Thursday Miscellany (and 200+ followers!)

I just reached 200 followers this week, in just over 7 months of blogging! Thank you, awesome followers:

Speaking of awesome, my friends are awesome.  They love me, and wherever we go, they jump for me!

Yes, I even make my friends jump in a bowling alley! I apologize for the quality--it was dark and I was using a flash and my ISO was bumped up REALLY high! But at least I learned my camera can get up to about ISO 1250 with hardly any grain! It also gave me a chance to practice with my flash and this little soft box I bought for it. The first shot is still a little dark and I bumped the flash a little brighter after that.



And just for fun, here's that last shot in black and white.










I've seen some shots like these around the net and I was suddenly inspired to try one. I don't do a lot of self-portraits, but I like that the camera is in focus and I'm softly blurred out! I took this in my bathroom mirror!

And lastly, a quick edit for you, since I'm finally finishing all the edits from my portrait session with my friend Kristin! (which can be seen here, here, and here.) I was looking through my pics from the shoot and wondered why I never noticed this picture before!

Here's the "after":

To edit, I did these steps:

-Cropped slightly.
-Ran Pioneer Woman's Slight Lighten action at 85% opacity.
-Ran Pioneer Woman's Boost action at 30% opacity.
-Ran Coffee Shop's Baby Powder Room action to sharpen her eyes and smooth her skin.

Here's the after with the original: