My Boys

Here are some recent pictures of my boys. I didn't add them to Moving Forward because I have so many other pictures posting there, I hate to add to the stream. I didn't add them to Flickr because I don't care to hear anyone's reviews of them. They make me smile and that's good enough for me.

Trey, who doesn't often give us a good gummy smile (he's embarrassed of his teeth), sure gave me one here.

 Nate watches Daniel play his Nintendo DS. Sweet moment to catch.

Boys = Mischief

 

New Purpose for This Blog

I am posting most of my pictures at my personal blog, Moving Forward, and I think I am going to make this blog one that gets pictures that I like but maybe others won't. Make sense? So, if you're looking at this blog and thinking why the heck is she sharing these? Well, because they appeal to me on some level and I'm not quite sure what to do with them.

For example, the picture below just tickles me. I took it with a new-to-me camera, a Nikon D200.

It was a cloudy, dreary day and I had no idea what I was doing with this camera. I stepped out of my van, having just bought the camera 40 minutes before and snapped a few of the cows behind my house. This one calf was like "what are you doing?"

I used my favorite lens, the Nikkor 55-200mm VR telephoto. I worked hard to focus on the calf and not let the focus be either of the trees or the barb-wire fense. Honestly, I'm not displeased with how it turned out.

You Capture - Friends

This week's You Capture theme is friends. I am not often in front of my camera, but luckily I have a picture from just a couple of weeks ago of myself and a friend.

My friend Brigitte and me at the Usborne Books National Convention, July 18th. We met for the first time two years ago and have been friends ever since, although we only ever see each other once year, at convention.

My son Daniel (on right) with a cousin/friend. They had their first sleep-overs ever this year - both with each other.

You Capture - Black and White

I have been too busy to post pictures for a while, but luckily I was able to do this week's You Capture by I Should Be Folding Laundry. Her theme this week is black and white. A couple of weeks ago I changed my settings to b&w and snapped a few pictures. This one of my daughter Georgia was the only one I was pleased with enough to share.

Flower Fixed - What Do You Think?

I took several pictures of this flower this weekend, but each time I took it, it came out too vibrant, with the leaves all blending in with each other. So, I tried various things in PSE 7, trying to see what worked and what didn't.

With this picture, I darkened the highlights a bit, lowered the contrast and brightness, messed with the hue and saturation of red in the photo, cropped it and finally added a bit of sharpening with Unsharp Mask.

So, does the flower still look real? Did I edit too much?

Here is the before picture:

Summer Fun

These aren't anything to jump up and down about, but I thought they were pretty good photos, and during the summer they are what I will take pictures of the most.







You may have noticed that I share more pictures of my daughter and that is only because she is my most cooperative subject. My least cooperative is my 3.5 year old son (no surprise).

Very little editing, if any, was done to these photos.