Better Than The Pros

Okay... perhaps that's a bold statement but it is what my mother-in-law said about these pictures. Yes yes, I'm finally posting some of the pictures we took of our nephew.

I decided to only edit a handful of them (the ones I liked the most) and sent the rest over to my sister and brother-in-law to look at so they can decide which ones they'd like edited. Thank you Maria for this wonderful idea. I would have spent a bajillion years editing all of the pictures.

Anywho... here ya go:




This one is my FAVORITE.





I hate to say this, but I saw some of their "pro" pics and I do think that some of these are much much better. (I'm patting myself on the back now)

Never Again

Have I mentioned that I'm never doing baby pictures, or pictures in general, for anyone anymore unless its for fun on MY part?!

After several e-mails from The Mr's coworker, we were finally able to send off 63 pictures to her. It had been a little over a week. Seriously, lady? Professionals generally take longer, send LESS AND they actually charge you money. Leave me alone!

I'm not very happy with these pictures but I hope its enough to keep her off our backs.

So, here are a sample of what we sent her. I will say that we definitely learned our lesson from this shoot on what NOT to do (i.e. we should have a game plan, we should bring black and white sheets for background and we should tell parents to stop moving so much).

Enjoy! And feel free to critique them - I do appreciate feedback whether its good or bad. I'm still learning!

I'm not including any of the pics of The Mr's coworker because well, I don't want to (and I'm not sure she'd want her picture on here).









He's a very cute baby. I really like the pictures with the stuffed animals in them because it almost seems like he's chatting with them. "Hey Mr. Bear... how's it going?"
"Oh Mr. Giraffe, nobody gets me except you."

Editing Help

So I meant to add that one of the edits we're trying to do on the bajillion baby pictures from Saturday is blacking out the background. Most baby pictures you see look like this:
)
(picture from Anne Geddes)


(picture from Barefoot Photography)

Since we snapped all of the photos in the co-worker's house, the background in most of the pictures often looks too busy. We took some cute ones of them on their bed but their bedspread was red & tan with a crazy pattern. I feel like its a little distracting in some of the photos.

So I've been reading endless tutorials on blacking out the background. This is such a pain in my ass! Have I said that enough? Any tips to make this easier on an amateur?

I've Got Mad Skillz

Okay, I really don't but based on Jamie's suggestion of showing the before picture of my totally awesome editing on Kristin and Jackson's picture, I figured I should. This way I can stop patting myself on the back since I have not shown real evidence of any sort of magic that I worked on the picture.

And is it just me or are all of the sentences above kind of awkward? I'm having difficulty speaking and writing this morning.

Here is the photo before any photoshopping was done:

Great picture... there's just a distracting crane in the background. I feel like Baltimore is ALWAYS under construction. I wonder if I'll ever get to see it in all its glory... but I digress.

I had no frickin' idea how to get the crane out so I kind of did a little ghetto touchup. I'm sure there's a much fancier way to get rid of stuff from a photo but based on the completely clear blue sky, I figured using the little cloning stamp would work just fine.

Phase 1. I just removed the crane from between their heads since I felt that was the most distracting piece of the photo.

I was ready to stop there because I felt my work was done AND I wasn't sure how to remove the crane from in front of the building. But still... I had the little cloning stamp selected and was already in the process of editing... let's just see how it'll look.


At this point, I figured if you didn't know that there was a crane in the photo - you wouldn't know what that funky blue stuff was in front of the building. You may even think that it's just a part of the building. So voila! There it is.

I know I still have A LOT to learn.

So Flattered

I feel like such a dork but I was super stoked to get Ian and Katie's Save-the-Date this weekend because...

... I totally took that picture. It was behind the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. I felt kind of bad because the sun was going down, it was super cold and windy and we rushed them.

But seriously - I love that they used this picture because they DID have a session with their wedding photog who took some very cute pics of them that they could have used.

Thanks Katie for making me feel special. :-)

I'm currently working on a Save-the-Date for Kristin and Jackson. I started off using this picture:

Its still one of my favorites but it has been noted that it looks a bit odd that most of Kristin's body is missing. She was laying on a hill. That's what I like about this photo because I know that its her looking UP at him but I get that if you don't know, it seems like Kristin is only a head with arms. And I guess that's kind of creepy or something.

So, I messed around with this photo:

I don't know if you can tell but I photoshopped a gigantic crane from the background. The Mr took this photo and I thought it was FABULOUS (Kristin and Jackson were our first test group with taking photos) except for a crane that looked like it was going through both of their heads.

Anywho - I made a simple Save-the-Date design from it and I hope they like it.

Ian & Katie

Okay, so since Katie has blogged about her fave photos from yesterday, I figured I'd post some of mine (hope you don't mind).

Yesterday was VERY cloudy, VERY cold and by the time we could synch up... it was getting dark. Ian & Katie were serious troopers because The Mr and I had to switch off a few times because our hands were numb. NUMB. Katie powered through without her coat. I'd die. I hate the cold. I'm cold just thinking about how cold I was yesterday.

So, through the power of Photoshop (seriously, how much can I talk about my love of this product? Adobe, you should be sending me gifts) - we were able to take the overcast photos and make them look decent. What do you think? These were my favorite pictures (the before Photoshop and after):



















Seriously, I love this shit.

Art Fart

We've been messing around with Photoshop again. Its really addicting but I have to say that I hate that The Mr. knows more than I do about it. In my defense, he has the time to learn this! I'm in school. And work has been killing me lately. I can get better at this during winter break! I know I can!

Wow, competitive much?

Prior to getting our DSLR - I had this vision of what I wanted to do with a wall in our dining room. Its a blank slate with so much potential. And its small. And its in an open floor plan so you can see it from the living room, kitchen, stairs, etc. We actually have a very generic picture from Ikea on that wall but it isn't really "us" and it was more of a filler piece than anything.

Back to my vision. I love the look of a wall covered in framed pictures of differing styles, shapes, colors and size. Are you with me? Can you picture this? And I thought it would be interesting if we had pictures of doors and windows. Its a little artsy fartsy and I'm not trying to be pretentious or anything but considering our space is somewhat small, it seemed interesting to have pictures of windows in our home. And Baltimore has some interesting architecture so it would be easy to find.

Easy, that is, until we bought the frickin' DSLR. Its like all of the interesting doors and windows have gone into hiding. Yarg! Anywho - we took some interesting pics in Puerto Rico and through the power of Photoshop, we aged them and made them look even more interesting. I think these might earn a spot on our wall (unless, of course, all of the cool doors and windows I've been dreaming about reappear).