California Orchard

This is another shot that I've always wanted to try and get. When I was a little kid I remember driving to my aunt's house and looking out the car window as we passed orchards. I remember being amazed at all of the lines and aisles that the trees created. I imagined it would be fun to walk through one, to be a little girl and have a tea party in the middle of an old orchard with tall trees and lots of shade.
I liked this newer orchard because the trees were small enough that you could see straight to the mountains. It was also another "drive by" shot so it is a little blurry in the foreground, but I'm glad I got it. I just hope people aren't getting too sick of me pulling out my camera every 10 seconds on this trip!

Iowa Windmill

I'm almost surprised I am getting this up today. We had a very busy day in Sonoma, CA. It was a lot of fun, but I'm pretty tired. This is one of my other favorite pictures from the drive on I-80 in Iowa. There are a lot of wind farms so to say, not quite like Wyoming, but there are a lot of windmills and it's green and beautiful. I liked the clouds in this particular scene too.

Generations

Isaac met his Great Granddad Jack yesterday for the first time. Here is a picture of them together at his house in Sutter, CA. Thank goodness Isaac is not as scared of facial hair as he used to be, or this could have been a disaster.

Great Salt Lake Sunset

Saturday July 24th, 2010

(Happy birthday Jason!!!)

As we left Salt Lake City on I-80 the sun was setting over the mountains. This was the best picture of the ones I could find. I wish I could've gotten a little higher up on the side of the mountain to get a better angle on the reflection, but I like it a lot, especially the colors.

A Storm is a Brewin'

FRIDAY July 23, 2010 post

Thursday my mom, James, John, Andrew, Ben (James' nephew), and Ben's friend Eric, and I went out at 4:30 am (yes, AM) to climb Mt. Sherman, a 14er in Southwest of Denver. The hike was going pretty well, but around 13,100 ft. we started noticing some really bad clouds at the top of the mountain. We met up with a man who was calling for his wife (Sue) who informed us that he used to work for New Mexico Search and Rescue and that he was not going to the top; he had pulled too many dead bodies off of the top... welllll, after he said that I turned around and ran down to James and mom and said, "we're outta here! let's go! down the mountain." So we didn't make it to the peak, we were pretty close, but it was really fun. There were a lot of mining ruins along the trail which was really cool. I wish I could have spent more time, but we were in a hurry, especially at the end.

Colorado Stream

I have always wanted to take a long exposed picture of rushing water to get that flowing effect. I went on a hike a few days ago with my brother and his family and we passed so many beautiful things. When I saw this small stream I took a few minutes to take some pictures. Because it was daylight I had to set the ISO low so that I could also slow the shutter speed down to get the water effect I was looking for. I set the camera down on a rock to steady it in a few places and this is one of my favorite shots from the bunch.

I Believe I Can Fly

That's what Andrew was singing as he was jumping on the tramp with his brothers. I like this shot of him, it looks like he got some serious air. I also thought it would be fun to play around with the colors from a cool picture I saw on the internet with a guy in a bright shirt and the rest black and white. I'll look for the link and post it if I can find it again.

This is my nephew Austin on a fun rocking horse in their even more fun backyard (a child's haven). Really, do I need to say more? ...just an awesome moment! I love his face!

Is this heaven?

Is this heaven? No. It's Iowa.

This is a picture I took as my mom and I were driving through Iowa on 1-80. It was probably pretty funny now looking back on it; I was sitting in the passenger's seat with the camera on my lap the whole time and was surprised how well some of the pictures turned out. Some not so much... but isn't that the great thing about digital? I can erase all of those! I must say, I love the rolling-corn-covered hills in Iowa. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside :) of course, I was raised there sooooo...

More from the lily pond...

This is another one that I really liked from the Lily Pond at Lincoln Park. I took a couple different shots of these flowers with the tree right behind it, but this one is my favorite.
Just a side note, I'm going on a long road trip for the next three weeks so I will have a post for every day, but I might post more than one on some days when I am in a car all day, or hiking a mountain, or at a beach, or just playing games with the fam and don't have time to get it done. I will however be sure to take lots and lots of pictures and try not to be so timid to ask people to take pictures of them (or their children- cough cough, my nephews) and hopefully I'll have a lot of good ones to choose from in the next few weeks.

Vignette

Okay, first of all, I litterally was crying when I looked through my old pictures of Isaac trying to find the perfect one to try a new effect on. I've seen a lot of portrait shots with the cool vignette effect. I tried it on the bridge picture from Shannon's wedding but the way I tried it was a PAIN and it didn't look exactly like the ones I had seen on the internet. So I did a google search (a novel idea) and found a tutorial for darkening the edges, and... voilá!

Chicago Allyway

When we went to check out the Lincoln Park neighborhood we passed this ally and I thought it was pretty cool. It would have been fun to hang out and take more pictures but two cars were trying to get out and loading and unloading stuff, (I edited them out) so we had to move.

This is my first picture

Then I tried making it Sepia...

but this is my favorite

A learning process

One of the more popular photos from Shannon's wedding with people is this shot on the bridge outside the reception hall. I had a hard time getting Matt to do many posses for me, so I was grateful to get this one! I wanted to try and blur and darken the edges using curves, feathering it a bit, but I'm still not 100% happy with the end product.

I think this would be a good photo to have in black and white too.

What do you think about the edge effect I did, more tweaking? I guess I feel like the circle is too obvious and might look cheesey.

Lily Pond Butterfly

Today we went downtown for the last time before I leave for CA and we move to spend an afternoon at our favorite beach in Chicago. On our way home we thought it would be fun to stop and see if we could get some good pictures at Lincoln Park Zoo. We ran into a sign and a fenced in area that said it was a Lily Pond, so we decided to check it out. There were a ton of wildflowers, butterflies, birds, bees, and of course, lilies. It was really beautiful. Here is my favorite picture of a butterfly that I caught. It took a lot of patience to get this shot! I don't know why I seem to be fascinated with flowers and nature lately... it's just beautiful. I also think it's peculiar that I'm terrified of most bugs big and small, even moths... but for some reason butterflies don't frighten me in the least.

Team work

Jason actually shot this picture, it is probably my favorite... or at least on the top 10 favorites from Shannon's wedding. We tag teamed the picture taking and I sure love this one, such a great moment. The little girl is Shannon's niece and her mom, Shannon's sister. I enhanced some of the colors, the primary colors to be exact, red to bring out the orange flowers in her bouquet, yellow (for the hair ties and bouquet), and blue obviously for all the blues in the photo. I also turned down the saturation on the florescent light above Shannon's head coming in from behind her because, well, it bugged me! :)

Before

After

Grandma's Park

Here Isaac is at Grandma's "Park", at least, Alexander calls it a park and I think that's really cute. He was more interested in the wood chips of course...

Fixing shadows and reflections

I was looking through Shannon's wedding pictures getting the final DVD ready to burn for her and Matt to keep and I found this great shot of her dad with her brother-in-law Tom. I love the actual picture, the moment and everything, but the shadows behind them and reflection on her dad's face was really bothering me, so I fixed it! How fun is that!? I absolutely love how it turned out, you can barely tell. Because the background was so easy to work with I just used a clone stamp to fix it. Easy as pie really.

Before

After

More Color Silhouette

Color Silhouette

I took some pictures of my mom's hostas plants because they bloom these pretty purple bell flowers this time of year. I've been thinking about doing these pictures for our bathroom to decorate. Our color scheme is purple and black so I thought it would be cool to have silver picture frames with black and white pictures of purple flowers but leave the flower color exposed. Anyway, so I tried it today and this is what I ended up with. It's a little late for me to worry about a few spots I missed, I'll get them before I print them for our bathroom if I do go ahead with the idea.

Just chillin'

Well, I wish I could say there was something terribly significant about this picture, as it is my first on this 365 day journey, (is it leap year?) but it's not really. Unless of course you count for the fact that just about everything Isaac does is outrageously adorable and terribly significant to me! :) Tonight at my parents house he took their high chair that was on a "big boy" chair and put it on the floor and then sat in it, and I thought it was cute!