On the drive from LA to Vegas you pass a lot of roads that look like this.
My good friends Megan and Dave had Dave's daughter Madyson staying with them for a few days. I went over for dinner and just grabbed a few snapshots of them in the backyard real quick. Poor thing had a stye on her eye that made it all swollen. I tried to take some of the red out on photoshop but it still looks swollen! I would love to do a more formal portrait session with little Madyson one day, she has SO much personality and is a total ham in front of the camera!
She was very excited by the little feather extension she got in her hair!
I'm going out of town for a couple days (Vegas, baby!) so I might not be posting as much, but I hope to return with fun desert pictures!
Here's my entry for I Heart Faces "A Touch of Whimsy."
The Pioneer Woman's photography contest this week is "Funny Faces." I was looking through my Flickr to see if I had anything to submit and I couldn't really find anything. I realized I only had pictures with perfect smiley faces! So I went through my iPhoto to see if I had any "funny" faces and I came across a few pics that just cracked me up. Some of these I had previously disregarded because of a lack of perfect focus or exposure, but this week I learned that some pictures are worth posting just because they make you smile!
I posted a Part 1 from this "mini shoot" the other day. It was an impromptu session with my brother and his fiance, Becca, after our families had gotten together for lunch on Father's Day. The lighting conditions were HORRIBLE! It was 3pm on an 80 degree clear day! Harsh light and shadows everywhere! In order to get anything half way decent we had to find some solid shade to shoot in. I still had a few lighting problems. And I realized that this is my first time shooting someone with glasses--anyone have any tips to shoot someone with glasses and not get a glare?
Here are the rest of the pics I liked from the mini shoot. (The first one is my favorite!) :)
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Since I got into photography I keep hearing people say how important it is to find your photography "style." I've been thinking about it more and more lately. What is my style? I saw a photographer recently describe herself as a "natural light lifestyle photographer." I thought, "oooh I like that!" I can use that explain my total lack of knowledge of studio lighting! I can just say "I'm a natural light photographer!" Perfect. And I really do prefer to only shoot in natural light.... But do my pictures have a style?
The more I learn about editing, the more different styles my pictures end up being. Sometimes I really like a soft vintage touch, and sometimes I think bold colors look best. But if I go back and forth, pictures from a session may look disjointed and not so uniform. Some of the pictures I took of my brother and his fiance on Sunday look awesome with a very slight vintage touch. But if I do it to one photo, do I have to do it to every photo in the session? More and more I'm leaning towards simple "clean" edits with just some lighting and sharpening fixes. But sometimes I see professional pictures with soft pink glows or crazy bold colors that I love. Do I need to pick one and stick to it to make my pictures show my style? If I do many different edits depending on the picture and shoot, will I lose a sense of "me" in my photos? These are just a few things I've been starting to think about lately whenever I go to edit a photo. Any thoughts on finding your photography style?
Here's one of the shots I took of my brother David and his fiance on their Mini Shoot on Sunday.
I kept the edit clean. I brightened it, ran Pioneer Woman's Boost action at about 30% opacity (which I can't help but do on almost every photo!) and I ran Coffee Shops Baby Powder Room to sharpen her eyes and smooth her skin bit.
Here it is side by side with the Straight Out Of Camera version.
I think a nice simple edit worked for this photo, but I bet there are tons of fun actions that would've done great things for it too!
More pics from this session coming soon!
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