Category — photography

First, I have to brag about and congratulate my little brother who just graduated from Georgetown yesterday and actually has a job that starts next month!  And, it’s in the financial sector {insert Wicked Witch music here…just kidding Jer;}.  I’m so bummed I missed his graduation, but my Yiayia filled me in that he graduated Magna Cum Laude and won a $500 award from the finance school, not to mention that he speaks Chinese.  Jer, I know you’re blushing, but since you’d never tell me that yourself, I’m now putting it out there for the world because I’m your big sis and that’s what we do!  He leaves in 2 days for a backpacking adventure throughout Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong, which will be awesome I’m sure.  I’m really proud of my brother, and not just because he’s super smart.  He’s also a really hilarious, goofy, sweet, socially conscious, thoughtful kid who is always friends with everyone and is just a blast to be around. 

One thing Travis always says he loves about my brothers so much is how sentimental, affectionate, and sweet they are.  To me, those seem like rare traits to find in a 6’3, former football player, alligator hunter, scuba diver, fisherman, world traveler, partier, dude to whom girls flock and guys admire.  I love that he is so confident in his masculinity and his relationships that he can say “I love you” with ease to everyone he truly cares about, including the men in his life like our brothers, our dad, Travis, etc.  I hope I can raise my boys to be the kind of men their Uncles Jeremy and Alex are.  As an example of how sweet my little brother is, when he learned Shanie was in need of speech therapy, a service Jer didn’t know is provided at no cost to us by our county, he called me and wanted to know if he could pay for all of Shane’s therapy expenses!  How freakin cute is that? 

Ok, and onto the rest of my post, which is just photos that I’ve been playing with in Lightroom.  I have been trying to get my hands on presets and am LOVING Jack Davis’ free WOW presets as well as the ones from Killer Tips.  Here are some Finley pictures edited with a variety of my new preset downloads:

I think I could pretty much barf on a Jack, take a picture, and it’d still be a great photo because he’s so dang photogenic…but I applied a few of the antique presets to some bath pics I took using my 50mm and I think they turned out to be pretty cute:

Ok, so you know how photographers always say you can grayscale a photo and immediately know if it’s meant to be a B&W picture or not?  Well, I don’t have that sixth sense…the one that tells me instantly which way a photo is supposed to go - B&W or color.  It’s right up there on the list of senses I’m missing, along with seeing dead people and hearing musical tones.  So I’m asking for some viewer input, or as Jack would request, “lil help please, lil help?”  For each picture, I’d love it if you’d tell me how it looks best, B&W or color.  And if they look better in B&W, but my conversion just sucks, I’d appreciate if you tell me that too.  Here they are:

And of course, Shane was asleep during most of this little photo shoot, but I did get a few pictures of him cheesing it up for the camera (which is RARE - usually he HATES my camera!) later in the day.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken a picture of Shane that I liked in B&W more than color, so these are all color:

My boy LOVES his binky!!  I’ll post a video of Finley tormenting him with it.  It’s awful; she runs by, snatches it out of his mouth, he screams, she keeps running.  Then, inevitably, she’ll turn back around to run by him again while holding the binky out, as if she’s going to give it back, get really close to him so that he’ll open his mouth for it to be replaced, then she’ll keep running.  He’ll scream some more and I’ll have to step in and tell her to knock it off and give the binky back to Shane.  She’s gotta be Shane’s worst nightmare of a little sister!

And then there are a couple pictures I’m sure I like, decisively, in either B&W or color, but not both:

Finley was playing peek-a-boo with the camera and it’s a damn shame this chair leg got in the way of the picture.  Still, I LOVE this one in B&W:

This is just a picture of Jack and Fin playing hide-and-seek:

This next one is totally my favorite shot of Jack.  If only I could pimp him out to the modeling world, make enough $ to send him to the school we want him in regardless of scholarship, then retire him WITHOUT being the parent who pimps her kid out to the modeling world…hmm.  Thoughts?  My photo magician friend, Kell, edited this photo to make it just perfect:

I hope you all had a great weekend.  We sure did!  Here’s some pictures from one of my favorite spots, the Botanical Gardens:

Yiayia, me, and Miss Fin:

Carefree:

Cute’n'crusty:

Don’t ask me why, but she wore this scowl the whole day:

This was my favorite picture of the day:

My friend, Kelly, edited it for me and turned it into a beautiful and much more artistic photo.  I love it:

How cute are these 2 (believe me, Shane wasn’t in as much pain as he appears to be)…nothing like a loving choke hold from your little sister right after she beats you over the head with a sippie cup!

This mullet wig made its way out of the closet this weekend and the kids think it’s as funny as we do!  Business in the front, party in the back!

Lots more to talk about on the education topic…thank you for all the awesome input.  Your feedback has been really helpful in our thought process and very interesting to read through!

Thanks for all the insightful answers on the last post to my question about Shane’s language delays.  It makes sense to me now, and your comments were much appreciated.  Also, thanks for following my Twittering adventures in court yesterday…if you STILL don’t know what Twitter is, you can click on my TWEETS tab on the right sidebar of my blog and see what I’m talking about (don’t worry, I just figured out how to reply to other people’s tweets and read the replies people made to mine!).  Anyway, I narrowly escaped serving on a jury that was trying a dude for the alleged 1st degree murder of his partner, plus 4 counts of felony for tampering with the witness.  While it sounded like an interesting case, my boobs were totally uninterested in lingering around while I fulfilled my civic duty.  They were like 20lb cannonballs by the time I weaseled my way out of that place.  I thought I was gonna have to go Fembot (Austin Power$ style) on that courtroom if I didn’t get out of there when I did, firing milk in everyone’s eyes or something.  So, yeah, glad that didn’t have to happen.

Even though winter was springy for us in Colorado this year, we did have a fairly cold first few weeks of April.  But check this out…in the course of a 2 days, we went from this:

To this:

These 2 absolutely crack me up.  They have SUCH a unique love-hate relationship that just makes us laugh CONSTANTLY.  I think it’s more love than hate, at least most of the time, but Finley is intent on pushing every one of Jack’s buttons on a daily basis.  He has been SO good about using words that I’m constantly SHOCKED he doesn’t just womp her.  Seriously.  The cute thing is that when they are on the love side, they have a BLAST together.  Their similarities in personality just blow me away.

Swapping lunches:

Look at the adoration in Finley’s eyes as she watches her big brothers play:

2 peas in a pod:

Put me in coach, I’m ready!

Here’s Shane’s GQ look:

Here’s my little muscle man:

I LOVE this picture of Jack:

Finley has, quite possibly, the worst hair ever.  I am hoping the 50 year old balding man inside of her, fighting to get out, goes away very soon and my baby is able to grow hair in a normal pattern!  Bad hair days and all though, she’s pretty darn cute…

Nothing could be more deceiving than the innocent look that Finley has mastered!  Don’t be fooled!

This boy LOVES his swings!

Ok, here are a few I took while pretending to be shooting pictures of Shane on the swing.  I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap a few of this guy; he was HILARIOUS.  We were hanging out at a pretty notorious park in a gay part of town when we saw this man wearing his earphones and doing some pretty awesome hula hoop dancing.  We picked a picnic table near him intentionally so we could watch the show, and he did NOT disappoint.

I’m glad I got some cute pictures of Finley yesterday and today because she had a bit of a run-in with the pavement this evening.  She sort of attacked it with her face, if you know what I mean.  I can’t even imagine the dent she must have left in that cement because her face looks like hell.  I didn’t realize how bad it was until she got out of the bath tonight.  She hardly made a peep when it happened, so I never would’ve guessed she’d turn into a unicorn…plus, she has a serious shiner around her left eye with a cut underneath it too.  Poor kid, but she’s a tough little thing! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!  Ours was great.  We had lots of friends in town, and my sister was here through this morning.  I’m was sobbing on the way home from the airport today; it was just so awesome to have her out here with me, Trav, and the kids.  Since Travis and I have dated since my freshman year of high school (and were actually first introduced by my sister, who loved him and wanted us to get together), he and my sister know each other really well too and we have a blast altogether.  In college, I used to take a short bus to Boston (~45min), then hop a Greyhound to Dartmouth to visit every so often and she did the same to come see me.  Then I dragged her to medical school where I was, so she was in the class behind me (but ended up technically graduating in the class above me because I deferred to stay home with the kids).  She’s now a family medicine intern in Oregon and I don’t get to see her nearly enough.  BOO!  It’s really depressing to go from seeing each other just about every single day in medical school (and living 1 mile apart) to NEVER now (and living a 17 hour drive apart).  BOO!  Ok, I’m done complaining now.  I just miss her!

Dying Easter eggs with Aunt Christy:

My Cadbury Bunny:

Shane and his truck basket, on the hunt:

This Lightning Easter basket was quite a hit with Jack, as you can imagine it would be:

Bubbles, bubbles!!

Shanie LOVES his Lar-Bear:

Kaakpema and Sara were out here this weekend.  Kaakpema and I met in college and he’s been one of our closest friends since.  He and Sara have seen us through thick and thin and we’re SO pumped that they’ll be moving out here soon (or “soon” as defined by K!).  Trav and I are so excited to see them tie the knot out here this June:

Shanie and Uncle K, enjoying some beverages;)

We’re also really excited to have Karin and Caroline in town with us right now.  They spent Easter with us too, and since Karin has some work functions tomorrow and Tuesday, I’ll be kickin’ it with 4 kids under 3 for the next few days!!!  Should be an adventure!!  Caroline, by the way, is Shane’s age and one of the babies we visited everyday while in Vietnam.  I love this little girl!  We’ve been in touch with Karin since she received Caroline’s referral and we received Shanie’s, so it’s really awesome to meet her in person and spend time with Caroline outside of Que Son orphanage.  She’s an awesome little kid and TOTALLY fits right in with my 3.  It’s been really cool for Travis and I to spend time with Karin and really cute to see the kids altogether.  I’ll post pictures of their visit with us in my next post! 

Quick Note: Ali from Ambajam wanted me to pass on an announcement that they are having a huge sale right now.  Ambajam is getting ready to introduce a bunch of new items, so they are clearing out a lot of adorable stuff…check it out!

Travis got me Adobe Photoshop Lightroom a few weeks ago, along with the Scott Kelby book about using it.  I’m really enjoying playing with pictures in my “freetime,” and am hoping to continue improving.  Not obsessively or professionally or anything like that; I’m not looking for any super time-consuming hobbies at this point, but I would like my pictures to be pretty.  With that in mind, can anyone recommend any good sources for Lightroom presets?  I LOVE Totally Rad Actions for Photoshop (not Lightroom), but since I don’t have photoshop, I’m not looking for actions, I just need LR presets.  I have downloaded most of the good freebies from Lightroom Killer Tips and just watched the demo and downloaded the freebies from On One also (though I haven’t gotten to use them yet).   If you have the good camera but are just learning how to play with your pictures, like me, check out that demo by Jack Davis; it’s really helpful.  I am willing to pay a little bit for some good presets, but I just don’t even know where to go to get them.  I looked at Lilyblue and liked her watercolor stuff, but I don’t think I liked it enough to pay what she charges (plus, her stuff looks way cooler when the presets are combined with actions, and I don’t have photoshop so actions are useless to me).  I tend to like bright, warm looking pictures with vibrant, rich colors.  Any suggestions for presets? 

Here’s a picture I took that I love of Finley.  I haven’t read the chapter yet on removing blemishes, boogers, or dirt from my kids’ faces, so pretend her face is clean:)  I would love feedback on my Lightroom post processing if anyone wants to give me some input.  You can tell me they suck; I can take it.  But I’d love it if you would then follow it up with how I can make it better. 

{Quick note: the convention of first showing the picture and then including related text BENEATH that picture makes no sense to me, so I’m bucking the system.  I apologize if that’s confusing to anyone, but I like to introduce a picture with words and then show it - so captions are ABOVE my pictures}

Here’s the original picture before I did anything to it:

The next one is just the regular photo with some tweaking by me (I can’t remember exactly what I did, but I’m sure it involved increasing the exposure and warming up the temperature some bc I almost always do that):

I used an aged photo preset and added strong contrast to this one (this one’s my fav):

This is my attempt at a B&W conversion.  My conversions suck, but I love B&W’s so your feedback is appreciated!

The next one would be MUCH cuter if I knew how to remove blemishes.  I’ll get to that chapter in my book soon, but for now just imagine you can’t see the bruise on her forehead, the booger in her nostril, or the dirt on her cheek, all of which are totally highlighted in this one!  I used a free preset I found on Killer Tips that was designed to imitate the Polo/Ralph Lauren look.  What do you think?

UPDATED: this came to me as a gift in my inbox from Starr…here is the last photo with the dirt and bruise edited out for me.  Thank you Starr, I love it!