Journal Me This

Seeing Stars

achallphotography — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:54:19 +0000

I was driving today and I spotted this entrance to a local farm in the back woods not too far from my home. I love these three stars on the fence so I stopped to take a couple shots of it. In two weeks, my children will all be at Grammy and Grand Dad’s house for a week and I’ll be home ALONE during the day. I think I’ll make a few trips out to see what I can find that’s interesting to photograph. In the meantime, here is what I found today.

Busy, busy, busy

achallphotography — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:35:46 +0000

Life here is busy. I don’t know what I expected for summer but life seems to be hopping right along! I can’t believe it’s July 1st. CRAZY!

I’ve been playing on Facebook lately because John’s cousins invited me to join. Since then, I’ve found a bunch of old pals from college who I’d lost touch with. One in particular is my sorority sister Bonnie whom I adore. It is totally fun reconnecting with people who you value. Today I got to go her house to photograph her and her babies. She has three children under the age of two!!!! The woman is crazy busy. Those babies sure are sweet though. This is my favorite picture of the day.

The Farm

achallphotography — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:33:43 +0000

It was a very good day here. It was the first day of summer break for my daughter so we could do whatever we wanted. I should also mention that I got my new Canon 40D camera last Friday and today was my first chance to really play with it. So, I took the kids to get their hair cut and then to McDonalds for lunch. It was just too nice out to go back home so I took them to the farm. I figured they could run and play while I played with my camera and everyone would be happy. Out of the 1,000+ pictures (yes, you read that right) I took today, here are my favorites.

First Maternity Session

achallphotography — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:03:00 +0000

Today was my very first ever maternity session! I had so much fun! These are my top picks from the day. If you were the pregnant lady and you could only have one, which one would you pick?

Okay – this one isn’t really about the baby on the way – this one is just because I was playing peek-a-boo with one of the girls and I think she’s so darn cute!

Scrapbook Club

achallphotography — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:27:50 +0000

Last Saturday night, I went to my scrapbook club with my pal, Amy Sheffer. She has a fantastic blog called Pickled Paper Designs. She creates the most amazing stamped creations and I consider it a significant blessing to be a member of her stamp club because I get so much inspiration out of it. You can find her blog here (http://pickledpaperdesigns.blogspot.com/)

This month we had the supplies to create this scrapbook page (http://pickledpaperdesigns.blogspot.com/2008/05/scrap-club.html). Since I don’t typically make scrapbook pages in what she calls a round-up style, I modified it to the next page I needed for my chronological scrapbook album. Here is what I made using the same supplies that she used to create her page.

Behold the power of PhotoShop Elements!

achallphotography — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:56:05 +0000

My friend, Christina, has a blog called Momology (http://momology.blogspot.com/). She recently had a post on how she typically processes her photographs. (http://momology.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-standard-processing.html)

Since I’m trying to learn as much as I can about PhotoShop Elements, I’m going to follow her steps with the following photograph of my dog Molly.

That picture is SOOC. Isn’t she cute with her little underbite?

So.. step one is get the picture in PSE. Check. (I’m using PSE 6 if anyone cares)

Then, create a duplicate layer and run the auto adjustments to see if I like what PSE gives me. Check.

Well… I’ll be! I did it with Levels, Contrast and Color Correction. I liked what Levels and Contrast gave me but the color correction was all wrong. So, I hit the handy undo button for that last step and this is what we got!

Hmmm. I think I could stop there. But she had more suggestions to give so I’m going to keep going.

Next step… unsharpen. She gave me a new way to try… so here we go. This is what I got next.

After this, she says she rotates and crops. Don’t want to do that to this picture so then we are off to do the P Dub trick I learned the other day … make it pop with soft light mode and screen mode.

Here you have it.

Now, last but not least… vignette. I’ve never tried this before and I don’t know if I’ll like it on this particular photo – but hey, I’m all for practice!

Interesting… who knew that you had to right click on the sponge tool to get the dodge and burn tools to show up?! I didn’t. Can you see how very much I needed this tutorial?!

Here is the final product after following Christina’s steps.

Before

After.

Good to know!

Gift Idea from the kids

achallphotography — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:05:15 +0000

If you are trying to think of a cool gift idea for your little one to give to grandma, you MUST see Carrie’s idea! Follow this link to her blog where she plays a video about how to make the coolest photo gift. Ignore the beginning of the video where they are talking about club bow wow or something and hang on until you get to Carrie and her daughter. It’s worth it. I’ll post my picture when I have my kids make their own version.

http://barefoot-memories.com/news/index.php?link=192&cat=7

Hello world!

achallphotography — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:36:02 +0000

Welcome to my new blog. Previously, my blog was supposed to be focused on photography only. Now, I’ll share more of my life overall with my on-line journal. Too bad I already sent off my Mother’s Day cards or I’d share those creations with you!

On a happy note, Hewlett Packard offers free classes at their site and I’m currently enrolled in a class about PhotoShop Elements. It’s focused on PSE 5 but I’ve already learned a couple new tricks that I can use in PSE 6. It’s pretty basic, but basic is what I need since I’m brand spankin’ new to the program. They offer several types of classes. To find out more visit them at http://h30240.www3.hp.com/index.jsp

HP photography class

achallphotography — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 10:05:46 +0000

Heads up! Wanna take a free online course? HP is offering a free class called Beyond Basics about fundamental photography techniques. Class starts April 7 and runs until May 9.

If you are wondering what happened to my Morgue File class that I’m following, I still intend to do it when the weather FINALLY turns to spring. What can I say, I’m a sissy and don’t like photographing landscapes in the freezing rain or wind. It’s been miserably cold here and it just will not lift! But when it does, I’ll proceed with the next assignment. In the meantime, I’ve taken up knitting. A lovely indoor sport. I’ll share more about that some other time.

Amazon Groceries

achallphotography — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:57:04 +0000

Well, hello. It’s been a month and a half since I posted. Shameful. I missed my one year blogging anniversary too. And I can’t tell you much about the slow month except that I spent a lot of money in spite of myself. It was spring break and hubby and I had a weekend get-away planned. Duh. Bad month to try to keep the cash output to a minimum. But we’ve done very well on eating out of the pantry and not spending so much on groceries. Which brings me to my point of this post.

Did you know that Amazon has gotten in to the grocery market now?! Who knew? Anyway, you can subscribe to their service to have certain staples delivered on a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or semi-annual basis. It’s like Costco bulk but it arrives at your door with FREE shipping! I’m trying it out with laundry detergent, dryer sheets, paper towels, toilet paper, coffee and Cheez-Its. (My family loves Cheez-Its) I would subscribe for diapers and wipes but I’m hoping to potty train the boy at the beginning of the summer. Yeah, wish me luck with that one.