Bright Eyes Photography

Noah

2009-08-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of Sunday's ago I met up with my friend Jodi and her son, Noah downtown by some old train tracks. Noah was a blast, like all the kids I've photographed so far, and had no problem running around getting into things and making for great pictures.

I love this one and the fact that he is all dirty like a little boy should be. Yes, that is a large, rusty nail by the tracks. Safe? No, but a nice prop for photos with mom standing right near by.

Judging by some of these pictures of Noah looking very serious, you might think that is how he is all of the time which is so not the case. He just is in that stage of toddler-hood where he prefers not to smile when prompted. He can see right through me. :)

See, here is a smile! But I had to catch it fast!

Jodi, I hope you love all of your photos and I'm hopefuly that you can convince the Mr. that you all need some family photos!

Sneak Peak: Noah

2009-08-03T08:20:00.001-07:00

Am I biased or do I not photograph THE CUTEST children? I spent some time with Noah and his mom on Sunday morning and got lots of good stuff. More to come later!

Baby boy Chase

2009-07-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

I seriously love this kid, he is so much fun. He is a great baby and was a blast to photograph. He was an excellent subject and didn't throw a fit the whole time, except at the end when he fell and bumped his head. But that wasn't his fault, so it doesn't count.

Doesn't it almost look like he is reaching out for the light here?

I am totally in love with this picture, the expression on his face is priceless. He is just content and hanging out waiting for this lady to stop snapping his picture.

Heather and Joe, anytime you need another round of photos I'm there. Chase is so adorable and so easy. Hope you enjoy these!

Fix-it Friday

2009-07-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive I promise. To prove it I wanted to participate in iHeartFaces Fix-It Friday, which I haven't done in a few weeks. Here is the original.

And my edit.

So here is what I did, which really wasn't a whole lot:

Using Gimp:

-used the healing brush to erase the bags under his eyes

-used the lasso tool and color balance to eliminate the green and yellow shading around his eyes

-used the unsharp mask on eyes at 52

Using Lighroom:

-I used a preset called PH Surreal Moment (found in this set)

Fix-it Friday

2009-06-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

I skipped out on last Friday's iHeartFaces fix, I don't remember why... This week was pretty easy since this was already a pretty good picture. Here is "Pretty in Pink."

Here it is with my edits:

Baby Caeley

2009-06-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

Now that Caeley is out of the hospital, her parents brought her over for some photos. I really underestimated the difficulty level of newborn photography, but we still had a good time and got some good shots.

I love baby feet and baby shoes, they are so stinking cute, especially these.

I'm sure Caeley will grow up being a Daddy's Girl just like her outfit says. She already looks just like him!

This baby girl has some huge blue eyes! So pretty.

By the end of it, Caeley was a tired girl. Hopefully she went home and gave mommy and daddy a good nap!

Thanks for letting me photograph your pretty little girl, Mike and Danae. I hope you enjoy them.

Fix-it Friday

2009-05-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-09T20:24:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

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.)

Mommy and Son shoot

2009-04-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

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!

Showers

2009-01-01T16:16:00.000-08:00

Bridal and Baby Shower sessions will document you day spent with family and friends, sharing stories and opening gifts. This is an important day for you, and more often than not goes undocumented. These sessions last the duration of the shower and will capture all of your special moments.

Shower session (approx 2 hours) : $225

All edited images will be given to you on a disk for you to share and print however you please. They will be mailed to you within two weeks of capturing.

Contact

2009-01-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

If you would like to talk about setting up a shoot, or would like more information, you can contact me via:

Email: brighteyesbyliz@gmail.com

Littles Ones

2009-01-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

Little Ones sessions include children age 0-12.

Newborn sessions are typically in the first week or two after you have delivered, once you get home from the hospital and all settled in. These sessions are taken at your home and will last one hour. We will take photos of your new bundle of joy it its own setting; in your arms, in his nursery, wherever they are most comfortable. These can also include you, your spouse, other siblings and even pets! Or they can all simply be of your baby, the choice is up to you.

Babies & Children sessions can be any time of year, for any reason at all. These sessions can be in the comfort of your own home or outside at a location you have chose. These also last one hour.

Little Ones session (1 hour) :
week days - $100
weekends - $150

All edited images will be given to you on a disk for you to share and print however you please. They will be mailed to you within two weeks of capturing.

About Liz

2009-01-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

I have always had a love and great respect for beautiful photography. It has been a hobby of mine for the last few years until I recently decided to upgrade my equipment and set off on a new venture in professional photography.

I am unashamed to say that my talent is not from a classroom or text book, it is God given and self-taught. The goal in photography is to produce beautiful photos, and that is what I am aiming to do. So take a look at all of the galleries on this blog and consider me for your next shoot if you are pleased with former results.

If there is a type of photography that you do not see listed here that you are interested in having please send me an email and I would be glad to hear your request. However, at this time I am not shooting weddings.