Joy of Love

Trying to catch up on Joy of Love (now that it's over, oops)! I missed a few of the prompts and someday I will go back and complete them. I also hope to go back and edit all of the photos from the month once I get some new software (these are all still SOOC).

Joy of Love

Day 14

Wedding Bands

1/50 F5.6 ISo800

Day 15

Kiss

Ava giving Daisy a big kiss! 

1/50 F5 ISO800

Day 16

Together (self portrait)
Eeek! The shadows are way harsh in this. But it is SOOC and I do plan on trying to fix it up a bit someday. Anyway, here we are!

Day 17

Staying In

This is one of Ava's favorite things to do on those days where we stay home (and sit around in pj's) all day! 

1/30 F4.5 ISO1600

Day 18

Going Out

Fail :(

Day 19

When They're Gone

Fail :(

Day 20

When They're Home

There's always mess! 

1/50 F4.5 ISO800

Day 21

Hands

Ava's cute, chubby hands. I cut up her grapes for lunch. She spent almost her whole time at the table trying to "fit" them back together. 

1/125 F5.6 ISO1600

Day 22

Face (portrait)

1/50 F4.5 ISO1600

Day 23

Facebook Picture

Ava at 1 month

Shot in automatic 

Day 24

Where you Fell in Love

Fail :(

Day 25

When you Love them the Most

When they are truly happy!

1/800 F5.6 ISO800

Day 26

Bromance

Fail :(

Day 27

What They Say

Ava's newest fav sentence is "I do it by I self"! Haha! Here she is trying to pour paint into a bottle (for a recent craft project) by herself! 

1/100 F5.6 ISO1600

Day 28

The Future

I hope that you always remember that you are smart, funny, and oh so beautiful! You can accomplish whatever you set your mind to and I know the future will bring great things for you.

1/80 F5.6 ISO1600

Joy of Love

Joy of Love 

Day 8

Gift from the Heart

Photo of our dog, Lucy. Demonstrating her never-ending gift of love by waiting at the front door for her daddy.
1/15 F4.5 ISO1600

Joy of Love 

Day 9

Passions and Hobbies

Ava's hobby: playing.
1/80 F5.6 ISO1600

Joy of Love 

Day 10

Space Where they are Comfortable

The couch of course!

1/25 F5.6 ISO1600

Joy of Love 

Day 11

Dreams 

Our cat, Lilly looking out the window. Dreaming of outdoor wonders!

1/125 F5.6 ISO1600 

Joy of Love 

Day 12

The Eyes 

Ava's beautiful, blue eyes!

1/125 F5.6 ISO1600

Joy of Love 

Day 13

Routines 

Brushing her teeth!

1/100 F5.0 ISO1600

Trendy Treehouse-Eyelashes

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 7

Generations

We are a military family stuck in Germany all alone! :( So I decided to photograph Ava holding pictures of both sets of grandparents. She really just wanted to stare at the photos and she was holding them at such an angle that they couldn't be seen in my pic. So, I decided to take them out of the frame. This is a picture of Ava and her maternal grandparents (it's one of my favorites)!

1/100 F9.0 ISO800

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 6

What They Love

My daughter's lovey, appropriately named "blanket"!

1/60 F4.5 ISO1600

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 5

Love to Hate

Love to hate....hmm

I am not sure that I hate anything about any of my loved ones, but there are plenty of little things that may or may not cause my eye to uncontrollably twitch on a regular basis! hehe

Like water bottles. My husband drinks so much water (good thing). Most of the time he uses a refillable thermos (another good thing). But there are plenty of times a day when he winds up drinking from a regular water bottle (don't worry, we recycle). These bottles always end up strewn around the house for me to pick up (bad thing). When I staged this shot my husband laughed and asked if I thought this was a bit of an exaggeration (the amount of bottles). Well sure, maybe for one sitting but not for an entire day! I can't really complain, at least he's being health conscience!  

1/13 F5.6 ISO1600 

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 3

Then and Now

Then: March 2008 Kerry and I on our honeymoon in the Bahamas (one of the many arm out, snap the pic, and hope you didn't cut off either persons head, shots)! Back then it was all about us!

Now: February 2011 We got pregnant with our daughter 1 month after the "then shot". Now our lives revolve around her and we wouldn't want it any other way (even if we do find it tricky to sneak in a kiss at playtime) :)

Now: 1/13  F5.6  ISO1600

Joy of Love

Day 4

What They Wear

Make-up (aka chapstick)! This kid loves the stuff. I guess when getting photographed, it is important to "put on your face" first! hehe

1/40  F5.6  ISO1600

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 2

How They Look

Photos of my daughter, Ava

Much better day, today! If you didn't get to see my entry for yesterday (What They Do), click HERE!

belly 1/40, feet 1/80, faces 1/30

all F5.6 and ISO1600

Joy of Love

Joy of Love

Day 1-What They Do

They Sleep! 

(Pictured is my cat Lola)

Ugh, I had SO many great ideas for this. Nothing I did was working out for me today :( I am still very new to full manual shooting so the majority of my photos don't turn out "usable". Today was no exception. If you have any suggestions at all, please let me know. Throughout this monthly class I am hoping for people to step up and be blunt with me. I would love to hear from you whether you like my shots or not! The lighting in my house is terrible (all florescent) and the natural lighting in Germany during the winter is also terrible! I had to bump the ISO all the way up so I ended up with a lot of noise (probably didn't need it so high for this shot, but I had just finished trying to photo Ava and didn't change it).

Also, I don't know if we are allowed to manipulate these photos in photoshop so I posted both the original as well as the "tweaked".

Original:

1/10  F9.0  ISO1600

Edited:

Levels Adjustment: Shadows 5 Mid-tones 1.30

Curves Adjustment

Brightness +5

Contrast +9

Crop and Watermarked

Shot and Edit: Winter

Okay folks, here is my before (in case you forgot)!

And here is the after...

I started off following Ashley's tutorial but tweaked things a little to fit my photo:

1.Created a duplicate and applied high pass filter 

2.Adjustment Layer: Levels 

Shadows 5

Midtones 1.38

3. I skipped Adjustment Layer: Color Balance

4.Adjustment Layer: Black and White (@9% opacity)

5.Adjustment Layer: Brightness (+11) and Contrast (+25)

6.Ran Florida Action

Here they are side by side for a better look!

Do you think I went to light? I would love to hear what you think!

Art of Composition #2

So the challenge at Psychemage Photography this week is Lines: Forks

I bumped the contrast WAY up on these but I like how they turned out! Although, looking at them now, I wish I had polished them or something :) hehe they are covered in water spots!

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Shoot and Edit-Winter

There is a new challenge beginning this week: Shoot and Edit. You link your SOCC photo up to Jill's blog then later in the week, you edit it and re-post on Ashley's blog. Should be interesting! The first theme is "Winter". Since we just so happened to have a heat wave (low 40s), all of our snow melted! Strange how it just happened to occur when I wanted to snap a few new shots for this challenge. I decided to use this photo of Ava that I took a couple of weeks ago. She is catching snow on her tongue!

Is anyone else having trouble posting linkys lately? For the past few days, I have had the worst time. It just comes up all scrambled instead of with a pic!

Art of Composition #1

So there is a new photo meme that is starting up this week over at Psychemage Photography. This weeks challenge is Rocks. I am excited for this new meme because I love black and white photos!

This is a photo of Ava with her rock collection. That girl loves rocks! I'm not sure if I really aced the concept behind the assignment with this one, but I really like this photo. It will definitely help me to view some other entries!

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December Photo Hunt

This months challenge was a little confusing. It was orginally supposed to be a 10 item challenge but the challenge creator decided to post last Decembers items (for her own personal reasons). This was a list of 20 items of course, so I wasn't sure if we were supposed to complete all of them or just choose 10 from the list. I decided that I would just complete as many as I could and instead of freaking out and trying to capture those 3-4 photos that I always have incomplete at the end of the month, I would just relax and leave them out. 


1.Holiday Lights
Our Christmas lights hanging from the balcony

2.Holiday Spirit
:(

3.Holiday Treats
A yummy treat we got at a Christmas market. It was a chocolate covered apple mouse

4.Ornament
Ava's very first ornament

5.Gift Wrapped Package
:(

6.Window Display

7.Winter/Holiday Icon
Ava and Santa! No lap pics, this was just about as close as she was willing to get to him

8.Tree
At one Christmas market we went to there were these cute little reindeer made out of trees

9.Tradition
Making cookies for Santa

10.Something that says Noel
Some of our Christmas decorations. Can you spot the word "Noel"?

11.Something Precious
We have been potty training (very successfully I might add), and Ava insisted that I move her potty in front of the tree so she could admire it while she went! I thought that was pretty precious

12.Something Peaceful
Naptime!

13.Something Hot
:(

14.Something Cold
Snow, of course

15.Something Red
I am making invitations for Ava's birthday party!

16.Something Green
Play-doh!

17.Motion Blur
Clearly, someone hasn't been told that you shouldn't shake babies!

18.Black and White with Selective Color

19.Infrared
:(

20.Macro