. Probably because...this was a really tough shoot. The light was bad and we had to constantly avoid crowds of people AND security because we technically weren't supposed to shoot there without a permit. And I just wasn't really thrilled with any of my shots. So they just sat on my computer for quite a while. But since I'm backed up on editing right now and none of my new shots are ready to post, I figured I'd post some of my shots of Lindsay before they got buried in the archives forever!

Despite the troubles I had with this shoot, I'd really like to try shooting there again. There are some really interesting architectural elements, and I think with a little practice I could get some really cool shots there! Have a great weekend!

Sunset over Los Angeles

2012-01-11T22:28:00.000-08:00

I've gotten so behind on editing lately! To top it off my brother just got all his high-res images of his wedding back from his photographer and they are all SOOC because the photog charged extra for photoshopping...so now I've all THOSE to photoshop or him!

But in the meantime I saw a beautiful sunset the other day I grabbed a few shots. I love seeing the LA skyline in the distance and the bit of sun flare over the hills.

This last one's from the same view on a different day.

Click here to link up this week's Tips & Pics.

Tuesday Tips & Pics

2012-01-09T21:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 2nd week of Tuesday Tips & Pics. If you're new, the idea behind Tuesday Tips & Pics is to help others learn and make new blogger friends. Share pics for inspiration, and share tips too if you can!

I spent the weekend in Texas for one of my best friends' baby's 1st birthday. It was a super quick and busy trip so I really didn't have time to a portrait session with them but I tried to grab a couple quick shots of the baby when I could!

Tips
I realized this weekend how dependent I've become on my reflector! I love shooting with a reflector. It's such a cheap and easy way to help light work in your favor. This is the reflector I got and its the best 20 bucks I've ever spent! It's so helpful to get your subject properly lit. With it I can shoot with the sun behind my subject for pretty golden light and still get catch lights in my subjects' eyes because I'm still reflecting light on their faces. Without a reflector it's much more important that who you're shooting faces a light source. Without those pretty little catchlights in their eyes, portraits can look stiff and lifeless.

Pics
I just got back from my trip late last night so I haven't had any time to edit or go through pictures. So just one for now, but it has to do with what I'm talking about. I didn't have a reflector with me but luckily it was an overcast day, which acts as a natural diffuser. Even still it was important that the baby face towards the light source and lift her head a little in order to get those catchlights. Yeah, you try explaining that to a 1 year old! But if you sit on the ground and take enough blurry shots, you are bound to get one eventually! If I had a reflector with me, it wouldn't have been as important that she was facing a certain way--I could've used the reflector to bounce light on her wherever she was.

I really have to give props to this baby's mama, Kristin of First Comes Love because she consistently gets super sharp pics of her squirmy but adorably baby! You should check her out and leave her some comment love!

Anyways, here is the adorable baby Kenley! I'll try to post more of her this week after I get a little more editing done!

Now link up your Tips & Pics! And if there are any tips you'd like to see covered on Tuesday Tips & Pics, let me know in the comment section and I'll do my best to cover it!

Best Face of 2011

2012-01-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

I had a hard time picking a shot for I Heart Faces this week. How do you pick just one out of a year of photos? But I kept coming back to the shot because I just love the sun flare and the dreamy look on her face.

Click HERE and HERE to see more shots from this session.
And come back tomorrow for Tuesday Tips & Pics!

Staci and Andy Portraits Part 2

2012-01-06T10:37:00.001-08:00

I loved taking these portraits of my good friend Staci of Love the O's and her husband Andy a day after they found our they were having a little boy. I posted a Part 1 of this session last week. In Part 1 we played with a lot of "It's a Boy!" props including It's a Boy confetti, the sonogram of their son, and even a Christmas tree with blue ornaments! Click HERE to see Part 1 of this session if you missed it!

In Part 2, magical golden light was our prop! (my favorite kind!) We put the props away and I focused more on the two of them being together and using light to create a glow. In these first few back lit shots, I literally had to hold my camera in my right hand and a reflector in my left hand to try to get some light on their faces!

Aren't they just adorable??

Experiments in Macro

2012-01-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

I got two awesome new lenses for Christmas! A Nikon 35mm f/1.8 Lens from my mom, and a Nikon 85mm Macro Lens from me (with the help of some gift cards and X-mas money!) I'm so excited about it, its my dream macro lens, and I've been DYING for a macro lens!!!

I went on a walk around my neighborhood to grab some quick shots to practice. Getting good focus is really tricky with macro because the depth of field is so shallow, so it takes some practice.

But this is one of the first shots I took, and I love it!

I love this last shot too!

Click HERE to link up to this weeks Tips & Pics!

Tuesday Tips & Pics - Malibu in the Fog

2012-01-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

I got a lot of positive feedback from my first photo meme, Photo Tip Tuesday. However, I also had a lot of people tell me that they really wanted to link up but couldn't think of any photo tips to share. So I wanted to make the link up a little more inclusive, while still encouraging people to share tips with each other. So introducing the first week of "Tuesday Tips & Pics." Share a tip, or just share a pic! Simple as that. Visit other entries and learn from their tips, or simply gather inspiration from other's pictures.

Tips
I went up to Malibu the other day to take some pictures and was surprised to find a thick blanket of fog over the beach. It was really unique--I had never shot in such thick fog before. It was tough to get interesting pictures, instead of just thickly gray ones. It helped to change my white balance to "cloudy" instead of leaving it on auto. It also really helped to find specific objects to focus on instead of just general landscapes.

& Pics

I don't know what these spiky little dead looking flowers are, but I love photographing them!

Now it's your turn, link up your pictures below, and share a tip if you have one!

Holiday Bokeh Favorites (Week 3 and 4)

2012-01-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

I loved seeing everyone's entries for the Holiday Bokeh link-ups throughout December!
Photo Tip Tuesday returns this Tuesday with a few changes, please check back!

Click HERE to see my favorites from weeks 1 and 2. Here are my favorites from the last couple of weeks.

Week 3 Favorites

A Blog by Carrie G

With a Grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart

Week 4 Favorites

love.bug.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

Thanks again to everyone who participated! Hope to see you back Tuesday.

2011 in Review

2011-12-31T16:56:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! At the end of the year it's always fun to look back at what you shot throughout the year. I've been seeing some awesome end of year collages and tried one myself...but I may have gotten carried away! It was so hard to narrow down the pictures!

Staci and Andy Gender Reveal Christmas Portraits - Part 1

2011-12-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting around to posting the pics from this session! My good friend Staci, from Love the O's found out she was having a boy the day before we met up to do some portraits for their Christmas cards. So we decided to incorporate an "It's a Boy!" theme into the pictures! I liked so many from this session, that I'm breaking this up into two parts! Here's the first half...

What do you guys think? I'll post the second half next week. I can't wait until she gets a big belly and we can do a maternity session!

Holiday Bokeh Party, Week 4 - The FInale

2011-12-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the last Holiday Bokeh link up of the year! Sorry I'm soo late getting this up! I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

The above picture is actually from last year but I didn't get a chance to take a new version of it this year and I wanted to share it.

I thought I'd also give one last lesson on bokeh today.

Most of you know that bokeh appears in the out of focus parts of the picture. I just wanted to show that the more out of focus your camera is, the larger your holiday bokeh.

In the example below, on the left I start out pretty much in focus. On manual focus, I gradually start moving my focus ring to make my photo more out of focus. As you can see the more out of focus I get, the larger my bokeh gets. I also have a snowflake filter and a star filter on my lens. Click here to see how to do that if you don't already know.

Your apertur also affects the shape of your bokeh. To get perfect bokeh circles, you need to be as wide open as possible. The more you close down, the more your circles will turn into little octagons.

The picture on the left was taken at f/1.8, the middle shot at f/3.5, and the right shot at f/7.1. Because I'm increasing my depth of field the amount of blur is decreasing as well and so my shapes are getting smaller like in the examples above. But the circles are also starting to get edges on the them. So if you want perfect circle bokeh lights, stay as wide open as possible!

Now link up your holiday bokeh shots! After the link closes on friday, I'll post my favorites from week 3 and 4, and maybe we'll have a vote off :)

Also come back next Tuesday for the return of Photo Tip Tuesday--with a few changes in store.

Perfect Frosted Christmas Sugar Cookies

2011-12-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!! In case you're still looking for something to bake today, here's a recipe for just about the best sugar cookies I've ever had!

Soft Frosted Sugar Cookies
For the cookies:
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
5 teaspoons vanilla extract
Frosting (optional)
Sprinkles (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until soft and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Blend in the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients mixing just until incorporated and evenly mixed. Cover and chill the dough for 1 hour.
When you are ready to bake the cookies, scoop about a quarter cup of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the ball slightly and place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, spacing the cookies at least 2-3 inches apart. Bake about 10-12 minutes or just until set (do not overbake! The edges should be no more than very lightly browned if at all). Let cool on the baking sheet for several minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
When cooled, frost with frosting of your choice and drizzle with sprinkles!

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas!!!

Cranberry Bliss Bars

2011-12-21T22:44:00.000-08:00

I've been practicing my food photography lately and really wanted to try a Christmas themed food session. I wish I could say I made these, but in fact they are the fabulous Cranberry Bliss Bars from Starbucks, along with a few peppermint cake pops! I was really happy with these shots though, they looked so cheery to me!

I've had trouble doing overhead shots like this in the past with food set-ups and making it look interesting, but I like how this one came out.

By the way it's not too late to link up to my Holiday Bokeh Party!

Holiday Bokeh Party, Week 3

2011-12-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

I've been having so much fun seeing everyone's Holiday shots! Click here to see my favorites so far.

I've been experimenting with custom shapes of bokeh. You can create bokeh in any shape you want by cutting the shape out onto a black circle in paper and putting it over your lens. I've tried this before and it works well but my shapes come out a little wonky because I have trouble cutting my shapes evenly! Apparently I failed at kindergarten :) So I found a handy trick I wanted to share. I found some craft punches with different shapes and I picked up a star and snowflake shape.

(warning, cell phone pic below!!!!)

I traced my lens onto a piece of black construction paper, cut out the circle and punched a star shape into the middle. It's really important for your shape to be centered, and I accidentally punched mine too far to the side, so i had to add a little extra paper on the side. But the punch worked beautifully, so much better than me trying to cut it out by hand! Tape your shape onto your lens, point, and shoot and voila, your bokeh will turn to stars.

I repeated the process with a snowflake shaped punch I got too.

By the way, see my adorable camera strap in the corner? It's one of Gina's awesome Beach Bum camera straps, check 'em out :)

I used this star filter, with some colored Christmas lights in the background to get this Nutcracker shot.

I love the way the lights also reflect off my dining room table. Click here to see how I edited this shot.

Then I switched to my snowflake filter and some white Christmas lights and my little Christmas mug.

I really love this technique this time of year.

What kinds of Holiday pics have you been taking?

Bokeh Favorites (Week 1 and 2)

2011-12-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

I mentioned my favorites from Week 1 already but decided I wanted too show the pics so everyone can get inspired.

Week 1 Favorites

June Makes Six

Lil Mama Stuart

Week 2 Favorites

I had to pick 3 because we had so many awesome entries!

Light Trigger

Bunch of Barrons

Kelsey K Anderson

Thanks so much for entering, and remember there will be two more Holiday Bokeh link ups--tomorrow, and on the 27th. Hope to see you back!

Editing Bokeh Lights

2011-12-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

This week Jill and Ashley's theme for Shoot and Edit is Bokeh Lights. I missed the deadline to sumbit my SOOC's on Jill's blog on Monday, so I'm showing my SOOC's and my edits now!

Here's a SOOC shot of my nutcracker with a star shaped filter over my lens.

I did some basic edits in Lightroom first and used an adjustment brush to brighten the nutcracker without brightening the background. I also used a clone tool in Photoshop to cover up the black edge in the background and extend the bokeh. That brought me to this:

Then I ran Swoon from Florabella's Luxe II action set and added a bit of a vignette to bring me to my final edit.

Here are my edits side by side.

And don't forget I'm hosting a link-up for Holiday bokeh every Tuesday in December. It's not too late for this week's link-up, just click here!!!

Holiday Bokeh Party 2

2011-12-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

Every Tuesday in December, come here and link up your Holiday shots! Photo Tip Tuesday will resume in January.

My favorites from last week were:

June Makes Six

and

Lil Mama Stuart

(there's some great pull back shots in this post!)

For this week I am showing two versions of this candy cane bokeh picture, because I just can't decide which one I like better!

And with some texture added...

Link up your Holiday shots below!

I Heart Faces - Furry Faces

2011-12-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

This is another shot from my Gender Reveal/Christmas Portrait shoot with Satci and Andy! I'm going to post more from this session later this week! But since the theme at I Heart Faces this week is "furry faces" I thought it was the perfect chance to show a shot featuring their cute pup, Dixie, front and center.

Tarvin Family Session

2011-12-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

I posted a preview of this session I did of my friends last week and wanted to share a few more!

And if you haven't heard I'm hosting a Holiday Bokeh link up every Tuesday. Its not too late to join, just click here!

Holiday Bokeh Party

2011-12-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

I decided to put Photo Tip Tuesday on hold for the month of December. I know how much everyone loves shooting Holiday lights this time of year so I thought every Tuesday people could just link up their Holiday Bokeh shots!

This was my favorite Holiday Bokeh shot from last year.

And I haven't really had a chance to decorate for Christmas yet this year, but I did grab this shot really quickly.

Link up your holiday shots below!

Staci and Andy - Gender Reveal Shoot Preview

2011-12-04T14:54:00.002-08:00

I was so excited when I found out two of my best friends were expecting their first child! We planned on taking some Christmas portraits and scheduled them for the day after they learned the sex of their baby so we could incorporate the gender into the photo shoot. I'm still sorting pics, but wanted to share this one because it took forever to get it just right!

Pin It

I had been inspired by similar shots like this I've seen with glitter, and really wanted to try it with "It's a Boy" confetti!

Tips on getting this shot:
We practiced several times to get the framing and timing right!
To get it right, we had to put her hands really close to her mouth and remind her not to puff up her cheeks too much when blowing the confetti!
I auto-focused on her face, then switched to manual focus before taking the shot so my camera wouldn't try to refocus on the glitter. When my focus was locked off I gave her the signal to go! I had my camera set to continuous shot and just held down the shutter. The confetti flies up so fast, continuous shutter was really the key in getting just the right shot!

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Tarvin Family Session Preview

2011-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

I was so excited to be asked to take pictures of this family for their Christmas cards. This baby's mama, Lexe, and I went to high school together and we see each other so rarely now, its always a treat.
But, man, was this a tough session! Her adorable baby James is 5 months old and its a pretty tough age to shoot. It was quite a challenge getting the baby to look at the camera, or to even sit still enough to come out in focus!
I'm still sorting pics, but wanted to give a little preview and this adorable family!

It did help to wave a toy near the camera to get his attention! At least, sometimes it helped! Any other tips on shooting babies?

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Seven, Union Station Shoot Part 1

2011-11-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another week of Photo Tip Tuesday. Here are some of my favorites from last week!

Photography by Lynette

This is Life...with my Camera

Light Trigger

And for a really fun idea with your camera and Photoshop, check out Half Past Wonderful. I really want to try this!!

Also, I've decided to Photo Tip Tuesday on hold for the month of December. I know how much everyone likes taking pictures of Holiday lights this time of year, so every Tuesday in December I'm gonna have a Holiday Bokeh party for everyone to share their pictures.

And for my pictures this week--I've finally finished editing my Union Station shoot of my friends Lindsay and Ashley. Here are my favorites of Ashley.

My Photo Tips
--It turned out you're not technically supposed to shoot at Union Station without written permission! It wasn't too hard for us to simply agree to move on when security asked us to and to keep shooting somewhere else, but it wouldn't have hurt to have done some research and fill out the necessary paperwork in advance.
--Finding light was a challenge. We looked for bright windows and tunnels with lots of light and I used a reflector to help bounce light where I could.
--I realized later I took mostly vertical shots and all my favorites ended up being vertical, which made the whole session end up looking more like head shots than regular portraits. I wished I had taken more horizontal shots and maybe some more distant, full body shots, to get more of a portrait effect.

Which rows do you like best?

Link up your photos and tips below!

Shades of Autumn Finale

2011-11-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

Sorry, I've been a bad blogger this week! Just busy with the Holiday and all. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I've been having a lot of fun getting pictures together every week for the Shades of Autumn challenge. For the finale, we're supposed to show our favorites. So I thought I'd show my favorite from each color prompt they've had. The colors in the challenge were green, yellow, orange, red, purple, brown and white.

Green

Yellow

Orange

Red

Purple

Brown

White

My cactus shot for the color "white" was selected as a favorite this week! Which color is your favorite?

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Six, Troubles with Food Styling

2011-11-21T18:57:00.000-08:00

I've recently decided to dive into food photography. I love finding new aspects of photography to concentrate on and right now, its food! And the thing I have the most difficulty with I think is styling. Here are some apple tarts I made recently.

I've shown you my set-ups in past posts, like here, and I think I've got the lighting down pretty good. I like using natural light from my window, and bouncing it off a reflector. What I really struggle with though is styling.

Tips in styling I've learned so far: Use an ingredient in your final dish to help style, in this case, the apples. Try using opposite colors in your dishes or linens to help your food pop. The final dish was sorta orange-ish so I went with a blue table cloth, but I think the blue color was too pale to do much difference. I think I darker blue might've been nice.

Things I need to learn: placement of props, what dishes to use, how to move props around to make each shot look different, how to "tell a story" with my food photography, and really invite people in with my pictures, and how to make the dishes look beautiful, yet also look like they really might've just been on the table like that!

Any suggestions would be more than helpful!

Any photo tips you'd like to share?

Also, if you have any questions, or anything you'd like to see featured on Photo Tip Tuesday, please let me know in the comments! If I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to find out and write about it!

Before I forget, here are my favorite entries from last week:

Sienna Photo Designs

It's on the Tip of My Tongue

Scattered Horizons

Feel free to grab a button:

And now on to this weeks link up...if you don't have a photo tip to share, you can simply share what lens you used, what your settings were, or a step you took to edit the photo. (I'm not very picky!)

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2011-11-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

The themes for this week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday are: Mainly One Color, Around the House, Reflection, Writing, and Water.

I had intended on driving somewhere cool to try to get these shots. But today's the day LA decided to pour! I'm glad one of the themes was "Around the House" because with the rain, ALL these shots ended up being taken Around the House. And it is very challenging to find interesting things to take pictures of in my messy apartment! But here's what I came up with...

Mainly One Color
I keep all the books on my shelf organized my color. So here's the "blue" shelf! :)

Around the House
Love having my morning coffee in my Starbucks mug.

Reflection
I love how this vase reflects light in different colors. I actually got this vase at an estate sale at Lloyd Bridges' house after his wife passed away. I like to think she yelled at Jeff and Beau as kids when they were running around the house to not break this vase :)

Writing
I have a framed print in my living room that has the entire play of Hamlet printed on one page. My brother got it for me in high school when I was going through my Shakespeare phase and I still love it.

Water
This one was easy because, like I said, its pouring rain outside!

Hope you guys are getting some sunshine wherever you are! :)

Shades of Autumn -White

2011-11-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

The theme for the Shades of Autumn photo challenge this week is the color "White." Luckily, in LA, we get a few rogue flowers that survive year round to take pictures of! But I think this interesting looking cactus is my favorite.

Oh, and guess what? My dear friend Meghan of Meghan Bob Photography started an amazing online design magazine and she published a whole page of my photos covering their launch party! Check it out at Toujours Mag on page 9! Oh and check out the rest of the magazine too, because its pretty incredible!

Shooting at 1700mm (an Experiment in Astrophotography)

2011-11-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

The title of this post is not a typo. I recently had an opportunity to shoot with a 1700mm lens. Which is, in fact, a telescope. Imagine my surprise when a friend told me he not only had a telescope, but an attachment where you could hook your DSLR up to the telescope and shoot through it. And it just so happened his attachment was for Nikon DSLR's. As Michelle would say, I squealed!

But next came one of the most challenging experiments in photography of my life. This post is about my progress and learning experience--NOT about a successful final result.

First of all, you have no control over aperture. The aperture is fixed at whatever the telescope is. Focus has to be done on the telescope, not on the camera. The only thing I have remote control over is shutter speed, but even that proved to be a challenge.

I'm sure many of you have looked through a macro lens or telephoto lens at something far away and realized if you move the lens even slightly, they're subject can easily fall out frame. Well with a telescope it's even more difficult to keep your subject in frame. After finally getting the telescope lined up with the moon, just touching the focus dial made the moon jump in and out frame. And after every picture the process had to be repeated. To make matters worse, the earth is constantly moving, making the moon get higher and higher in the sky, and the angle in which I was looking at my camera more and more difficult and every couple of minutes the telescope had to be completely realigned.

I used live view on my camera to attempt to focus. After some experimenting, I got the moon to look pretty well focused on my screen, but the pictures were still coming out EXTREMELY blurry. For an hour straight I got nothing but giant white smears!

We figured out that the movement was so sensitive that the movement of the shutter opening and closing was jostling my focus. I was doing about a second and a half exposure but decided I needed to cover the opening of the telescope with a board when the shutter fired, to prevent motion showing up on camera, then moving the board to expose, and covering it again before the shutter closed. I had to increase my exposure to about 3 seconds to compensate. This helped a LOT and I could finally get enough focus to see some definition instead of a giant blur, but the focus still wasn't perfect.

This was about the closest to focus I could get.

I still have a long way to go. And I'm not sure where exactly to go from here. The image seems to be in focus on screen and I'm trying to block movement, but the images still aren't coming out sharp. It took about 2 hours to get one as sharp as the one above and I was freezing and frustrated and ready to give up by then!

Its possible there were a few environmental problems beyond my control. It was hazy, and clouds passed in front of the moon. There's a chance that the blur is simply caused by that. I can't wait to try this again, on a clear night, taking in to account all I learned on my first attempt.

And just for fun, I increased the canvas size of the photo and filled in the background (super easy when the background is solid black!) and I added a quote that kept popping in my head while shooting this. And also, the smaller the picture of the moon is viewed the better it looks!

If by chance anyone has ever tried shooting with a telescope as a lens, I'd love some advice!!

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Five, Before and After

2011-11-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another week of Photo Tip Tuesday. My favorites from last week were:

If you have any photography questions you'd like answered, or anything you'd like to see covered on Photo Tip Tuesday, please let me know in the comments or send me an email. If I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to find out and feature it on Photo Tip Tuesday!

Now....I'm almost done editing the pictures from my Union Station shoot that happened, ohhh, about a month ago. I'm so behind! But before I post a set from this shoot, I thought I'd show some of my editing process. I started with this SOOC shot. We were in a poorly lit tunnel and the light was behind her so I used a reflector to try to bounce some of the light back onto her face.

50mm, ISO 250, f/2.5, 1/125 second

I shot in RAW so I brought it into Lightroom first. First, I rotated it slightly because it seemed crooked and I cropped it just a bit. Then I changed sliders from the settings on the left, to the settings on the right.

Those simple changes brought me to this.

Then I brought the photo into Lightroom to play with the awesome new Florabella actions I got. I used the action "envy" for this shot at about 60%. Then I used Coffee Shop's Baby Powder Room action to sharpen the eyes and soften the skin. This was my result.

I like this shot, but I REALLY wish I hadn't chopped off the bottom of her elbow. I've heard warnings about being more careful about "limb chopping" and to not awkwardly cut off a body part. I really need to be more careful about that!

This was my progress:

Link up your photo tips or editing tips below! Remember, you don't have to write a tutorial, if you don't have a tip to share, simply post what lens you used or what your settings were for a shot!

I Heart Faces - Autumn Splendor

2011-11-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

The theme at I Heart Faces this week is Autumn Splendor. I love this picture for the theme because it perfectly sums up fall in Los Angeles...still a little green, but with a few hints of fall leaves, chilly enough for a little jacket but nothing more...

also linking to...

Shades of Autumn - Brown

2011-11-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

This week, the Shades of Autumn challenge is to capture the color Brown. Brown was a fairly easy color to find! It may not be the main color in each of the pics, but they all feature some brown.

This first one is my favorite, and I can't exactly explain why...

I like this last one too...I think the first and the last are my faves.

Berries 'N Cream Muffins

2011-11-08T21:17:00.000-08:00

First of all, there's still time to link up to Photo Tip Tuesday - click HERE and link up!

And now...Berries 'N Cream Muffins!

I posted a picture of these muffins the other day and got a few requests for the recipe. And of course I had plenty more pictures of them, so here it is. I adapted this recipe from Danelle's awesome food blog, Let's Dish. Even if you don't cook, you should follow this blog just for the inspiring food photography! I adapted this from her recipe for Raspberry Cream Muffins.

Ingredients
1/2 cup fresh raspberries
1/2 cup fresh blackberries 3/4 cups sugar, divided
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cups finely chopped white chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, toss raspberries and blackberries (I chopped the blackberries first a bit because the ones I bought were really big!) with 1/4 cup sugar; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and 1/2 cup sugar. Beat in egg and extracts. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with half and half. Carefully stir in the chips and raspberries. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yum! I really loved these muffins! Thanks, Danelle for the inspiration!

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Five, Tracking Your Progress

2011-11-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

Here are my favorite entries for last week's Photo Tip Tuesday. I'm sorry for just showing links instead of your awesome pictures, but I'm writing this on my work computer (shh don't tell anyone!) and the internet is a little fickle here sometimes and for some reason the pictures aren't showing up right now. But do yourself a favor and click on them to see!

My Favorites, in no particular order:

Photographis

Luvin' Life Photography

Chic Homeschool Mama

Grab a Button!

For this week's Photo Tip Tuesday I wanted to show some "progress" pictures. It was last November that I really got into blogging and started taking pictures regularly. I saw that the Pioneer Woman has been posting old pictures lately and comparing them to recent pictures she's taken to track her growth as a photographer. I've seen this done at Click It Up a Notch as well, and I thought this would be a good exercise, to take stock of how I've improved in the last year, and where I want to go from here.

And let me point out, I didn't intentionally pick out "bad" pictures to show a greater difference. I picked pictures that I remember being really excited about at the time!

I was really excited about this yellow flower shot when I took it. I thought it was so artsy looking! Now I'm wondering if its even in focus! And the shadow going across the top of it is so distracting! On the right, I see light and focus working FOR me!

This shot on the left was definitely lacking contrast, depth, and color!

This 2010 shot was one of the first portraits I ever took! The one on the right is probably my favorite portrait I've taken so far.

On the left--a macro setting on a point and shoot. One the right--on real actual macro lens!

Not sure what I was thinking here! And what kind of processing was I going for?? On the right, i'm clearly paying more attention to light and focus.

What a difference in sharpness, focus, and COLOR! Granted, the 2011 shot was taken with a very expensive RENTED lens!

Can't wait to see what my shots look like in another year!

What have you guys been shooting? If you don't have a photo tip to share, remember you can simply share what lens you used or what your settings were.

I Heart Faces - Black

2011-11-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

I've been excited about this weeks I Heart Faces challenge to show the color Black in a color photo--no b&w submissions allowed. As you know I've been very slowly editing and showing drips and dribbles from my shoot at Union Station with two of my gorgeous friends.

We did some cool backlight shots in one of the tunnels leading up to the train platform and I immediately thought of this photo for this challenge. It almost looks like she's walking down a runway with a spotlight behind her or like there's actually a train coming right at her! But its merely the sunlight flowing in to the tunnel!

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for Photo Tip Tuesday!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2011-11-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since I've done a Scavenger Hunt Sunday. Here's what I came up with for this week's prompts.

FOOD
I'll try to do a post soon with the recipe for these amazing berry muffins!

PURPLE
I really wanted to do a full post of Purple for the Shades of Autumn challenge, but I just couldn't find much purple around here. I did manage to get this one shot...

SHAPES
Circle..

IN DISGUISE
I've already posted every Halloween costume picture I have so I went with this instead...they aren't technically "in disguise" but I liked the idea of a hood being a partial disguise...

PHOTOGRAPHER'S CHOICE
I am soo behind in editing the pictures from my Union Station shoot! I only have a handful of pics done from each girl, so until I have time to get enough done for a full post, I'm just going to show small previews here and there!

Halloween - West Hollywood Style

2011-11-01T23:46:00.000-07:00

I live about 15 minutes from one of the country's largest Halloween celebrations in West Hollywood--yet I've always taken special care to avoid it, figuring parking and traffic would just be a nightmare.

But this year, I decided to brave it just to take pictures of all the, well, interesting people. And to my surprise, it was some of the most fun I've ever had on Halloween. To be honest, I thought it would be just a lot of nutty people. And while there were some, there were also tons of families, and amazingly creative people, and live music, and lots of strangers wanting to talk to each other and take pictures of each others favorite costumes. It was a really great experience.

One of my favorite costumes I saw was actually one of the simplest--Siri, and Steve Jobs. I was a little nervous about asking strangers to take pictures of them, and they were the first couple I approached. They encouraged me to press her "Siri" symbol on her stomach and she proceeded to tell me about the weather!

Here were some other great costumes--keep in mind, I would guess half this crowd works in some sort of film or tv studio, so they probably have some pretty good resources!

We found a very cool, chill bar to end the night at and I decided to prop my camera on the table and try some long exposures. I used self timer and got into this one shot--so this is my Halloween Selfie!

Photo Tip Tuesday linky is still open, click here and enter!

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Four, How to Shoot Your Pumpkins

2011-10-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

I've never really tried shooting carved pumpkins before so I experimented a little. At first, I tried to just hand hold my camera. I opened the aperture up to 1.8 (as wide as that lens would go) and slowed the shutter down to 1/50 second (about the slowest I can hand hold my camera and get some half way decent focus!)

Even at that setting, the result was very dark.

So I set up my tripod. I closed down to 3.5 and tried a shot on "aperture priority" mode to see what shutter speed the camera recommended and how it came out. The camera chose a full 6 second exposure! And it made quite a difference!

But I decided I liked the picture a little dark so the background would disappear a little more, but I still wanted to see some of the pumpkin (unlike my first hand held shot.) So I experimented a few shots on some different settings--the beauty of manual exposure! I settled on f/3.5 and a 2 second exposure.

I just think it looks a little spookier that way!

Then for fun I extended the canvas on the shot and use the cloning tool to make it look like that rail that the pumpkin sat on went all the way across and I cloned the background too. I added some texture and then I brought the photo into Picnik and had some fun!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Link up your Photo Tips or Editing tips below--and remember, if your tip can be as simple as sharing what lens you used or what your settings were!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

The theme for the Good to Wow challenge is "costumes." Well there are no little kids in adorable costumes in my family, so I shot some pumpkins instead! These photos are completely SOOC. Come back tomorrow for Photo Tip Tuesday and to see tips on shooting your pumpkins!

Boo!

And for fun I experimented a little with purposely shooting out of focus.

Happy Halloween!

Photo Tip Tuesday - Favorites

2011-10-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorites from this weeks entries.

Favorite Photos

Picture Speak

Lisa Gordon Photography

Favorite Photo Tips

Kelvin White Balance by Naptime Momtog

and

Textured Roughness in Photography by Mira Crisp

Grab your winners button!

Shades of Autumn - Red

2011-10-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Today is my 30th Birthday.

I just thought I'd share that.

Now on to this week's challenges...

The theme for the Shades of Autumn challenge this week is the color Red. Red is not really a shade of autumn that we get out in LA. Orange and Yellow were hard enough, but red is nearly impossible to find.

My friends and I went to an apple orchard to pick apples last weekend and I was pretty sure I'd get tons of red shots--however all the apples seemed to be green! At the very end, we did find one red apple on the ground, and my friend held it up for me to take a picture of it.

Photo Tip Tuesday - Week Three, Union Station Preview

2011-10-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

I was so excited last week to be able to bring two of my gorgeous friends to downtown LA's Union Station to take pictures of them. It was a very different experience for me. I'm used to shooting people in pretty parks, not crowded train stations! We did get stopped by security a couple times--technically, you need a permit to shoot there, but we told them we were students and they were pretty nice about it. Just told us to try to not block any paths or anything.

Finding light was also a whole new experience. It wasn't about finding the usual "golden hour", we needed bright window light! I have soo many pictures to sort through still, but here's one so far that I like.

And for my Photo Tip: In this tunnel shot, the light source (bright sunlight at the end of the ramp) was directly behind her. I used this reflector to bounce some light back onto her face. I used the silver side because there wasn't much light, and I needed to reflect as much as possible. Because of this, I was able to get some nice catchlights in her eyes. It also helped me get a better exposure on her skin without having to completely blow out the entire background. Part of the light is still blown out but I didn't mind that too much. Reflectors can really help add light when you need it!

Link up your photo tips below!

If you don't have a photo tip, remember you can simply share what lens you used for a shot, or what your settings were, or a step you took to edit it.

Shrimp and Pesto Pizza with Goat Cheese

2011-10-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

I made this for dinner the other day and just had to take a few pictures and share.

I started by sprinkling the shrimp with some garlic and herb seasoning, and just lightly sauteed it, about 30 seconds on each side. You don't want to cook it all the way through because its going to go into the oven. Then I rolled out my pizza dough--I use the pre-made garlic and herb pizza dough from Trader Joe's.

I just used a pie tin to cook it in but I really want to get this Bialetti 3 Piece Pizza Stone Set! My friend has it and it makes awesome pizza crusts!

I spread some prepared pesto onto the dough, spread the shrimp across it, sprinkled it with mozzarella and spooned some scoops of goat cheese on top and baked it for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees, until the cheese starts to brown on the edges. And voila, cheesy, pestoy goodness.

Pin It

I made this recipe up but I highly recommend both of these pizza recipe books if you're interested!

The 50 Best Pizza Recipes: Tasty, fresh, and easy to make!

and

The Mozza Cookbook: Recipes from Los Angeles's Favorite Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria

Thanks for visiting!

Photo Tip Tuesday - Favorites

2011-10-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who participated in the second week of Photo Tip Tuesday!

I'm still sort of experimenting with how to show the "winners" but for now, I'm posting two favorite photos, and two favorite photo tips!

Favorite Photos

Beth at Laugh Until You Cry

Olivia at ...love, life & pictures

Favorite Photo Tips

What to do to Prevent Image Loss? by Mira Crisp

and

Photographing Vignettes by June Makes Six

Feel free to grab a favorites button!

Colors of Fall

2011-10-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

First off, I had an awesome shoot today with two of my absolutely gorgeous friends down at Union Station in downtown LA. I've never done a portrait shoot inside a building or with an architectural background instead of in a park or something. It was very challenging but so much fun. And we only got yelled at by security once :)

Anyways, the theme this week for the Shades of Autumn challenge is "Orange." It is a bit of a challenge finding fall colors in LA--it's still been in the 80's every day, but I was able to get a few Orange shots.

First, I'm including one from my pumpkin post yesterday, because, well its so very orange :)

This next shot barely has any orange in it at all, but I love just the touch of orange on the edges, reminding me that fall will indeed hit LA (it just takes a bit longer here!)

Here are my other orange shots...

Good to Wow - Pumpkin Edits

2011-10-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

I had fun editing my pumpkin shots for this weeks challenge. Instead of doing clean edits, I added some texture and ran some subtle vintage actions on them.

Click HERE to see the SOOC versions of these shots.

And..then for fun, I thought I'd add a face to the pumpkin in this shot...

And lastly, this shot...

Which I also decided needed a face...and then I got a little carried away and turned it into a little Halloween Card!

I added the texture and jack-o-lantern face on Photoshop, and then brought it into Picnik to add the text and border. It was my first time trying to add a face like this onto a picture. I found a picture online that I wanted to use for the face, and then basically applied it like a texture, used a layer mask to remove what needed to be removed and played with the blending modes and opacity a bit. It wasn't too hard to figure out! Check out Ashley's blog for other awesome edits!

Oh and there's still time to link up to Photo Tip Tuesday!