Mommy and Son shoot

I did a fun mini-shoot yesterday with my sister-in-law and of course, my ever constant subject, Matthew. It is so much fun finding different spots to shoot at and then seeing what you can come up with. This is the best hobby in the world.

{Leavenworth area lifestyle photographer}

Fix-it Friday

This week over at my new favorite site, iHeartFaces, they gave us this image to fix up.

Besides the basic correcting, there a million things you can do with a picture. I'm on a muted-colors/vintage kick and so I chose to turn mine into this:

This is one of my absolute favorite things about photography and editing: the ability to turn nothing into something. There are many times things come out brilliantly straight out of the camera (SOOC) but sometimes they don't. If you know what you're doing, you can take a photo you never thought you would like, into a photo that you love and would hang in your home.

Some highlights of what I did (I know I should have been making notes step-by-step so I could share but I forgot):

-First and foremost, I used the healing tool to get rid of his little blemishes

-Curves adjustment to lighten it up

-Sharpened

-Added a skin tone layer to smooth the face out and then lowered the opacity

-Added a layer mask to the skin tone later and erased the eyes so the blue would shine back through

-Adjusted the channel mixer but checked monochrome color to get a nice b&w effect and then lowered the opacity of that layer to about 70.

-And finally, I adjusted the levels and the contrast.

Pre-Easter weekend

We are already in the Easter spirit and I'm loving it! It's such a blast to have a kid to celebrate holidays with - it brings an entirely different dimension to it. Yesterday, Guy and I took our nephew, Matthew to the city Easter egg hunt. Grandma and Grandpa came along as well. They announced that they had 7,000 eggs hidden in the park and over $500 worth of candy. Even still, Matthew came out with three pieces of candy and four eggs.

It was still a fun afternoon and a good opportunity to teach a nice sharing lesson. All of the kids took off after the eggs (there was no limit to how many you could take) and they grabbed everything they could. At one point Matthew and another little girl ran up to a bush with two eggs in it, and Matthew beat her to it. She turned around to walk off, and we told Matthew to only take one and leave one for her. He was very polite and only took one egg. You have to grab those opportunities when they come because they are the best way to teach manners and politeness.

And we're off...

So here it is, Bright Eyes Photography! I have recently made the leap to begin my own photography business and I am eager to begin shooting and expanding my talents. Thank you for every one's support as I take off, and thank you in advance for recommending me to all of your friends, family, coworkers, garbage men, bank tellers. . . I'm incredibly excited about the chance to meet new people and document the important moments in their life. Wish me luck!