New Year, New Class

At this time of year, there is something that sparks inside of me and just makes me want to get out and do and learn. Last winter, I took a photography course through the University of Saskatchewan Centre for Continuing & Distance Education, but this year I wanted to mix it up a little. I feel confident with the manual controls on my camera and want a look at another side of photography, so I am taking a course with Shannon Brunner - a local Saskatoon photographer. Last night was our first class and I am SO excited for the next 9 weeks! There are 6 of us in the class (including myself) and I think that we will all bring something different to the table. Can't wait to see things differently! :)

Our first assignment has to do with natural light portraits. So, I strung up a shower curtain over my very sunny kitchen window and Lily and I had a little fun! Lily is in Rhythmic Gymnastics this year and she LOVES wearing her body suit (the tutu's are more for fun at home)! So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite shots from today.

So, after loading the images onto the computer, I noticed the very harsh line across Lily's chest from where my super-sophisticated diffuser curtain (aka a $1 white shower curtain from Dollarama) ended. Oppps! Thank-you burning tool in Photoshop. I will definitely remember that and hopefully not make that mistake again! Would have been a lot less time consuming to lower the curtain than try to fix it in Photoshop!!

It wasn't all serious - Lily has MANY faces and she wanted me to share with me.

Did I mention how much I love this little girl??! <3 Oh, and my new camera kicks butt too! :D

Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk

What a great night! On Saturday October 5th, me and 45 other photographers got together on Broadway for the annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk. From 6:30-8, we had the opportunity to walk around and photograph anything our hearts desired and at the end of the evening, we could choose one (just one) photo to submit to the Photo Walk contest. 

I had never noticed these amazing painted boulders on the shore of the Broadway bridge before. Amazing what you see when you open your eyes!! Very cool.

So, I totally cheated on this picture. The sky was completely washed out, so I dropped in a light blue sky from a few days before. The wonders of Photoshop....

This is the original

 

ran into this lovely fellow as I was walking ALONE by the shore on the downtown side of the river. Can you spell CREEPY?!!

It just so happened that Saturday night was also the "Light The Night: Walk for Leukemia & Lymphoma", so there were a lot of people in Kiwanis Park and the walk opened with the AMAZING Durga Fire Dancers. 

These women had such passion. The whole performance was amazing.... I am SO glad that we got to see it.

I love this picture. It is the one I submitted to the contest. I can't say that it is the most stunning picture I have ever taken, but having watched the dancers and felt their emotion, I loved that you could see each of their faces from my perspective and thought the colors turned out fantastic. I did not modify the colors at all - I sharpened it a bit, but otherwise I did not modify anything from the original pic.

If you look closely, you can see the lanterns and the people on the walk along the path at the bottom of this photo.

Terrible color in this picture, but I LOVED this bike!

I'm at the front.... In orange... :)

The Super Moon

I didn't know when I looked to the sky on Friday night that the moon was a "super moon". I did know that with as close as it looked to earth and how clear the sky was, I had the perfect opportunity to take a few pictures. I am so happy with how they turned out! Check out the craters!!

Did you know that they make them this teeny??!!

I had the absolute honor of photographing the teeniest baby yesterday!! Blake is one week old and just 5lbs, 4oz! He proved to be the perfect little model and we took all kinds of shots with him! It was SO much fun - here's what we did! :D

 

I had crocheted this little turtle shell before a friend of mine had her baby, but it was pretty small on him - didn't even cover his back. It was the PERFECT fit for baby Blake though! For the turtle shell pattern, click here!

 Oh these little feet! He loved to stretch right out, no matter what position we put him in and when he would stretch out his legs, he would cross them at the ankles. It was so cute (& funny)!!

 Big brother Blayton was on the move, but we caught him in a couple of pics. No time to waste with those ones!! :)

My sister pinned a pose like this one on Pinterest and I just had to try it. And with a baby this teeny, it worked out pretty good!

A big, huge thank-you and congratulations to Mommy Zoey and my lovely friend (& Grandma to baby Blake & his big brother Blayton), Janice, for letting me help you capture these precious moments. I feel very honored.... <3

Sweet, Sweet Baby Girl

What a precious little girl I had the honor of photographing last week! She is just 3 months old and was SO good for the shoot. She seemed to really like the camera (and the fact that my little helper, Lily, was behind me holding up bright colored toys and smiling at her)! 

I learned a lot from this shoot. The baby was a perfect little model and allowed us to move her around and position her all sorts of ways. It was good to play around with the set up, especially in babies that are a bit older and move around.

 

That brings us to lighting. I absolutely prefer natural lighting and we worked with what we had, but I did end up using my flash (just the pop-up on my camera with a diffuser) for many of the shots. After this shoot, I came home and ordered my off camera flash. I don't think it will arrive soon enough! :) My colors are very different from one pic to the next due to the changes in lighting, so it has made editing a bit of a nightmare, especially since I have been trying to maintain some consistency in the color from picture to picture. I converted a number of them to B&W and that helped, but doesn't solve the problem. Guess that's why they call it a learning experience! :) 

I also used this as an opportunity to really sharpen up my photoshop skills. I wanted to make baby's skin silky smooth - dreamy. So after spot healing little blemishes, I smoothed out her skin using an action in the Florabella Retouch and Makeover action pack called Natural Skin Smoother. It worked amazingly and I am personally very happy with how these pics are turning out.

Which one do you like better - full color or just a pop of color? I really like them both. :)

Thank-you again to this sweet baby's Mommy for letting me "play" with her! We had fun - let's do it again sometime... :)

More Me Than You Can Handle....

One of me is a handful.... How about 5 of me?! I got an email a few days ago from Photojojo! in regards to cloning yourself in photos and I just had to try it. So, without much (or any) real thought into it, I set up my camera on the tripod and ran around my room, posing in different positions before the 10 second self timer went off! Then, after collecting a number of shots, I imported them into Photoshop and got to work layering, erasing, layering, erasing..... To see the tutorial that I followed, click here.

I cannot wait to do this again with more elaborate poses and interesting subject/background - this was just fun to see if I could do it. And I did! :)

Note: if you are going to try this, do it in a place that the light will remain the same. Duh, right.... Well, I chose my living room... At 7pm.... Which happened to be when the sun was setting, so my light and colors from the first pics were quite different from the last (which is why the pic of me standing, talking on the phone is a little dark compared to the rest).

You've gotta love a baby....

The world just seems like a better place when you watch a precious little baby sleeping..... Thank-you to our friends Ila and Ryan for letting me "play" with their adorable little baby Henry yesterday. He is not quite a month old and was such a sweet little model! :) I can't wait to take more pics of him as he gets older - maybe next time we can get his big brothers in there with him too!