Fix-it Friday

Here's I ♥ Faces week 15 fix-it:

Edit 1:

Edit 2:

And now the details. I used the same basic editing, using Gimp, for both:

-Crop

-Erase the blemish on her chin with the healing brush

-Used fx-foundry EG ISO noise reduction

-Bumped up the contrast to 3

-Unsharp mask

And for edit number one I added:

-Fx-foundry simple duotone

-Sharpened the eyes with unsharp mask

-Bumped up the contrast again, to 4

For edit number two:

-Added a couple of textures

-Sharpened the eyes with unsharp mask

{Leavenworth area lifestyle photographer}

Weekly Challenge: Silhouette

Its getting close to the deadline at I ♥ Faces and I had no intentions on participating today because I had no time to get out at just the right time of day to get a good shot. But whaddya know, as I was looking through some files I found this:



A silhouette! I have no idea who this fellow is, but he happened to be standing at the perfect place in the perfect stance for me to go click! And now he's famous. Just from standing. How about that?

{Leavenworth area lifestyle photographer}

Fix-it Friday

Here is this weeks before picture from I ♥ Faces:

And my after:

Here are the highlights of my edit - using GIMP.

-Erased the circles under her eyes with the healing brush tool

-Converted to B&W

-Sharpened her eyes to about 84

-Added a vignette

-Added a border and some texture

A good find for Gimp users

Using Gimp instead of Photoshop (or any other extremely overpriced photo editing software) has its issues. There are some things that you cannot do or the process is much more time consuming to achieve the effect that what you wanted. My absolute biggest issue with using Gimp instead of Photoshop is the inability to use actions. In the Gimp world, they are called scripts, and there are very, very few good scripts. Nothing like the options that Photoshop users have. So when I find a good script I get so very excited. I wanted to share with all of you Gimp users the Vintage script. Download it, install it, close Gimp and reopen and there it is. Voila.





I encourage all the Gimp users to share your finds; tutorials, scripts, videos, anything! If you do, please leave a link in the comments section here.

My favorite face photo

This week at I ♥ Faces they are hosting a Blurb photo book contest and are looking for entries of everyone's most favorite photo they have taken of a face (of course). I'm entering in the ameteur section and not the professional section because the criteria is based on making money from your photography and so far? I've made zero. I am submitting precious baby Riley because a) its a great shot and he's so cute and b) look at those eyes!



I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb book photo contest. If chosen, I grant I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

Baby Caeley

Remember the other day when I was begging for a newborn to shoot? Well, wish granted. A good friend of my husband just had a beautiful little girl, Caeley. I wasn't able to get too many photos at the hospital, but I will hopefully be able to get many more once they get home and all settled in. Mike and Danae, she is so precious, congratulations.


Yes, these are Caeley's little feet. (I took a picture of her hospital prints and turned them pink!)

Good way to close out the week

What could possibly be better than a beautiful baby with an amazingly easy-going personality, whose nursery has fantastic lighting? Not much, I tell you.

Family Shoot

I had a great time Saturday getting to shoot one of my very best friends and her family. (It sounds kind of funny when you talk about "shooting" someone, doesn't it?) It only took me a week to edit their photos, and also only a week to edit the mommy and son shoot so I am going to reduce the editing time from four weeks to two weeks, for now. That may change in the future. I am also dying to get some newborn shots so if you are in the area and have a newborn, I will give you an uber-discount!

On to the photos...

I always love a good feet picture...

And as you saw before, Devin was a great sport...

And so was Dad...

Thanks, guys! I had a blast! I hope you enjoy all of your photos.

Photo Challenge: Hats

This is my first week participating in iHeartFaces photo challenges. I took some pictures for last weeks "reflection" theme but wasn't happy with any of them. However, this week I had a few to choose from.

Sneak Peak!

Here's a sneak of my shoot this morning with some of my favorite people. Thanks for being a good sport, boys.

Fix-it Friday

Hooray for Friday! I'm excited to learn from everyone how they fixed this weeks photo from iHeartFaces, "my shadow". Here is the original:

And here is my edited version:

Shadows really are a pain to get rid of. I actually have spent a lot of time this week trying to manipulate shadows so its funny that they would choose this photo. Using GIMP, here is what I did:

-Used the clone tool and healing tool to remove that bright light reflecting on his cheek

-Cropped

-Played witht the curves and levels to brighten

-Used the auto>white balance tool

-Added another layer and set the mode to screen, decreased the opacity to 80

-Adjusted the contrast

-Added two layers of textures and set them to overlay. (You can find them here.)