i heart faces - week 24: All about Babies

Since my very first newborn shoot is not until Wednesday, I am having to settle for one of the maternity photos I have shot recently.

To see more photos that are "All About Babies," head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces - week 21: "yellow"

Luckily, I had a ton of yellow photos to choose from, the tough part was narrowing it down.

Out here in western Oklahoma, many of the farmers choose to grow canola beans and for a couple of weeks in the spring the canola bean plants produce the most stunning fields of bright yellow flowers.

To see more "yellow" photos, head on over to i heart faces!

i heart faces - week 20: Faces and Flowers

Good grief! I almost forgot to enter this week's challenge - shame on me. I had some photos with even more flowers on them, but they were on a different computer. And since I am getting this in just under the gun, I had to use what I had on hand : )

To see more "Faces and Flowers", head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces: week 19 - Celebrating Mom

I just did a whole post on my photography blog for Mother's Day with pictures from some of the women I have photographed with their children.

I love when moms decide to come out from behind the camera and have their special relationships with their children captured in photos.

To see more photos "Celebrating Mom", head on over to i heart faces!

i heart faces: week 16 - collages

I recently had the opportunity of photographing this precious little one for her first birthday portraits. The mom wanted a couple of storyboards/collages to choose from and here is one of them I came up with.

To see more collages, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces: week 13 – Dramatic Black and White

I am so late in getting my entry up this week especially since there are already over 1000 entries!! Absolutely amazing!!

I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted to use; but in the end the following won out: 1. because I like that I was lower on the ground taking the photo and the composition turned out pretty sweet, 2. the lighting was perfect!, 3. I love the DOF, and 4. that baby couldn’t get any cuter if he tried.

To see more “Dramatic Black and White” photos, head on over to i heart faces!

i heart faces: week 12 - “Focusing on Angles”

Last week I had the most fun photo session with a group of high school girl friends. The girls were stunning and energetic and amongst stepping through plenty of cow “presents”, finding a big dead cat, and freezing our tooshies off – we still managed to have an amazing time and shared a lot of laughs.

I chose the following photo not only because of the tilt of the camera but because of all of the angles from the truck as well.

To see more photos utilizing various angles, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces: Week 10 - “Jump For Joy”

This week’s theme over at i heart faces is “Jump For Joy.” ‘

To see more jumping photos, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces – week 8: Hands On Fun

Wow! What a challenging  theme for this week’s i heart faces - instead of focusing on the face, they have chosen a theme that focuses on the hands. Of course I wanted to not miss out but coming up with a photo proved to be rather difficult. I really wanted the hands to tell a story and to show some kind of relationship. I am hoping that the photo didn’t have to just have hands, because here is what I came up with:

To see more hands-y photos, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces – Fix-It Friday #44

I had to join in this week’s Fix-It Friday over at i heart faces because a RAW version of the photo was provided and man, do I heart RAW!! In fact, that is primarily what I shoot in at all times these days because it can be so forgiving and you can do most of your editing in Adobe Camera Raw without compromising the quality of your photo.

Here is the original from this week: 

And here is my fix:

The original has a bit of a blue tint and is underexposed. So I opened it in ACR and went to town. I have learned to work so quickly and methodically in ACR, that I completely forgot to write down my steps; but here is the gist of it: I white balanced, straightened and cropped. I upped the exposure, the blacks, the brightness, the contrast the clarity, vibrance and saturation. I went into the details portion of ACR (it is the little button that has the two overlapping triangles) and upped the making the luminance and the color to get rid of some of the noise.

Now it was time to open it up in Photoshop for a few last touches.

It still was not bright enough for me, so I created a new brightness/contrast layer and upped the brightness to 71 and the contrast to 3.

Next I wanted to add a little texture, so I went to Flickr, found what I was looking for here, downloaded it and opened it in Photoshop. I then flipped it all around until I had the dark side on the left, then placed it on top of my photo. I didn’t want the red splotches in the photo, so I increased the texture size until those portions were hanging off of the photo.

I chose to use the Texture as an Overlay with the opacity set at 70%. Next I created a layer mask and used a soft round brush set at 66% opacity and 30% flow and went over just her face and hair.

Next, I ran PW’s Boost action at 25% and then flattened image.

Lastly, I ran  the Coffee Shop Perfect Portrait action which opens it’s own levels window where I bumped the left arrow in to 6 and the right arrow in to 250. Then all of these different layers open so that you can adjust according to taste:

1. Sharpen – 40%
2. Brighten – 20%
3. Turn off vivid color
4. Color Pop – 10%
5. Urban grit – ran a soft brush over everything but the girl and set the opacity to 25%
6. Turned off whiten teeth
7. Turned off whiten whites
8. Eye define – used soft brush set at 30% opacity
9. Bright eyes – used soft brush set at 50% opacity
10. Soft Skin – still a little bit of noise, so used a soft brush opacity at 35%
11. Dodge and Burn – used a soft black brush on left side of photo and set the opacity to 30%
12. Vignette – set opacity to 75%

Flatten image, save and you are done!!

i heart faces – week 7 - “I Wanna Dance”

Since I couldn’t find any other dancing photos, I had to use yet another one from August.

This little guy was totally bustin’-a-move on that dance floor, and dang was he cute while dancin’ the night away!

To see more “I Wanna Dance” photos, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces - “We Heart Kisses”

“'Twas not my lips you kissed
But my soul”
~Judy Garland

I know it is completely shameful that I am using a photo that I took back  in August. But the weather around here has just been so terribly cold and wet…and when the weather is cold and wet, I tend to hibernate : )

To see more “Kissy” photos (and probably more recently taken ones at that), head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces - Textures

This week’s theme is textures. I took this engagement photo a couple of weeks ago and am in love with it. The blanket wrapped around the couple was given to them by the bride’s mother. It was a wedding gift presented to her back in on November 22, 1963 – coincidentally, the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. What a great heirloom to pass down to their children one day!

To see more texture photos, head on over to i heart faces.

i heart faces – Fix-It Friday

It has been a while since I participated in i heart faces’ Fix-It Friday, but I just couldn’t resist this week’s challenge.

Sticking with the “We are Family” theme from this week, Angie and Amy decided to highlight a very  special family. Although I don’t follow this woman’s blog personally, I do follow Angie’s blog and she often talks of the trials this family is going through.

“The dad in this family has been struggling with cancer for years and they found out the devastating news in December that his cancer is now terminal. They are now doing everything they can to enjoy the rest of the time they have together on this earth.”

Having lost a grandmother to cancer myself, I know how devastatingly hard dealing with this disease can be. I hope you will join Angie, Amy, myself, and the rest of the blogging community in praying for this family’s continued strength and perseverance in the time ahead of them.

On that note, here is my submission for this week’s Fix-It Friday:

Original: My Fix#1:

To get to this point, here are the steps I took using PSCS4:

1. First off, I cropped and rotated the image.
2. I duplicated the layer to make some color adjustments.

• Go up to image – adjustment – levels – RGB – move left slider to 23, right slider to 240 and middle slider to 85
• Go up to image – adjustments – levels – Blue – middle slider to 90
• Go up to image – adjustments – Hue/Saturation – Reds saturation to –7
• Vibrance +2, Saturation +1

3. Flatten Image

4. Next, I used the doge tool to rid the kid’s faces of some shadows. I used a soft brush with the opacity set at 6% and ran it over mostly the eyes first with the midtones selected and the the shadows selected.

5. Ran Boutwell magic glasses at 40%**

6. Ran Slice like a ninja at 15%**

7. Next I added two different textures. I wish I could tell you where I got them, but I have no idea. When I find something I like, I simply save it into a designated folder on my desk top. Since I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s copyright legalities, I won’t share them here. Sorry.

• The first texture I chose to run as a “Soft light” with the opacity set at 55%
• I then added a layer mask and using a soft brush with the opacity set at 100% and the flow at 41%, I ran it over the skin of the 3 kiddos.
• Next, with a soft brush set at 35% opacity, flow still set at 41%, I ran it over the clothes just a little bit
• Then I added the second texture but decided to use this one as an overlay with the opacity at 28%
• Again, I added a layer mask and using the same brushes as before I repeated the same steps with the skin and clothes.

8. Flatten Image.

9. I felt the image was a little dark so I ran TRA’s Clarify at 15%

Again, here is my final image:

My Fix #2:I wanted to go for a little more drama, so I created one more fix-it by running TRA’s Bit%$& Black  and White at 100%, but I opened it up and lowered the curves to 70%. I then ran TRA’s Boring Selenium at 50%, Antique Tone at 50%, flattened the image. Then used a burn tool set at 15% for around the corners.

** – these actions are free at Totally Rad Actions

i heart faces – “We Are Family”

*Update - The following photo placed 5th in this week's contest!

“When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.” ~Joyce Bro

To see more family photos, head on i heart faces.

i heart faces – week 2

i heart faces is celebrating one year as a photography community this week and they are doing it in style! You should see the guest judges they have lined up for this week:

Jose Villa ♥ Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) ♥ Angie Monson
Nate Kaiser ♥ Sheye Rosemeyer ♥ Becker
Simon Pollock ♥ Rebekah Westover ♥ Amy Wenzel
Justin & Mary Marantz ♥ Rog Ellsworth
Michael Howard ♥ Patti Schmidt ♥ Raya Carlisle
Lori Nordstrom ♥ Lyndzee Ellsworth ♥ Donna Boucher

Seriously, that is one amazing list!!

In honor of i heart faces’ birthday bash, they have chosen to focus on, get this, faces this week!

I photographed this lovely young lady back at the beginning of December and decided to share her cutie-patootie face with all of you.

To see other beautiful faces this week, head on over to i heart faces.

Do you have a favorite?

Hello everyone! I am running a little contest over on my photography blog and I am sure that some of my clients would really appreciate your vote. If you have a chance, would you go over to Melinda Brookshire Photography and vote on your favorite photo?….please : )

i heart faces – week 1

You did not read the title incorrectly! It is week 1 again over at i heart faces. Can you believe it has been one year since that amazing site took off? I was looking over a few of my older entries the other day and was amazed at how far my photography has come in just one year.

This week’s challenge is a little bit different though. With it being the one year anniversary, those lovely ladies, Amy and Angie, have challenged us to stretch our photography skills even more by including their logo in our photos. Upon tackling this theme, I quickly realized I need a lot more practice using Photoshop! : )

Anyway, “I am submitting the following photos into the I Heart Faces logo photo contest. By entering, I am granting I Heart Faces LLC permission to consider my photo for use in the marketing and promotion of their website.”

Happy Anniversary I Heart Faces!!! May you have many, many more!!

Guest Judge!

I am one of the guest judges this week over at i heart faces and I couldn't be more excited!

The theme this week is "Hilarious Outtakes," which would include photos like this one - Choose anywhere from 1-5 photos that crack you up, follow the directions for having a valid entry, and then post a link to them on the i heart faces linky. Since I am one of five judges, I won't get to stop by and see all of the entries, so if you decide to post some of your favorites, leave me a comment here or on the special page they set up for me. I would love to see what my readers/followers contribute!

i heart faces – week 48

This week’s theme over at i heart faces is “Sweet Dreams.”

I love the following photo for a few reasons: 1. the irony of all the caffeinated drinks along with two passed out kiddos, 2. the extremely disheveled car definitely screams boys, and 3. the angle from which this photo was taken (although I strongly recommend not taking this while driving).

To see more “Sweet Dream” photos, head on over to i heart faces. Now I’m off to take a nap of my own before these two hoodlums get home : )