365 Project - Day 330

Today I wanted to do a bit of a practice photo shoot on Brianna and picked out a couple of props/costumes I had wanted her to try out for me. Guess who found them and decided to try them out? He's my little Dancing Queen! lol

365 Project - Day 329

I’m a God fearin’ hard workin’ combine driver
Hoggin’ up the road on my p-p-p-plower
Chug a lug a lugin’ 5 miles an hour
On my International Harvester

~International Harvester by Craig Morgan~

(just click on this picture to see it larger)

*the storyboard template was made by Heidi (Louder than Words Photography). She isn't offering this exact template but she has another great one offered as a freebie on her blog today: http://blog.louderthanwordsphotography.com/2010/06/storyboard-freebie-akron-oh.html

365 Project - Day 328

Niklas had his first tester afternoon at Kindergarten today. Usually he naps still in the afternoon so he missed his nap, had all the excitement of going to Kindergarten for the first time and to top it off, it is super hot and muggy here. He conked out in my arms a couple of hours ago and I could not resist taking some pictures of him. Sleeping children are the ultimate picture of innocence!

365 Project - Day 327

My honey suckle is starting to bloom!! 

It smells so beautiful on my balcony, especially since the jasmin is also still blooming!

Since we had company yesterday, I actually did not take any pictures. I took a lot today though so I'll include an extra one. As we were cleaning up in our yard today, my husband said to me, "you might want to go get your camera". This bug was sitting on the table watching us!

 Bugs actually creep me out, but it fascinates me to take pictures of them. When this one suddenly flew at me though, I picked up my camera and ran away screaming!

Fix-It Friday #60 at i heart faces

I love fix-it Friday at iheartfaces!! It's so much fun to experiment and get creative on someone else's pictures. It's teen week this week at iheartfaces so of course we got a picture to work with with a teen in it!

Here is the original, contributed by Susan Keller of her teenage son.:

I love sun flares so I for sure didn't want to try to loose any of it's beauty when editing, but I did want to try to make him stand out a bit more. I cropped in a bit and did a slight tilt on the picture (for some reason tilting it seemed teenagery to me, maybe because that's the viewpoint I seem my teenagers in since they don't seem to know how to sit normally!?). Since I am testing some new Lightroom Presets for AMP, I decided to open it up in Lightroom 3 first. I ran the preset "retro classic" from her soon to be released "Shabby Chic" collection then continued editing in CS5 photoshop. I ran "clean it up" from AMP's Squeaky Clean set but made it into a hidden mask and only masked him in. Then ran my all time favorite action from AMP, rainbow smile and tweaked it quite a bit. I was fairly happy with the picture but wanted to give it a bit more so I opened it up in Lightroom 3 again and ran the retro classic preset on the edited version I had so far. Then I added a rounded opaque thick edge from another set of presets that I am testing for AMP and had this:

I also wanted to test how it looked in BW so I ran AMPs Lightroom  Cherry Cola preset (also found in the Shabby Chic collection) with a rounded opaque white edge preset and had this:

Be sure to check out the other fixes posted on iheartfaces:http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/

365 Project - Day 325

Sunrise Dewdrop

sometimes waking up early is just worth it!

365 Project - Day 324

A few of the many faces of Niklas!

365 Project - Day 323

Experimenting with texture today!

365 Project - Day 322

Niklas stayed up very late last night and loved it!

365 Project - Day 321

Today is officially "summer". It doesn't feel that way yet, Niklas and I still had jackets on for our walk this morning. But still, when I see this field of wheat ripening beside the road, it looks likes summer and gives me hope that we even get some days that feel like summer yet soon!

i heart faces "Celebrating Teens" photo challenge

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4714616740_93f2ff5361_o.jpg

This is my entry for the "Celebrating Teens" photo challenge this week at iheartfaces!

Joshua is 16, loves sports and this was one of the pictures I took of him during a photo shoot this winter. He amazed me at how high he could jump, especially considering that there was about a foot of snow underneath him for the take off!

Be sure to check out the other "Celebrating Teens" entries at iheartfaces: http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/

365 Project - Day 320

What Makes a Dad

God took the strength of a mountain,
The majesty of a tree,
The warmth of a summer sun,
The calm of a quiet sea,
The generous soul of nature,
The comforting arm of night,
The wisdom of the ages,
The power of the eagle's flight,
The joy of a morning in spring,
The faith of a mustard seed,
The patience of eternity,
The depth of a family need,
Then God combined these qualities,
When there was nothing more to add,
He knew His masterpiece was complete,
And so,

He called it ... Dad

- Author Unknown-

ps. you can download the template from mcp actions: http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2008/05/31/free-10x20-dad-template-perfect-for-fathers-day-gifts/

Fix-It Friday #59 at i heart faces

It's Friday and time for another "fix-it" at iheartfaces! 

Here is the original picture, taken by Julie Rivera:

I seriously could not find much of anything to "fix" with this weeks picture and to top it off, she is just adorable! Here is what I came up with:

As usual, I opened the picture up in Camera Raw of CS5 Photoshop and did a really slight white balance adjustment and then brought it into photoshop. I ran AMPs "clean it up" action over it and "softly" from her "A Little Sugar" set. Then I choose a texture to play with because this picture was really calling out "texture" to me. I did a few different layers of the texture, masking out parts of her as I went along and changing the modes on the different layers. And in the end I brought a layer of just texture to the top, cut out the middle, leaving a frame. Did a drop shadow and a bevel and emboss on the frame. Then merged all the layers except the frame. I duplicated the merged layers layer and brought it to the top and made it into a hidden mask, revealing only parts of the picture (the top of her head, the bottom part of the blanket) to make it look as if she was crawling out of the frame.

A super cute and fun picture to play with!!
And if you want to see more "fixes" be sure to head on over to http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/!

365 Project - Day 318

Today I was excited to get my new Nikon SB 900 Speedlight delivered! I'm really excited about learning how to work with it! Of course I could not wait to read anything but had to play a bit first. One of the things I tested was using it as a fill flash outside in sunlight.

The above picture is an edited version of my test shot. Here are the two straight out of camera pictures showing without the speedlight and with:

and I will include one more picture that I took just a few minutes ago. As I do this blog post, I am also keeping an eye on the TV. Germany is playing Serbia right now in the World Soccer Championship and it does not look very good for Germany. But they have one little fan here blowing away and making lots of noise on his vuvuzela!

Maternity Photo Shoot | Schwangerschaft Fotoshooting, 67117 Limburgerhof, Ludwigshafen, Speyer, Mannheim

These pictures are a couple of months old already, but I thought I'd post them today since I have not shared them yet. These are from my first maternity shoot. We did the shoot on a Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning she had her baby! Luckily we got them done before he came!!

365 Project - Day 316

I suddenly saw that it was getting dark outside and realized I had not taken any pictures today! I grabbed my camera and went out on the balcony and captured this little guy crawling on a weed:

and noticed that my chives that I have growing in a flower box are starting to bloom (again! I actually pick the blooms off so that the chives grow thicker and juicier instead of flowering):

And this is what I really like about doing a 365 Blog. I love taking pictures, but some days the "all day" stuff just takes over and I don't get around to picking my camera up. Thinking about my blog gives me that push to grab it and just take a few pictures. It only takes a few minutes and afterwards I am so glad that I did. I'm perfectly ok with missing a day or two if life gets so busy that it absolutely doesn't work, but I like knowing I have an "excuse" to take some time out of my busy day and relax a bit with my camera!

365 Project - Day 315

First taste of watermelon this season. 

I had to laugh as he decided whether he liked it or not. 

In the end, the verdict was "like" for the watermelon and "yuck" for the seeds.

(love the little drop of watermelon juice hanging on his chin!)

365 Project - Day 314

I got to do a photo shoot of this little sweetheart in March and 

today I snuck a few pictures in again at play group. 

Isn't she just adorable!?