Simply Amazing!

Two words to describe my first birth photography experience!  It really was my ultimate favorite of all sessions that I've ever done since I started seriously persuing family photography over 4 years ago! I think I might be hooked. I'd definitely do it again in the future! To Jennifer and Falco, thanks for allowing me to capture this most intimate part of your life. I hope I will have recorded moments you will treasure and leave you with feelings of great joy whenever you look at the pictures! ♥

It was so awesome!! The Lord worked it all out!! I was staying up waiting to send my husband off to work when I saw her post shortly after 1am or so. She felt like it would be very soon, so since my husband was still here, I woke him up an hour early and he took us to their house. We even beat the midwife there!! Thankfully our children went back to sleep in the beds that they had waiting for them on our arrival! The following are of the birth and then little Sophia at 12 days old!

It was a great birth that took place at home. Jennifer was beautiful and just seemed to glow. she was so peaceful and just so serene...on the outside anyway. I think she was amazing!! At 5:31am she told me quickly that it was time for me to exit so she could start pushing, I ran to the clock in the living room to take a pic, thinking she'd be pushing a while, and not 60 seconds later, I heard the gush of water hit the floor and the baby crying at 5:32am!!! Awesome! awesome! awesome!  I was so pleased!! Amazingly, the midwife is also a photographer! http://www.karenbove.com/ and she gave me some great adjustments to make to my camera settings!

                           

...and 12 days later!  I truly have a greater appreciation for newborn photographers! Had fun during our newborn session, but Miss Sophia was wide awake and very alert just about the whole time! I did manage to get a few with her dozing off, but she wasn't in a deep enough sleep to be able to do any planned poses.  Sure is a sweetheart! 

I was able use some of my props I'd been collecting and was especially pleased with the look of the headbands with the flowers I had gotten at a craft fair a few weeks ago from http://www.petalbowtique.com/. If you have little girls, or are looking for a great gift idea for little girls, please check her product line out!

I was excited to finally try out this great little valise I picked up last year!



 
Would love some feedback on what you think!

Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,
Denise

I've Been Inspired!

I'm so pleased to have been introduced to the fantastic work of Nadia this past week. I love the whole feel of it! It makes me excited about learning all that I can to produce my best work possible, when doing a photo shoot for my clients.

I was able to purchase one of her texture sets today for my 'toolbox', and couldn't wait to show you how it turned out!

Before, in just plain black and white...



And after, created with one of the textures from her Nadia-Stalgic set #2

It gives the portrait an old-fashioned vintage look to it. I like the graininess of it. This was my first time to practice with it, so, although it's nowhere near as beautiful as Nadia's work, I'm sure going to enjoy practicing.

Well, until the next time I get bitten by the blog bug,

I'm Still Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,

Denise

Just My Cup Of Tea!

Just got a new prop! Isn't it cute? There is also a blue version which I'd love to have, but I'll save up for it another time. I figured this would be more adaptable for either a boy or a girl.

Even cuter now...and yes, he's wearing a diaper =)

Just experimenting...a little milk and sugar Just my cup of tea!

Just for fun...Just the milk and sugar again =)

P.S. Came across another frog the other night...

Thanks for stopping by!

Leaning On His Everlasting Arms,

Denise

Learning How To Create A Watermark...

I needed to find a way to mark my photographs to provide more protection against theft of my images, but at the same time, keep the image as the main focus rather than the company name. So I was off to find out how to do a watermark with my Photoshop Elements 5.0 program.

At first, I tried one tutorial but I don't think it was compatible with the Elements program that I have. So I went back to the drawing board so to speak. Here is the one I practiced with.

In the future, I may find a better way to do it, but for now, it's really not that bad! You just have to adjust the opacity of your text to your liking. I also learned how to include the © sign by holding down the 'alt' button and then typing '0169'. Here is my end result!

Pretty neat! Now I don't have to worry that I'm blocking details in the photo, but at the same time, I'm still protecting my photographs from being stolen and falsely credited as someone else's work.

For those of you that don't have an editing program, there are free editing programs that you can download to you computer, or just the watermark making program such as is found here on one of my favorite freeware sites. Please note that if an ad pops up in another language, click on the word in the upper right hand corner to get rid of it, and then click your refresh button

Leaning On His Everlasting Arms,
Denise

Playing around with Photoshop...

If you have photoshop, try this cool setting. It's under Special Effects to the right of your workspace and then choose "filters" and "brush strokes" and under that you should be given the choice of "crosshatch", then just double click on it and refine the settings to your liking and save.

It may not show up very well here on my blog because of the smaller dimension, but use it as your desktop background, and it looks amazing! It looks like an artist's rendering of your photo! Good times!!

Before...

after...

Unfortunately, in the small size, the textured effect is hard to see here on my blog, so let me crop it a little closer for you to see what I mean. Isn't that nice how her eyelashes look like a painting? Just experiment, you'll have so much fun doing it! I encourage you to keep learning something new everyday!

Have a great weekend!
Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,
Denise

My first storyboard practices! Fun!!

I belong to a great group where templates and tutorials are shared.

Here's what I came up with for my very first one.


Isn't it a hoot? I love the different expressions from his first experiences with the different baby foods. I chose to do black and white because I knew that the colors would all be assorted in the backgrounds and clothing. So I did that for uniformity and so that it would not be too busy on the eyes.

And here is the second one.

This was just some of my favorite of our son's baby parts that I didn't want to forget. From his little nose, hands, feet, to the little natural swirl in the center of his forhead. So yummy! Again, I chose to do the black and white so that I wouldn't have to worry about matching colors.

If you think you might be interested in joining this group of ladies, let me know and I will be glad to send you an invite(the group is a mixture of beginners, professional "wannabees" like me, and professionals already established in their photography careers).

Well, thanks again for stopping by!

Leaning on His everlasting arms,

Denise

More Practice On Layer Masks...

The other night, I caught this interaction between my husband and our son. It was a sweet moment where he was discovering Daddy's hands were just like his, only bigger. The more I looked at the picture afterwards, the more I wanted to capture the moment without the background details and just focus on the affection between them. It was a long shot, but I wanted to pretend that it was a formal photo shot on black velvet rather than on our quilt.

First, before doing anything special to it, I just cropped it in pretty close so that I could also include the look of wonder in our son's eyes as he held his Daddy's fingers. Then, I added a new blank layer and simply used the paintbucket to make it black. Then, in order to reveal the black "velvet" underneath, I clicked on the top layer, and because I have PSE 5.0, I used the eraser tool to erase away the quilt. To soften the edges on the hands and our son's face, I just used the burn tool selectively where the "velvet" would have cast a shadow or touched the skin to soften the edges. Then, to save the new picture, I flattened the layers.

It's a little rough looking on the bottom of my husband's thumb, but practice makes perfect.

Here it is in black and white. This is what I would like to mat and frame maybe include a caption of some sort...



My second practice photo was taken outside in a truck. Cute, but the sunlight was kind of bright on his face...


...So, first, I fixed that as best I could. Then I repeated the above steps and finished with the burn tool this time concentrating on the folds and shadowing. While I was doing that, I discovered that by using the larger diameter coverage, I could enrich the colors of his shirt and jeans. Looked much better that way. Again, before saving it as, I flattened the layers. I really like the way this one turned out even better than the hands portrait.

The black and white version actually looks like it was originally taken on a velvet backdrop. Neat!! I am pleased with how it turned out.

Well, thanks for taking a peek at my experiments. I really have fun with it. It gets my adrenaline going!!

Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,

Denise

Ooh! Look What I learned today...

Isn't this neat? I learned it off of today's entry of Pioneer Woman Photography. I learn so much from her. She talks in plain sentences. Not all tutorials are created equal. Some can be pretty vague at times. The only difference was for my Photoshop Elements 5.0, I had to use the eraser tool instead of the brush tool. All in all, it's pretty neat, eh?!

I'm not sure if you can tell but I also did her eyes too. Here is a close up.

Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,

Denise

It's so exciting to learn new things!!

I have been playing around with my Photoshop Elements 5.0 and have been having a ball learning as I go!

Here are a few of my plays.

This shot was taken at the local county fair back in October. It was kind of tricky to take the shot with the duck in the cage, but fun trying, and still salvageable. I love the final result.

Here is the original shot before...


...and the after

These shots I experimented with the "eye pop" to focus on their eyes. I used the tutorial from Scraps of Jacki's Life . I love the look. I think it is subtle enough to look natural, but still draws you to their eyes.

Here is the original shot of our daughter before ...

... our daughter after

My original shot of our son before ...

... and the finished shot of our son after

I am trying to find a tutorial to show me how to bring out Christmas lights on a tree. I've seen it where they can be made to almost glow. Just beautiful! You can almost catch them twinkling. I just can't quite figure out how to do it on my program. The tutorials I've seen are not for the PSE 5 that I have. Oh well, it's fun to experiment.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed looking! Remember, your feedback and/or constructive comments are very much welcome!

Leaning on His Everlasting Arms,

Denise