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!

Spring Festival

Each year the elementary school here in town puts on a Spring Festival in which grades Pre-K through fifth perform.

Jack did amazing singing and dancing to Phineas and Ferb's Gitchy-Gitchy-Goo.

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.

It’s soccer season…again

Yep, it’s soccer season. And Jack begged to play yet again. And despite my husband’s hatred toward the sport and the fact that he doesn’t think Jack should play organized sports until he is older, Josh still signed Jack up. I am only hoping to get another video like this one : )

Our Easter in (unedited) photographs

We kicked off the Easter weekend on Saturday by decorating some eggs.

FYI: my kids are NOT naked. I just didn’t want extra laundry to do, so off came the shirts. That’s just the way we roll around here these days : ) Jack and Beau loved decorating the eggs. But Jack kept breaking them on purpose so that he could eat the boiled egg. Beau, wanting to be just like his older brother, followed suit only to discover hard boiled eggs were NOT his thing. 

Sunday, Easter, was filled with a trip to church, Easter baskets with lots of goodies (that the boys inevitably fought over), and a little Easter egg hunt at Nana and Papa’s with just the two of them. 

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.

Meet Marvin

I am a little behind on posting. One because the weather has been horrible and we haven’t really done too much and two the boys have been sick….constantly. In fact, since it is spring break this week, we were supposed to head to the city to spend the night in Bricktown and then head to Norman the next day to see the science museum; but because Beau was running a high temp and plagued with strep; Josh, Beau and I got to stay home while only Jack got to go with his grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins. Maybe we’ll try a repeat of the trip this summer. Hopefully by that point-in-time my kids will be well…I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I won’t hold my breath.

Anywho, a couple of weeks ago, the hubby and Jack headed to Colorado to help Josh’s aunt and uncle move to Oklahoma. It happened to be the same weekend Jack got to bring the class pet, Marvin the Monkey, home.

Here are Marvin’s diary entries for their weekend together:

Friday, Feb. 6, 2010 - Today, I got to leave school early with Jack Brookshire. We headed to Jack’s house where we quickly loaded up his daddy’s truck so that we could begin our journey to Colorado in order to help his Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Bill move from Trinidad to Hinton. The trip was long but Jack took good care of me. We watched movies on his DVD player, ate lots of junk food and even took a nap. We reached our destination around 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2010 - Today we all woke up early so that we could get a head start on loading up all the trucks and moving van with furniture, clothes, toys and dishes. Our plan was to leave Colorado around noon but we got held up a little when Jack and I had to make a visit to the Trinidad Emergency Room. While Jack was playing with his cousin Devin, Jack accidentally fell on his arm and everyone was scared he might have broken it. After having x-rays done, we discovered Jack had only sprained his arm. It was a huge relief and we finally got on the road to Oklahoma around 6:00. This time instead of riding in Jack’s daddy’s truck, we got to ride in the big U-Haul moving van with Uncle Bill. We finally got into Oklahoma around 4:30 in the morning and boy were we tired. Since it was so late, Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Bill got to have a sleepover at Jack’s house.

Sunday, Feb. 8, 2010 - Luckily, we all got to sleep in this morning because boy were we tired!. But then it was back to work. Everything we loaded onto the trucks and van yesterday, we had to unload into Uncle Bill and Aunt Jeannie’s new house. Then tonight, we got to go to Jack’s cousin Owen’s house for his third birthday party. It was a Dinosaur party and we ate hotdogs and cake and then played pin the tail on the dinosaur and watched Owen open his gifts. It was so much fun!

 

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.

My soap box: keeping them innocent

So, I have been reading a lot lately and I have a few things I want to get off my chest.

First of all, before I get into my little tirade, let me start by saying I am whole heartedly for the first amendment. I am a huge advocate of freedom of speech and press. Furthermore, I do not believe in the banning or burning of books. Government should not play that kind of censorship roll in our community.

However, I do think it is our responsibility as parents to censor what our children read; but, how do we do this without discouraging our children from reading all together?

Most of the books I have been reading lately have been young adult fiction. I choose to read these because they are entertaining, usually well-written, and they don’t include a lot of the “sexier” scenes that adult fiction usually has. I’m not a prude, I just don’t like to blush while reading a novel : )

The thing is, the more I read young adult fiction, the more I realize how much the times have changed. Maybe I was ignorant and naive during my adolescent years, but I honestly don’t remember adult language and sexual content being embedded within the books I read.

I realize that kids are going to hear bad words at school and hear about who is sleeping with whom; but shouldn’t we try to protect their innocence for as long as we can? To me there is no need for our children to be bombarded with these sorts of things 24/7; but I am at a loss for how to do this without discouraging my children from reading.

What are your thoughts on this? If you have young adults, how do you go about “censoring” (for lack of a better word) what they read or do you at all? With a five-year-old and a two-year-old, I am obviously not to this hurdle quite yet, but I would love some ideas for future reference.

i heart faces: Fix-It Friday #45

What a fun photo for this week’s challenge – I absolutely love the perspective!!

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

To see more Fix-It Fridays, head on over to i heart faces.

The ceaseless chaos

And I don’t just mean the weather.

The phrase “ceaseless chaos” about sums up my life in general over the past few weeks.

You’ve read about my hairy, or rather hairless, situation with Beau and how Jack instigated the whole thing;  but I haven’t subjected you to all of the other “happenings” in a house with two boys….until now.

For some reason, Jack seems to play the lead roll in most of the stories around here; which is weird, because I like to think of him as my mellow child. However, incident after incident has occurred with him as of recently. Maybe it’s because he is five. Maybe it’s because he is a boy. Or maybe it is because I have no idea what I am doing as a mother. Any of those reasons are highly plausible.

It all started a few weeks ago when I went to pick Jack up from school. His teacher informed me he had been sent to the principle’s office for…get this…. peeing in the bathroom. Not in a urinal or a toilette, mind you, but rather in the actual bathroom floor. I got him to the car and immediately started crying. In all my years of school, NEVER was I EVER sent to the principle’s office (yes, I was somewhat of a goodie-goodie). So how I was to handle my son’s being sent in for discipline in only his first year of school was beyond me.

We talked about it for a long while with him insisting over and over again that he didn’t know why he did it, only that he “just did.” Until finally, after 20 minutes of my crying episode and trying to get to the bottom of such out-of-character behavior on his part did he finally say, “But mom, there’s a drain in the bathroom, don’t-cha know?”

Leave it to the plumber’s kid to think it is okay to pee in the drain on the bathroom floor. I called the school to make sure we were not having a lying problem as well. With a laugh, the teacher and the principle both assured me that he had peed near the drain and that come-to-think of it, he probably was not the first…just the first to be caught.

Next on the list, was a purple play-doh issue. Jack woke up screaming one night about his ear hurting and with as many problems as we’ve endured with Beau’s ears, I assumed that it was an ear infection. The next morning I took Jack to the doctor who discovered he had shoved a whole bunch of purple play-doh in his ear. It had hardened and had to be scraped and flushed out.

Then came the hair issue.

Then Monday Jack was sent to the principle’s office again. This time for acting up while the teacher was gone. The principle assured us that it wasn’t a big deal. He is a good and smart boy whom teacher’s expect a lot out of and when he acted up on Monday, along with everyone else, he was the one that got reprimanded….at least that is what the principle said.

Today, I received yet another call from the school. This time to inform me that Jack was sick. They asked me to come and pick him up and bring clothes when I did. (Baloney, you will totally love this story! for the rest of you it is probably TMI – but, that’s how I roll these days).

When I got to the school, I was directed to the nearest boys bathroom, which coincidentally had a “Bathroom Closed” sign handing on the door; and upon entering, there was Jack sitting naked from the waist down on a stool loaded down with paper towels and baby wipes. To be honest, it was one of the funniest and saddest things I had ever seen. Had I had my phone with me, I totally would have taken a picture.

Apparently a major case of diarrhea had gotten the better of Jack along with all of his clothes and shoes.

Like I said….ceaseless chaos!! Maybe by finally getting this all out in the open, life around here will calm down….I’m not holding my breath though.

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!!

My little deviant (a.k.a the instigator)

The story of Beau’s hack job only gets better.

When I found Beau in the bathroom shaving his head on Tuesday, he was not in there alone….Jack stood by quietly watching the whole scenario unfold. He was an innocent bystander… maybe a little too innocent.

I began to question him -

Me: Jack did you cut Beau’s hair?

Jack: No, mom! He did it all by himself (insert look of “how dare you accuse me of such a thing!”).

Me: Did you tell Beau to cut his hair?

Jack (looking everywhere but at me): Ummmmm, No.

Me: What exactly did you say to Beau, Jack?

L000000nnnnnngggggg

paaaaauuuuuuuse…..

Me: Jack?

Jack: I told him I thought it would be a good idea (insert innocent grin).

So all day yesterday, I faced comments about Beau’s hair, or rather, lack-there-of.

And all day yesterday, I got to hear about boys and that age, and that’s just what they do.

I would laugh and say “But Jack never did anything like that. He was always so laid back and good. But Beau…well, Beau’s my handful.”

Then, as we were gathered around the dinner table last night, I noticed a big bald spot on Jack’s head that he had cleverly hidden by combing the rest of his hair over it.

Yeah, real funny Jack! Just hilarious!!

And who says he can’t hack it?

After just one round with daddy’s facial clippers, I’d say Beau did a pretty sufficient job of hackin’ off most of his hair.

 

So much so, that I had to shave the rest of it off.

And that has just been one small portion of my day.

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.