Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Holiday Mayhem

Every year I wonder if all the craziness that surrounds the holidays is really necessary. I mean, there's the shopping, the wrapping, the card making and mailing, more shopping, more wrapping, worrying that the kids will love what you give them, the worrying that you got everything that you needed to for everyone on the list, the worrying that you spent way too much on the holiday, the cooking, the baking, the eating, the stomach ache after all the eating.

And then there is the worrying that you wouldn't get enough pictures of it all. And prior to that, if you are me, you should have practiced taking pictures a little more with the pathetic lighting in your living room. I did manage a few ok pictures (with lots of help from CS4).

I don't often center my subjects anymore - and unfortunately this was the best Christmas picture I took with my 3 babies together. Someday when I get over the anger of shooting my relatively uncooperative kids, I'll post up all the outtakes (there are many more of those than there are good pictures of them!!!) In case you were wondering, the weird shape of the lights on the tree are called bokeh - which can be created a few different ways - we can talk about that some other time.
My toothy 9 year old, Dylan - complete with bokeh...With that picture window to Dylan's left, I even caught a reflection on Dylan's left eye.
This is a better shot of Dylan.


Here is my Christmas Angel. I tried to take pictures from different angles around the tree - I wasn't really thrilled by this lighting. But rule #1 in photography - there is no such thing as perfect lighting. Except in my living room, the lighting isn't even close to good. It's lovely on a sunny day through the picture window but the light from the ceiling isn't conducive to easy non-flash photography.
This was Melody's turn with the tree.

I will say that I still prefer SOOC shooting with very little post-processing to the photoshopped pictures here....like this one -
This was taken out of the window of my car while I was parked in my driveway a few weeks before Christmas (there aren't 2 suns, just a reflection through the glass).

Earlier on Christmas Eve, Adam and the kids made this -
He was practically perfect. Until the temperature rose above 50 degrees right after Christmas...there was about 20 inches on the ground for nearly the entire week of Christmas - now's it's all but gone - that's a New England winter for you....

Some of the above pictures were taken with my Tamron 24-75mm f/2.8. The Christmas close ups of the kids were taken with my Canon 50mm f/1.8. And the kids were all dressed in new jammies sent for Christmas by Auntie Booger, Uncle Mike and little Claire.

I will resolve to blog more this coming new year than I had this year. It will stay here at blogspot and if I am lucky enough to finish more scrapbooking projects this year, I will shoot those and post here too.

I have a few more good shots to post later this week - I'm on break from school for another 4 weeks!!! YAHOO!!!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

NEED TO WIN

...this free watermarking action from CoffeeShop. I love their free actions! In case you didn't know what actions were, they are a series of editing steps in a photo editing program such as Photoshop or Elements.
This is my nephew Connor - I used the CoffeeShop Vignette action to darken the edges. I did though enhance his beautiful blue eyes from scratch. Such a cutie!

If by chance, I am randomly chosen to win this prize - it will make my weekend!!!