I Heart Faces ~ Dramatic B & W

This last year my nephew brought his girlfriend and 2 daughters to one our summer holiday gathering. What a joy and blessing it was to meet these girls (all 3 of them!)  Anyway, every time I have my camera out they come running.  It’s nice to have “eager” subjects to photograph, especially when there as cute as these!  Shoot, they’ve even nicknamed me “Uncle CooCoo”. 

What’s not to ♥ about them?

This shot was from the eldest's (she’s 5 I think), first soccer game.  I think I took almost 300 pics that day!

Now, I haven’t entered too many challenges, but this one is nice!  Way to go Amy and Angie, you rock as always!

Head on over to I ♥ Faces, and check out the other entries in this weeks Black & White challenge!

Love ya Tessa!

Uncle CooCoo !

 

Sweet Shot Tuesday ~ Ain’t She Sweet !

Not much I can say about this one! 

This last year my nephew brought his girlfriend and 2 daughters to one our summer holiday gathering. What a joy and blessing it was to meet these girls (all 3 of them!)  Anyway, every time I have my camera out they come running.  It’s nice to have “eager” subjects to photograph, especially when there as cute as these!  Shoot, they’ve even nicknamed me “Uncle CooCoo”.  What’s not to ♥ about them?

This shot was from the eldest's (she’s 5 I think), first soccer game.  I think I took almost 300 pics that day!

Make sure you head over to Darcy’s blog and check out the rest of “Sweet Shot Tuesdays” entries!

Love ya Tessa!

Uncle CooCoo

p.s.  I think I would look sweet with a Gussy Bag!  OK, if not me, then most definitely my wife!

Baker Family Photo Shoot

 

Just a few shots from my first “paid “ gig as a photographer.  Does that make me a professional?  Heck no!  It just makes me someone who loves the art!

I learned quite a bit from that day.  Like for example, my workflow needs a lot of work.  I learned exactly how long it takes to edit 455 pics.  But the most important thing I learned…

“Have fun, doing what you do!”

   

 

 

 

 

Enjoy life, snap some shots, and have fun. 

That’s what I’m gonna do!

Hallelujah, toss me some shrimp!

This past week, my wife and I had a wonderful opportunity to go our for dinner with some very close friends.  RJ spent the night over at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s, so it was a nice evening out.  I really don’t think we would have had to worry about RJ anyway.  He would rather stay at home and talk to his girlfriend than spend time with the old man and old lady!  In his words, “We are ancient!”

We had a wonderful time at Kabuto’s in Nashville.  This was our first experience at a hibachi style restaurant.  WOW, is about all I can say.

The food was fantastic, the companionship of friends was over the top, and the atmosphere was through the roof.  But the thing that made this place stand out…our cook, Kenny!

 

What a showman!  At one point though, I did fear for his life a little.  He pretended to trip and sent fake soy sauce flying across the table toward my wife.  In her most lady like voice, all I heard was, “Back of boy, this is a new top!”

Kenny never missed a beat, and in my mind, I just knew he had someone to pick on for the whole meal.

I think one of the things that impressed me most, was the skill this guy had.  Not only did he put on a great show, he made it seem easy.  I actually had trouble eating because I was taking too many pictures!

 

If you ever make it to Kabuto’s, make sure you look Kenny up.  He makes the price worthwhile.  Oh yeah, if it’s your birthday, please tell them.  It was pretty cool watching the crew sing Happy Birthday in Japanese and banging the drum and gong!

Now, the highlight of the evening was when the ladies praised God for the shrimp!  OK,at least that’s what it looked like anyway.  Kenny took several pieces of shrimp, cut it, patted it threw it in the air, caught it, and then told the ladies to open their mouth!  Melinda was actually the only one to catch it in her mouth.  To prove it, look closely at the pic in the middle!  My wife refused to do it, so Kenny reached across the table and took her plate!  Beth eventually said she would participate, but she cheated.  She used her hands!  LOL!

All in all, it was the perfect end to a busy day.  One of the couple we went with, were my first paying clients for Bald Is Beautiful Photography!  After all was said and done, we went to Starbucks, had some coffee and planned on our next get together. 

• Coffee at Starbucks ~ $9.00
• Dinner at Kabuto’s ~ $85.00
• Spending time with friends ~

 

PRICELESS!!!!!

And there you go. 

Enjoy life, snap some shots, and have fun. 

That’s what I’m gonna do!

Fix-it-Friday ~ I Heart Faces

Time for another Fix It Friday from my favorite spot on the web…I ♥ Faces!

This week has been a blur for me.  I had my first “professional” photo shoot.  That’s right folks, I got paid to take photographs.  Let’s just say this, I learned a lot.  Number one thing, it takes quite a while to edit 455 pics.  I don’t think I’ll be making that mistake again soon!  So when I saw it was Friday, I knew I could count on Angie and Amy to provide me with a break from editing for
$’s and start editing for ♥ ! 

Here’s the original Natalie P. over at “And Then There Were Three”.  A little birdy told me that “And Then There Were Three” is exapnding her blog and might be adding the #4 to the title!  Congrats Natalie, one was plenty for my wife and I!  If you get a chance, head over to “And Then There Were Three” and drop a note to this lovely lady!

Okay, here’s the pic Natalie gave us to work with.  This is her adorable daughter, Abigail, straight out of the camera!

Normal workflow:

1. Import into to Lightroom.
2. Auto adjust exposure.
3. Check white balance and add a little warmth to the photo.
4. Bump up the following: blacks, clarity, and vibrancy.

At this point, I usually take the adjustment brush and do some skin smoothing.  Today I did not do that.  Wendy C. over at Wendy C. Photography turned me on to one of the easiest and most productive PS Actions I have ever used.  I’ve used several actions in the past, but always get confused on where to use a mask, and what is too much, or too little for that fact.  But not this one!  Nichole V rocks, that’s about all I can say!

 

I purchased the Photo Fix Action Set this past week, and I was truly amazed.  This was so easy, and really helped with those 455 photos as well!  When you run the actions included in this set, a new window pops up and tells you what size brush, what opacity and so on.  This just took the guess work out of it and made life simpler!  Actions rule!!!!!

 

So ok, back to photo editing.  In PS I ran the following action sets:

1. Skin Smooth
2. Eye Pop
3. Selective Sharpening

 

 

I also used the patch brush too dust off her hat, and take some of the dark circles around her eyes and other blemishes away.  From here I went back to LR and used Matt Kloskowski’s Soft Focus Preset.

 

And there you go. 

Enjoy life, snap some shots, and have fun. 

That’s what I’m gonna do!

Sweet Shot Tuesday

Time for another “Sweet Shot Tuesday” over at My Life with 3 Boybarians.

I tell you, I just love the thought of sharing photos with the world.  There is truly nothing like it.  To be able to take a photo and put it up for the world to see is exhilarating.  Sometimes I wonder if that is what DaVinci felt when he painted the Mona Lisa?  OK, enough rambling.

This last weekend I had my first “professional” photo shoot.  that’s right, I actually got paid to take pictures of someone.  It was a blast, and the client was really impressed and happy.  That’s all that matters!  While I was scouting out the park for potential shots, I ran across on of the budding trees in Nashville. 

So, here is my entry to this weeks “Sweet Shot Tuesday”.

Several hours wasted, loads of info learned!

I’m all about learning, there’s no doubt.  Just ask my wife how much I spend on the interwebz looking and searching for new information, or how to do something different! 

Well, the other day I was perusing the multitude of blogs I read daily, and I stumbled across someone Scott Kelby had mentioned before, but had paid no attention to. Design by Firgs turned out to be one of the most amazing cornucopia of tutorials, downloads and advice that I had ever seen!  Her interview series with some of the best photographers and graphic designers is outstanding.  Her tutorials are very easy to read and follow.  And her free, that’s right, I said FREE download section is full of some great stuff!

Had on over to Design by Firgs and take a look.  While your there, make sure your register for her latest giveaway, a 16 x 20 rolled print from UPrinting.

 

Another site that is mentioned on Design by Firgs is TipSquirrel.  A pretty cool site with some more Photoshop type tutorials.  My favorite section of TipSquirrel is called “Inspire-O-Tron”  Just a neat little gimmick to help get the artistic and photographic juices flowing.  The Inspire-O-Tron is typically a single word, followed by a sentence. 

Today’s is:

Still Life

It doesn’t have to be on a table indoors, or fruit!

 

Have fun, and enjoy!

I think I’m putting Rita up for Sainthood!

OK, here goes.  I know I’m in ♥ with my wife, but I think I’m in ♥ with Rita from Coffeeshop Freebies also. 

This girl rocks my photographic world.  And before you ask, my wife knows all about it!

A couple of weeks ago my son asked if I could help him with the graphics for his science fair project.  He had the idea to use a flame background for the words on the board.  Now I had a pretty good idea how to accomplish this in Photoshop.  After many attempts at trial and error, along with countless trips to see Dr Google, I had failed miserably.  I had just about given up when I noticed that Rita at Coffeeshop Freebies had a new post.  Lo and behold, it was talking about creating a storyboard with text cut outs.  I could not believe my eyes, here was the answer to my problems.  Thank you Rita!

This last weekend the weather was not cooperating with picture takin’, so I thought I would redesign my photo blog.  One of the main things I wanted was a slideshow header.  You know, the ones where the photos kind of flip back and forth.   I searched once again through the annals of Googleland and found several ways to accomplish this, but they were really intricate and involved, just like my stinking taxes!  So I decided to forgo the photo changin’ header and opted for a single image.

Guess what Rita did today?  That’s right, it’s almost like this female is reading my mind.  So, the header above is a direct result of a blog post from Coffeeshop Freebies! Here’s the link to that post if you are interested ~ click here!

Once again Rita, I think you’re a Saint in the makin’!!!

Sweet Shot Tuesday!

OK, it’s just what I need to keep me sane, another challenge to make me take a photo! 

 

Darcy over at Life with 3 Boybarians has just come up with a new photo challenge called “Sweet Shot Day”, your best Tuesday photos.  So, knowing it’s what  I love the best (taking and sharing pics), I thought I would participate. 

Here’s my “Sweet Shot Day” of my son.  He’s grown way to fast and is almost 12.  Oh yeah, he now has his first “real” girlfriend!  Man, I’m getting old!

 

Thanks Darcy for giving us the opportunity  to share!

Sarah Ji Presets

I love my Lightroom Presets.  They are probably the easiest and fastest way to customize and edit a photo.  These presets are from Sarah Ji.  This one is called “Autumn”, but she has several more that you can download and install for free.  The internet is full of these little goodies, you just have to search for them.  Also check out my Lightroom Stuff over on the left for some further LR good-i-ness!  Is good-i-ness a word?
To install a preset, just do the following:
1) Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
2) Go to the Develop module. NOTE: YOU MUST BE THE DEVELOP MODULE
3) Go to the Presets panel on the left. Right click anywhere in it and choose Import.
4) Select the .lrtemplate files you unzipped in Step 1 and click Import NOTE: DO NOT IMPORT THE ZIP FILE


Very easy to do, but if you need help, give me a shout!



An example of what these presets look like in action! The presets above are straight from LR.  I usually tweak a few things before I post a pic, but these a great starting points!



Enjoy!

Fix It Friday…On A Sunday!

Well, it’s my favorite time of the week. No, not the end of the weekend, but Fix It Friday from I ♥ Faces! This weeks fix comes from Amy Pinney over at Amy Pinney Photography. When I first saw this photo, I thought it would be pretty hard to fix, but I was wrong. This one was pretty easy to take care of.

This was the original photo from Amy. It is kind of dark, and full of noise. After I imported the photo into Lightroom, I did an auto fix on the exposure, added some fill light, and then went to custom white balance. At this point I cropped the photo to remove the lower left corner that was really dark.

One of my favorite programs to use on any photo is Color Efex Pro 3.0. I love several of the filters that are there, but on this one I used the darken/lighten center filter. It allows you to add light to any portion of the photo that you need. When I felt OK with my results, I went back to Lightroom and used an adjustment brush on the eyes, just to add a little brightness to them.

From here I went to Photoshop CS4 and added a few textures. I feel good about my finished product.

On this edit, I took the finished product and ran it through Topaz Adjust 4. If you are a NAPP member, you can get Topaz Adjust for just $35. Not bad for an editing program like this!

Well, that’s it for today. Make sure you head over to I ♥ Faces, and check out the other Fix It Friday edits.

Old Hickory Lake Sunrise