Food Photography on Mexican Food Night!

There are few things I like more in the world than really good Mexican food! And while to some Mexican night simply means taco night, I happen to be dating the best cook ever (not that I'm biased or anything!) :) So to him Mexican night means homemade beef empanadas (crust made from scratch and everything) with yellow peppers stuffed with cheese and drizzled in spices, spanish rice with corn and a good beer.

This meal was just too amazing not to photograph!


Warm empanadas straight out of the oven...




Amazing stuffed peppers..

Spanish rice with corn...




and a good beer!









I think I'm STILL full!!

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Quaterly Top 5

Ashley, Sarah, and Amber are hosting a Quaterly Top 5 challenge.  You're supposed to post your top 5 favorite pics you've taken of your kids or pets between January and March.  Well, I don't have any kids OR pets, so I'm posting my top 5 favorites I've taken of OTHER people's kids!

1. Jillian - I love this shot of Jillian because she looks so relaxed and peaceful, which was challenging to achieve in this shoot because she did not want to sit still! Click HERE to see the rest from this session.




2. Justin - I just love this shot of Jillian's little brother Justin.  At just 10 months old, he was a bit of a challenge to shoot.  Most of the time he just looked at me like I was nuts.  But here he has a cute little mischievous smile and I just love the sharp focus on his big brown eyes.  Click HERE to see more!




3. Brooke - Ok, this may be one of my favorite shots I've EVER taken.  I just love how the light on her made her blue eyes pop and I love how she looks like a little doll in her princess dress. You can see more of Brooke here and here and what this picture looked like unedited here.

4. Jake - Brooke's 3-year-old big brother was so fun to shoot.  He was so silly and I just love his goofy smile in this picture as well as the sharp focus on his eyes! See the rest of Jake's session HERE.






5. Jake (again) - One of my favorite things to shoot is people jumping.  They always look so carefree and its a great way to get personality to show.  In this case, it was also a great trick to use when he was getting tired of getting his picture taken. He had so much fun jumping for this shot and it helped loosen him up for the rest of the shoot!

Check out Ashley, Sarah, and Amber to see more awesome kid shots!

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Tuesday Tips & Pics - Using Layer Masks to Help Cloning

After my last link up on cloning, I got a request to write a more detailed tutorial on using layer masks to assist in cloning and painting in black and white on layer masks to erase and reveal.

So here's the image I started with.

Unfortunately a car drove behind her write as I took this picture. And the boat in the upper right corner bothered me too.



So I started by duplicating my layer by hitting Command-J (ctrl-J on a PC) and I selected my cloning tool. I held down the alt button and selected an area of ocean/sand on the left and copied it over the boat and car on the right. The boat was pretty easy to just erase but the car runs right into her sweater and it was hard to just mask over the car without covering up her sweater.



I zoomed in on my picture to try to just get the car but I couldn't help but paint over her sweater as well. And I didn't really have to worry about it because we'll get to that later.

As you can see in the circled area I cloned far too much and covered her sweater.



To fix this problem, I clicked on the layer mask button (by the bottom right arrow) and then made sure to click ON the layer mask that appeared before I starting painting. I clicked on my brush tool and selected the color black. Then I lowered the opacity of my duplicate layer so could see the line of her sweater that I had painted over so I knew what to fix. I used the black brush to paint on the layer mask over the edge of her sweater, which erased my cloning.



After I went over her sweater carefully I brought my opacity back up to 100%. In one area I painted on black a little too far over the edge of her sweater showing some of the car again. So I simply switched from black to the color white which erased my erasings. Or more simply, black to erase, and white to reveal.



When I was done I zoomed out and flattened and then did my other edits. In this case, I just ran Florabella's "Swoon" action at 25% and smoothed the skin a bit, flattened and was done!




Here's the before and after side by side!



Without the distracting background elements, the viewers attention goes straight to the subjects.

If your interested in more shots from this maternity session, check out this Preview that I posted yesterday!

Link up what you've been shooting below!

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Staci and Andy - Maternity Shoot Preview

You may remember this adorable couple from their Gender Reveal photo shoot, (seen HERE and HERE) that I took a few months back the day after they learned they were having a little boy.  Well now Staci is 36 weeks pregnant! So we got together again for some maternity pictures down at Seal Beach.  I always have fun shooting Staci and Andy because, in addition to being two of my best friends, they are so silly and Andy always has us in hysterics, which really helps me get lovely natural smiles!

I just did this shoot today but I just had to get a couple up real quick!  Staci and Andy and I all fell in love with this first shot the second we saw it on my LCD screen! (And for the record, I didn't suggest that a 36 week pregnant lady do any jumping, she volunteered for it!)

Isn't she just about the cutest pregnant girl you've ever seen? I'll try to post more throughout the week, so check back!

And if you're interested, check out Staci's mama blog at Love the O's.

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