Sand box fun!

Sofi has a new-found love for sandboxes and loves to play in the one at our neighborhood park.

I love how you can see the sand falling out of her hand in this one!

See her pants? She likes to scoop up sand and dump it on her legs.

This is when she stuck a rock in her mouth (Don't worry, we got it out and she was fine)

Messy baby!

Photo editing tutorial with Photo Pos Pro

I downloaded a free photo editor called Photo Pos Pro and it is fantastic! It doesn't have quite as many tools as photo shop or some other more advanced editor but it is really great for touching up a basic photo. Anyways, I am just going to post a little tutorial on how to edit with photo pos pro. (and I'm sure some of these tricks apply to photo shop, too)

Here is the original picture that I started with:

Good picture, but kinda grainy

1. I used Noise Reduction twice on the picture to despeckle and make it look smoother and less grainy.
2. Increased Brightness and contrast to desired amounts. (10 brightness and 5 contrast if you're curious)
3. go to RGB and change color levels (R -2, G 5, B 5)
4. Go to HSL and change Saturation and Luminosity ( S 5, L 3)
5. Crop, if desired. 
6. Use clone brush to cover up any unwanted places.

And here is the image with basic edits applied:

But I decided I liked it better without the under-eyes smoothed over, so I undid that:

Much Cuter, I think.

Now, I decided I wanted to make it look a little vintage-y so here's what I did:

1. Go to Brightness/ contrast and turn the contrast up pretty high (I did 28)
2. Then go to Effects - Colors - Fade to Gray
3. Turn saturation down (-33)
4. Go to Effects- Colors- Sepia - Advanced
5. Adjust Tint, Level, and contrast until desired look is achieved (T 21, L 40, C 21)
6. Lower Opacity until Desired amount of color shows through (I did about half)

Here is the picture with these edits applied:

Which do you like better?

Trip to the park

Yesterday, We took Sofi on a walk to the park. We do this a lot, but we usually go in the afternoon when the sun is blazing down and this time, we went around eight at night. The lighting was so beautiful in the park, that I took a few pictures.

Sofi's Photo Shoot

Sofi had a small photo shoot with me the other day. Just for practice with lighting and everything. I wish I had a nice, smooth backdrop but oh well. Here are my favorites.

I threw in the last one because her face is so silly!

New Camera!

Last week, I got my Olympus SZ-12 in the mail! It's fantastic! So much better than my 8 year old Kodak easy share!
Here are some of my favorite photographs so far.

Happy New Year!

My New Year's Resolution was to start a blog. And since it's already the 8th, I figured that I might as well start. This blog will just be a documentation of my life and photography skills. Here are some pictures of my daughter that I've taken this year so far. (Expect a lot of pictures of her, she's a great subject!"