This has been a hectic week! From a weekend trip to Duluth, a LASIK consultation, an early morning wedding, and a girl’s night, I am worn out. Luckily, the rest of this weekend is plan free! I have already started relaxing, and I’m going to continue it!

Since I didn’t get much done creative-wise last week, I am going to show you photos that I took the week before. I had a little mini photo session with my husband and cats. I learned that I need to do some more playing around with lights and flash. I was not pleased with a lot of my lighting set ups, and the flash seemed a little on the out-of-control side. Of course, I’m only going to show you the photos that turned out best.

I think the saddest part about this session was finding out that my cats are not ever going to be models for me. There goes my plan of cat internet fame. I guess I’ll have to keep my day job…

 

 

One of the big perks in our new house is the wooded backyard. Since we’ve moved in, we’ve seen squirrels, bunnies, turkeys, deer, frogs, and many different types of birds. So far my favorite is the deer. This little lady has been sighted in our yard multiple times. This is the second time I’ve seen her laying down and enjoying the buffet. The first time, I tried to take a picture, but she saw me, got scared, and ran. My picture ended up being a blur, and I felt like I was showing people an ultrasound. “See that there? That’s the head…” And they would politely nod and smile, even though all they could see was a brown blur amongst the greenery.

This time, she sat still. She even stayed there long after I left! So I think we’re gonna be friends. By the end of the summer, I’m sure she’ll let me pet her…right?

My second favorite sighting was Peeper Frog (as I named him). I found him climbing up our windows a few times. At first, I was really excited because he was so cute. After noticing that he was peeing on every window he visited, I was a little less excited. But his cuteness won out, and the pee was on the outside of the windows, so I decided I could forgive him. (It was a long trek in frog leaps from the ground to where he was, after all.)

Peeper Frog got his name because he would sit at the bottom of our kitchen window for hours, and he looked like he was looking in at us. Although, if he were a real peeper, he wouldn’t have sat still while I took all the photos of him! But maybe he knew that they wouldn’t be very identifiable because I was taking them through the screen. (Hence, no frog pictures. Sorry!)

Now that we have moved and are all settled into our new house, I took a look back at the last post that I wrote. And I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t like how it turned out. So I decided to post it again…minus the makeup. I think this looks more like a photo my mom could appreciate of herself. (And less like a clown. Sorry mom!) The makeup was way too much.

It’s been a little hectic lately with all the house showings going on. I spent more time at the library this past month than I probably have in my entire life. But in the end, it was all good, because our house has sold. Hooray!

While at the library, I borrowed the book Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop. As anyone who knows me really well can tell you, I love myself a good Photoshop tutorial! And this book was full of them! The best part for me was that you could download all the images and follow along. In addition, you could download eyelash brushes and alternate images to practice on.

I have found a lot of times with tutorials that when I use their images, the results are amazing. But when I use my own images, they’re not quite as great. So I grabbed the photo of my mom above and started retouching. I think most of the retouches that I did turned out nice. But then I went to makeup and eyelashes. To me, these seem a little over the top. I’m not sure if it’s just because I have never in my life seen my mom with such full eyelashes, or if they really are just over the top. Next time, I’ll have to try using a photo of somebody I don’t know quite as well and see if it’s easier to tell when it gets too fake.

My mom was recently here for a visit. As a part of that, we took a trip to see my Grandparents with my aunt and cousin. Since I barely have any photos of my family, I thought it would be nice to bring my camera along and get some pictures. Sadly, it was a dreary and rainy trip, which meant that we were indoors, and I had to use my flash. I’ve read books about using my flash, and I understand the concepts, but in practice, it doesn’t quite work out as well as I would like it to. I was discouraged with the pictures I got. Luckily, when I got them home and onto my computer, I realized that they weren’t as bad as I had originally thought. When I attached my flash, I had forgotten to change my white balance setting. A few quick clicks in Aperture, and I’m pleased with what I got.