Our peonies have nearly withered for the season. We look forward to them every year...and they were gorgeous this year.
Peonie Pom poms...love!! I was a pom pom girl in high school...but that's neither here nor there now is it. Anyhoo....on with the show...
These withered rose petals are too pretty to throw out before snapping a shot:
Ooops, how did that cute puppy pic get here? Hmmm?
Hope you had a fabulous Easter weekend. We sure did! It was so nice to be a party of 5 again...daughter was home from school...so that was the best!
Hey, Here's a photo tip for you. What to do with photos with less than ideal faces? Like one person looks good, but another doesn't...or they have messy bed head, or are making a goofy face. No one in this example did...haha, okay maybe they did. Just crop the faces out. Bonus: the photo takes on a whole whole new perspective!
I like this photo, because it shows all the hands of the Easter egg decorators in the shot. They were all around the table, so it would have been hard to get all the faces anyway. Plus, they ignore me and my requests to smile. Plus I think it's good to not have "posed" photos all the time. Ya know, just let the subjects be themselves and let life happen "as is".
Here's another example. Of course, I don't blame the photographer (me), for the fact that the 3 subjects aren't all smiling and one has a goofy face. Nope nope. Or maybe there is a really distracting background behind them.
Again, cropping the photo (sans heads) gives the photo a whole 'nother focus. Now your natural eye starts looking at other things. Like their hands. It's interesting how there are 3 distinctive sets of hands here, and they all have different poses.
Another shot. Anyway, I love how there is a sense of mystery to the photo now.
Because you know they were all smiling, right? Aj's smile is a little silly, but that's just him. Here are their heads...cuz I know Gramma's reading this are thinking "I want to see their smiles!"
I've done this creative photo cropping before, but I forgot about it, so thanks to those Clickin' Moms for the fun reminder!
Guess why today is sooo special. Give up? It's my fav-o-rite daughter's 20th birthday!
It the first time we haven't been with her on her Birthday. That makes me sad, BUT she's coming home for Easter, and that turns my frown upside down! I can't wait!! She texted me already this morning and is having a great day. Her roomies and friends are taking good care of her today, I just know it. :)
and I really like it! There is a pretty good photo editing program that came with the phone (Droid X), but I really like this PicSay Pro App so I thought I'd share.
Here is a photo of Drake and his cousin straight out of the cell phone camera:
Here it is tweeked :
(fixed red eyes, sharpened 40%, faded color 30%, vignette edges 50%, added white border and text)
Another version:
(lomo 41% = fun vintage effect)
Here's another close up photo. Straight out of phone camera:
After editing:
(saturation 30%, brightness 4%, sharpen 40%, smooth .63, vignette 50%)
There are so many variations and color possibilities. Sorta like mini actions in PhotoShop, which is so much fun! So simple! The font options are a little cheezy to me, but there is a new version of fonts available. I don't use them much, but if you did that's a nice option, too.
We spent some time at The Aksarben Farmers Market this weekend. Look at my sweetie holding this fresh bouquet flowers.
Aren't late Summer harvests beautiful? Such rich colors.
I promised him I'd help carry our gatherings if he'd let me snap just one photo of him holding all that! Our last Farmers Market will be next weekend. They are our special Summer dates and we'll miss them!
By the way, the sweet corn was the best we've had all Summer. And we are picky about our corn. Going to have to go back next weekend for sure to get more!
Edit: BTW, that's an original Steve Gordon designed OMA t-shirt hubby is sportin' in that photo! OMA as in Omaha. Omaha rocks!
I forgot about this fun site. Have you used it?
Just upload your pix (like Flickr) and do cool stuff with them. I've used a couple photos of my 16 year old.
Carve out some play time today! You deserve it.
Exploring and experimenting digi style lately. This is the kind of creating you can do while sitting on the sofa and with no mess whatsoever. Gotta love that!
Here's what the above image started out as:
Here's another one. I like this one even more.
I'm thinking about getting one of these made into a canvas and putting it in our living room. Maybe. Hmmm. How about another Lilly puppy photo? You know you want one...
Hey, have a good weekend!! See you next week!
This one is for Grandma. Ever since this one was a wee baby, she called him "her guy".
Just an unusual, not your everyday viewpoint kinda photo. Actually, all I get from him lately are goofy faces, so I have to get creative in my photo taking with him again. It's ok though.
I've been on the computer a lot today. Updating, downloading, uploading, writing.
There's an update on Silver Bella: over here! That's an exciting one! It will be even more so in the coming weeks!!!!!!!
There's fabric charms being presented on The Free Style Embroidery E-Zine: over here! Yay! That's been such a fun e-course. It'll still be available for a while if you are interested in subscribing.
Chow for now!
So I've been reliving the past 18 years via photos. I'm making a scrapbook for my daughter's graduation open house.
It's been incredibly life affirming, I must say! If any of you know my background...that I used to be a major scrapbooker, you'd know I've done this for a long time. In the past 15 years I've sold the products in my retail brick and mortar store, taught classes at scrapbook conventions, and had many layouts published in all of the big dog scrap magazines. Designed lots of scrapbook products, too.
I should have taken a photo of all the scrapbook albums (12x12) I have. It's a tumbling tower...well over 15 fat huge albums filled to the brim with bright colored pages and embellishments surrounding the photos and life stories of our family. THIS scrapbook that I'm working on this week is very different from those.
My daughter and I created a digital scrapbook on Shutterfly a few weeks ago, and it by far our favorite of all. It was so easy to create, and the completed photo album looks like a hard back book. It's not trendy...very classic and will be in style forever. I'm so glad we did that! She's got her high school years (family, friends and sports) in that album and will enjoy sharing it at her open house--and forever, really.
But we still had the earlier years of her life to cover. The photos that were taken before we had digital photos. I'm not about to drag out all of those 15plus plus family albums to show guests. Who would want to see that? I mean...it'd take forever. SO, I'm doing a scrapbook for her to take with her on her life's journey, and it's got a few photos of each year of her life (I'm a totally chronological scrapper).
See how simple the pages are? Minimal embellishments. Very. I'm using a Kolo album, and limiting photos to one on a page. A couple have two photos, but mostly just one. I'm loving the use of all of the white space. I've never been a simple scrapper, so this is new for me. I've always pushed and pushed myself to be very creative with the layouts...it was a form of creative expression. So this is album is a no-brainer and comes together very easily. I'm not dreading doing it either, and no creative stumbling blocks! Minimal supplies! Minimal mess! I'm using the Fiskars photo splits (that's what I call the adhesives--old school, see!?) They were inexpensive and work great.
Best of all, when we put this book in someone's hands to view, they won't be overwhelmed. It's simple, it's going to be easy to peruse, and won't leave them cross-eyed from sensory overload half way through it. And, the focus is on THE PHOTOS!!!! Imagine that!
Throughout all of my teaching, I always told the beginning scrapbookers to focus on the photos, not the embellishments. I still believe that. My family has never ever said to me "Mom, I love that sticker on that page!!" or "Wow, that alphabet stamp is awesome." Nope, never said anything like that. They pick up our scrapbooks
to see themselves,
to read the stories,
to relive their lives.
It's never about the embellishments...even though it often was for me. I mean, I even planned my son's 1st birthday around the Mrs. Grossman's gingerbread boy stickers for cryin' out loud.
While I've been working on this album, I've thought about lots and lots of things about scrapbooking and photo storytelling. If any of you are into taking photos (of your life or your family) I'd love to give you a few tips/discoveries I've made along the way:
I wish someone would have told me this stuff..and if I still taught beginner scrapbooking classes I'd advice these...I'd scream it until they got it. I wish I'd taken closer photos of my newborn daughter. I wish I hadn't cropped her baby photos into little (blurry) 2x2 hearts and circles. Now they have the visual value of the sticker in the border beside them.
I think a fabulous gift to new parents would be a nice digital camera (if they already have one), and a lesson at a photography store on how to USE the camera....and some photo editing software (Photoshop). I couldn't be anymore serious about this...thus the large print above.
The biggest part of this week's project has been sorting through the photos. The early years are in boxes which I did have organized thankfully. Then around 2000 I got my first digital camera so all those photos are on the computer. Somewhat organized, too, even though I didn't know how to organized those on the computer (folders, dates, etc.) for quite a while!
Anyhoo....thanks for reading my rants and I hope that there's been a bit of advice for folks in this post. And if you already do/have all of the above, then I guess I would like to give you permission to use good archival scrapbooks and to keep it simple. Couldn't be any more serious about that either.
Now don't go thinking I don't use scrapbook supplies anymore...I do! I love many of them. I just am keeping it simple. I wish all of our photos were in Shutterfly books, but that's just me.
So now that you know my thoughts on all of this...have you any tips to share? To help out those new to capturing life via photos? Spill them in the comments if you do!
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