Baby Photo Session

Here are a few images I shot yesterday while Virginia was playing.  I forgot how much I love taking images. I needed a break for a while and my LOVE, which i always had, needed to be rekindled all over again, and it has. Then i decided to play around with different image layouts. I think i did a pretty good job.

It was her nap time but i just love her face when she cries i had to take a few shots. It seriously is music to my ears to hear her cry. 

I love her concentration trying to grasp the blanket.

Peace and Enjoy

Babies Blessing

Last weekend, Sept 19th we blessed little virginia. It was really fun to have my family come out and support us. My Dad, Veniece, my sister Jenny, her husband and son Gavin and my little sister Sammy all came out. We had a very full house during those two days. Thank you guys for coming to the armpit of america that is El Paso. :)

Dan did a beautiful job. I of course cried the whole time and Virginia was being as cute as she always is.

My mom couldn't come, as well as my other two sisters, Katherine and Elizabeth. I was a little sad but i totally understood. So family quit with the apologizing. :) love you guys.

My mom also got Virginia her blessing dress. It was beautiful and everyone loved it. Seriously i had almost everyone in my ward come up and ask where i had gotten the dress cause it was amazing.

Here are a few images from the weekend.

Here's Dad holding babes. 

She really does love to suck that thumb... I'm thinking it might be a problem...

Family photo op... while the wind was at it's craziest.

There was so much dress she barely fit in to her car seat.

She really loved being in that dress. The previous picture makes her looked upset to be in it but she was just super tried. She just smiled and giggled the whole time in it.

Here is the detail on the dress. It is really beautiful. 

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 2

Again, I had some time on my hands at work and decided to participate again in I Heart Faces', Friday Photo Fix.

Today's was a little simpler then last times. They just asked us to have fun and show of our talent in photoshop.

Here is the original

Here is what i did.

My workflow

first i cropped the images to my likeing
i decided to do a square image
i then duplicated the background layer

changed that layer blending mode from normal to screen 

added some brightness and contrast to define and darken the outlines a little with an adjustment layer

adjusted my curves in an adjustment layer, but only the blue setting to get the coloring

merged my background and duplicated layer
sharpened the layer three time with sharpen more

duplicated that layer

finally added a Gaussian Blur to the new duplicated layer on the top and bottom of the image

then erased the blur to my liking

Hope you understood my workflow

Peace

Virginia At 5 Months

Being a photographer and taking millions of pictures and having more then a few photo session under my belt, there are times when i LOVE the images I created or I'm not so in love with them.

These images are in the category of LOVE!!!

I love these four. It's her smile progression 

This is my favorite one

She just found her biggie toe to suck on and that profile is beautiful. Look at those cheeks. I wanna pinch them.

This is her telling me she was done. She was blowing some razzes and talking to let me know. 

I gave her a toy to play with and she looks so stinking cute and that look says "I'm going to rule this toy!!".

Happy 5 Months babes!!!

Peace

What A Busy Day Today

Oh goodness, this day is going to be..... fun, long, entertaining and I might even shed a tear before the night is over...

Why you ask?

One: Today is Dan's 29th B-day if you have not wished him a happy birthday do so NOW, I'll wait for you to do so.... did you do it? Thank You.

Two: Grey's Anatomy starts up today!!! I have waited 4 glorious and long months for it to start back up. It is my guilty pleasure.

Three: My little girl is 5 months today!!!! What?!? Where is the time going! I can't believe it's been almost a half a year since she was born. I will be doing a little photo session with her today. I haven't for a while. To much going on to sit down and plan one. I have taking out my little point and shoot every two secs but that is not the same to me quality wise.

(Not really on my list of my day but) Four: i got as a email from a co-worker.. super dang cut. Watch it, it's like a minute long. 

" Help me not to chase the neighbors cat" So dang cute.. Enjoy

Peace

Boss's Humor

I'm back to work, as most of you know. Working part time in the mornings. It's nice to be back with my co-workers. They are super awesome and I missed them during my time off. My supervisor, Susan,... by the name you can tell she is female... We sometimes like to chat it up a bit if it's not to busy. Well Tommy, the owner of the company I work for decided to send us this email this morning...

Tommy thinks he soooooooo *rolling eyes funny..... It's is a clever cartoon.

Peace

I Need A New Book

I just finished this series,

and I am still not sure how i feel about the ending... with out giving to much detail.. I enjoyed it but think i need to reread it.

Any who I need a new series, book,.... anything.... Suggestions?

Fix-It-Friday

There is this website that i occasionally go onto and look around.. being into photography and all.... It's called I Heart Faces and they have weekly challenges with photo assignments to do, they teach mom's and photoshop enthusiasts, how to do photoshop in really super helpful ways if you've never stepped foot into photoshop, which is super confusing.... blah blah blah... I digress, every Friday they have Fix-It-Friday were they give their readers an opportunity to show off their photoshop skills... which is super cool too. 

Being bored, just a little, at work this morning i decided to participate. This is the first time that i have.

I don't have Mr Awesome CS photoshop on my office computer. i do have it at home. I have the cheapest one that you can get. Photoshop 7. It's not even elements which lets you play around lots more then photoshop 7. Any who here is the original.

What they wanted people to do, was to make the sky blue...

here is mine....

There are some flaws to mine. 1st when i zoomed up really close to the face it went super pixelated and could not make the blue around the face area right with the limited elements i have at my work computer. There are some others that bug me but again i work with a terrible photoshop. 

My work flow process

Made a blank layer to work on

Duplicated the blue reflecting off the car and made a gradient layer on the blank layer.

Changed the layer option from Normal to Overlay

Erased everything on top of the car, boy and landscape.

Burned the sky a little to give some depth

Played with curves to get the cross processed look

Then tweaked some hue saturation and contrast to make it pop just a little more.

I think i did pretty well.

Peace

A Plethora of Photos of Babes

This is little miss Virginia during church last week. She was being so stinking cute i needed to snap some images. I'm sure Bro Condie, Sunday School Teacher, was not to pleased with the photo session during class.

She always falls asleep during church and the best and fastest way for her is to suck her thumb. This is her completely passed out. I love how the thumb is just barely hanging on.

This is how I usually discover babes during her afternoon naps. Here's babes at Grandma Morgan's the week before we moved into our new apartment. ( pics of our apartment are coming, i'm just lazy about getting it ready) 

My baby also gets crazy hair. Her hair is so thin that i had to take this in the sunlight or you would have not been able to tell. Her hair looks like this most of the time. I brush it, wet it but it still does what is wants. I love it.

She loves to give this face. It so super cute. She usually does it when she is concentration on something. She was trying to get the camera. 

Here is babes during her first BYU game. She slept for most of it. Then when she did wake she was very content on just sitting in my lap and watching the game on the giant projector Sally and Robert have at their place.

This is baby during Labor Day. We went over to Sally and Roberts for some food and spent time with the family. Family what picture does this remind you of??? 

Little Miss Audrey in Italy 3 1/2 years ago. No it's not the same hat. 

This is babes on Friday. She didn't want to go down for her nap in her crib. She was so super fussy and would only cry when she got in the crib. I let her cry for awhile but she would not go to sleep so i picked her up and placed her by me on the couch. She fell asleep almost instantly. She just wanted to be by Mom. :) I love my baby.

Here's an image I snapped of her during the nap.

All in all, Dan and I love being parents. We love our happy, giggly, smiling baby girl. We love our new apartment and i am excited that i am back to work. Just part time in the morning. It's nice to have some adult conversations. 

Peace

I Think I Have A Small Prejudice.... Seriously

When I was up in Utah this last time, I noticed that people are getting new license plate up there. Any time a stupid driver would do something up in utah, usually i was not in the car by myself either, I'd always yell..... Damn Mexican.... Why you may ask?

Look at how similar these plates are....

New Utah License Plate

Mexico License Plate

You'd do it too. Elizabeth and my Mom can testify, they, people from Mexico, don't know our rules and make things up as they go. Seriously.


Peace