Happy Halloween!

So, my picture may not be THAT old but it sure looked old. I decided it would be a fun one to do in the spirit of Halloween AND since my son will be dressing up in a similar costume I thought it would be fun to put the two side by side on my own blog later.

Here's the after, and YES it actually is me on my first trick or treating expedition. I must have been about 18 months old.
See, the color was pretty bad right? I actually pulled out the big guns and, after cropping a bit, I ran the Kodak ROC plug-in with photoshop. It still wasn't right so I adjusted the settings till I had more of an orange tint on the pumpkin and the walls seemed a more natural color than the pink I had here.
One problem I ran into was my eyes. (I still have the same problem in my pictures- even as a grown up) I always have one eye that's really dark and one that looks kinda hazy. Any ideas for how I could even them out a bit?

CC ALWAYS WELCOME!!!

4 Greats

Here is a photo of my great, great, great, great grandmother on my dad's mother's side. Not sure if this was a photo or if it was a newspaper that as scanned. Either way it was really yellow and brown and wrinkled and just down right old. Good old photoshop was used to do everything I could think of for this one. This has got to be the oldest photo i can find!

Before and After for Restore OK

I mentioned it wasnt necessary to post before and after. You are more than welcome to post both, I just said it wasnt necessary so people didnt feel like it was double the time to post both.

Its optional! If you have already posted or saved your post just go back in and edit it with the new photo.

Great Grandma Caroline

This is my great grandmother Caroline Gregory when she was about 20 years old... I scanned the picture to my computer and then did some restoring in photoshop, the picture was basically in good shape, but I took away some spots, burned the edges and added a frame. All in all I think it turned out very well.

Challenge: Restore

The challenge for this week should be so fun. The word is Restore or Restoration. There are three ways you can do this so read up before you get snapping.

1) take a picture for challenge as normal and post as normal.

2) Get the oldest picture you can find that is meaningful in your life. Example: your great grandmothers wedding photos or something. Then use a photo editing program to "restore" it.

3) do both

It is not necessary to post the before and after picture.

I want to do this because photo editing is something we have had tutorials about and I know all of us at one time have wanted to do this with old photos. So this gives you an excuse to try it out!

Lets get this done by Sunday October 10th by 11:59pm!

There are many photo editing programs that you can use windows comes with a basic free one. Most printers you have probably have one you can do it with, there are probably some online like Picasa (from google), or you can use one you bought like PhotoShop.

Tuesday Tutorial: lesson for the sun... READY!!!

why do we hide from the sun! shoot right into it! I LOVE THE SUN!!!!! here is my little tips to sun shooting!

use your hood! a hood traps that sun and bounces it all around making circles! and you can see them in your lens as your about to shoot, its sort of blinding but hey...COOOOL! so also, the lower you are to the ground the bigger the circles, and the wider the lens it seems to get easier as well. here are my sample shots.

the first shot i put the sun behind the fountain water, glowing up the water and highlighting them. i was laying on my side to get the camera low so that the sun reays would channel through and bounce, making circles! you can see them as you angle the lens. i always do the test shots (cus its blinding) and when i have it ready then i frame them where i want and jiggle the lens around slowly looking for lens flare...then shoot! also, note that i NEVER add fake sun flare...i just work at the shot till i get it.

iso 160 sp 1/160 f5.6 these two are fun...sun RIGHT behind them. use your flash. and at first just use auto flash or if you have a speed light then set it at pttl (auto) and let it think for you...then shoot a sample, adjust flash and settings accordingly and then snap! sun rays

1. iso 320 (keep it LOW for great saturation!)

fstop 4.0

sp 1/1000 (because the flash and camera need to contradict. meaning the fast speed allows the camera to capture the light and colors around them, flash allows them to be lit too.)

1/100sp 8.0 f and iso 640 little more light and less flash on this one, for dreamy look) and sun right into the lens, peeking from the tree. same rules apply.

iso 400 sp 1/200 3.5 f

watch where the sun rays show in your lens, if they are hot that night set a ray right on them! like heavenly right? lol same settings as last. same recipie...just angled different letting different lights in!

here are just a couple more... these are to show my point a bit more. shooting into the sun is fantastic!!!!!!! you can do sooo much! truly! see:

these shot i wanted to see sky in its brilliant blue so i tricked the camera (lol.) meaning i shot it at an exposure that really is shooting the clouds... then fired a flash that caought them. so light meter the sky! then set flash then shoot! adjust appropriatly. resipie:

iso 250 sp 1/1000 and f7.1

last 3... at the same wedding i wanted three different shots, one really focused, and deeply saturated giving a feeling of where they are and the true colors around them. so the ap is set at 10 so that a great depth is set. the trees are focused even. iso 160 and sp 1/125 a very REAL photo.

the second i wanted a real magical feel. so its overexposed, showing ONLY them and blurry background and sun flare. iso 640 5.6 1/500 so lots of light in. and lastly this one! not real at all, a comic book color and really harsh sun flare. i was WAY low to the ground widest lens and really juiced up the recipie to make it work! iso 640 f 16 and sp1/1250 TONS of light and NO flash. to silluette them and make it grainish and just LOUD. these are all real circles, nothing added.
hope this gave you a few ideas...this is my favorite type of shooting. i love the sun! please leave cc to my thoughts if you have any as well! thanks for letting me be a part of this blog and thanks to everyone for the comments all the time! lindy

Quick Items

Some quick things!

1) participation - Thanks for the increase lately! It is pretty good. We can get a few more of you to post still. Come on people prove me wrong that you wont post! A challenge within a challenge! oh snap! Dont make me spam you on email/facebook mmhkayy! ;o)

2) Challenge Ideas - go ahead and send me your ideas cus frankly mine havent been a hit historically so help me out :o)

3) new poll on the sidebar.

4) M24 on Facebook become a fan to get reminders! click the sidebar to go to the page

5) Winners Looks like 6 entries ao I used a dice and rolled it three times to get three winners. If one winner was #2 and i rolled it again the second time I just re-rolled till I got a different number. Per the dice winners were Melinda, Kristine, Candace, and Mindy! I will also message the winners now! Thanks again for submitting photos!

Fall in Love

If there's anything I love more than doing a photo shoot, it's doing a photo shoot with family... This is my adorable nephew, Payton. I was the lucky photographer for a little photo shoot with him and his equally adorable sisters today. :) I'd have to say I'm in love with "Pete". :)

Part of my family...

I had hoped to get multiple family members in this shot, but when we were out at the park today, I got this picture of my son...part of my family...

My Baby Sister

This is the first time I've posted in MONTHS, but I was very able to complete this challenge without anything getting in my way! :) I've missed you all very much and this picture is of my little sister who just turned 17. We had a party for her at my grandma's house yesterday, where I snapped a few shots of her! I hope this will get me back in the hang of the posting for each challenge.

Growing Family

My family is expanding! (And so is my belly!) Self-shots can be really hard. I had to take about 25 of myself to get it the way I wanted. And then I liked it so much, I decided to wash it out a little and now I love it. For this particular photo, the reason it made the cut was because I managed to get it to center on my belly, with my face nearly out of the picture.

CC Welcome and desired!

The P family

My neighbors wanted some family pictures and tonight we finally had an evening with some good light.


f/6.3 1/60 sec, 100 ISO, cc

Other images from the shoot are at my blog.

Family - Sleeping Beauty