Long Awaited

The other night after work, I visited my friend, Michele at the hospital - she had a baby last Wednesday. He's so cute, see?

Ryan Michael - 7lb 9 oz, 18.5 inches arrived on 8/27/08 @ 1:42am.

I took that photo with the available light in the room, no flash. ***Note to self: hospital lighting is horrendous. I shot this photo with my Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. I was holding him and when I felt my arm going numb from it, I put him down so that I could take his picture. Thankfully the sheets were white, giving me a little more light towards his face.

I had Michele dim the lights because it was obnoxiously bright after she turned the lights on and here I was thinking I could shoot a decent shot from the ambient light of a lamp. Yeah, ok.
I didn't take too many pictures (which I should have) and I didn't have my tripod on me, so many of my photos ended up with camera shake. PSE6.0 to the rescue...
If you have a slight OOF that cannot be sharpened, try converting to black and white - it makes the OOF less obvious (I think). OOF or not, for someone who had a baby nearly 48 hours before this photo was taken, I thought Michele looked pretty darn great!!! This edit was done using the mocha and vignetting actions I got from EZActions.com. They also have a chocolate action -
Michele's not a chocolate fan; she'd rather white chocolate - I think an action titled white chocolate would convert a picture into (in this case) a normal exposure - definitely making OOF more obvious. Sorry, Michele.


I couldn't decide if I liked chocolate or mocha better, so I converted the same picture of Ryan into both, even though the colored picture was fine.
This is Ryan in chocolate.

This is Ryan in Mocha.

Last month, Michele's family threw her a baby shower. While I didn't get too many pictures of Michele (she was busy opening gifts and entertaining people), I got this great shot of her sister, Christy and her baby, Kaitlyn:
Poor baby, she was sick that day (I think she may have been teething). Michele got a ton of gifts - at least 2 laundry loads full!!!

I know she'll be reading this - Michele, we'll miss you at work - have a wonderful leave with Ryan. A big shout out to big sis Mikayla and to the original Mr. Mac & Cheese, Mike!!! Will see you soon (with my camera gear in tow)!!!