Can't Sleep.... So, I Blog of great things in New York, I Love You.

Dan I just finished the movie "New York, I Love You" I don't think it was nearly as beautiful as the movie they copied, "Paris, Je t'amie."  (I'm pretty sure it was created by the same people, but it didn't have the same feel to it) I love LOVE love that movie and my sister got it for me for my birthday this last year cause she knew of my love of it. I'm sure only one or two people know of my love of films, music and the art that goes into making them and the beauty that can come out of some. I'm talking to you ladies :) I miss every minute of your beautiful faces. .... I think those ladies will know whom i am talking about. I'm not even sure they still read this i hope that they do.....

I digress..

One of the stories, the director was Shekah Kapur and it has Shia Labeouf in it... I know right? Shia Labeouf... i actually like a short story that has him in it... crazy.  It wasn't his "brilliant acting" that blew me away. It was the directors story, his imagery, his composition, his depth of field, the lighting, the coloring, the feel.. everything. It was beautiful! that word doesn't even do it justice. It was brilliant, gorgeous, breathtaking.. i could go on for hours, but i won't. 

Just look at the beauty... I found it on youtube and just screen shot them but you can get the idea of the beauty from them. Watch it on HD TV and you will be blown away. 

 Look at that depth of field. He had to have had his shutter open to the max to get such stunning looks.

This scene, with the mirror, was my favorite shot. This does not even do it justice! 

Look at that beautiful depth of field fall off! It's magnificent. (depth of field is the unfocused areas)

They just moved in and out of the focus area.  He had to have had his aperture locked. I don't know how video film works.

This was a cool shot too, she is in focus and shia sometimes, he just kept moving out of the focus plane.

Love the look

stunning

mmmm... i could eat it.

here is the video i screen shot these from.
It's in two parts





Yes i am a geek

Peace

Virginia at Six Months

I can't believe it's been six months since baby has been born. It's crazy! I know it's been a few days since she's turned 6 months but it's okay, at least i got it up. :)

Things baby can do at six months

She rolls over, one way, all the time and loves to be on her tummy now. Before she hated it. She's been able to roll over since about the time i visited Utah in Aug.
She scoots everywhere and has learned to move about the front room with rolling and scooting
She is just about to crawl. She gets up on her knees all of the time and sways back and forth
A silly thing she does is she gets up on her toes with her butt in the air when she is trying to figure out the mechanics of crawling.
She's also learned to project her self forward from on her hand and knees. She kicks off from her feet flies for about an inch then lands hard on to her stomach.
She sucks her thumb all the time
She sleeps at the drop of a hat. She loves her sleep at can sleep from 8 at night to 8 in the morning most days and loves to sleep on her stomach.
She smiles at everyone! and I mean everyone.
She is starting to reach for me. Yet, i don't think she knows that is what she is doing.
We started her on rice cereal a few weeks ago and she is now liking it. At first she didn't. We want to try and give her some avocado. We would do a banana but it has lots of natural sugar and we know she is going to love it, so we are waiting to introduce her to it.
She love clothes and gets super excited anytime I change her cloths. Like her Halloween costume. I'm not going to tell you what she will be... Grandma Cannon, my mom, bought it for her and we got it on Tuesday in the mail. Just in time for the ward Halloween party. When I opened it up, she smiled so big and kicked those little legs and giggled when she saw that it was for her.
She finally has learned to sit up on her own with out an support. It's so dang cute. This is the most recent things she does.. like Sunday recent. She was always a good supported sitter on the couch or on our laps but now it's great that she can do it by her self in the middle of a room with nothing around her. :)
She sings in the car when we go anywhere.
She talks all the time too and yes, there is a big difference between her singing and talking.
She loves playing with her toys. Grandma Griffin sent her a care package with a yellow lamb in it and when i pulled it out to show her she got so excited. She kicked her little legs, which caused her to fall from all fours to her stomach, giggled, did a few coos, then grabbed the lamb and put it into her mouth. :)
Her favorite toy tho... which is odd, is paper. She loves paper.
She loves to put everything in her mouth, mostly her thumb and her feet. :)
She hates the sun. I mean hates being in it, everything! It's so dang cute and funny.
She loves the song 'Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam' and calms down quite quickly when i sing it to her.
She laughs and giggles to the song, 'If Your Happy and You Know It'
She loves to be thrown in air and played around like that. She will always laugh so hard. :)
She is more curious about objects and will sit and study it in her hands before she attempts to bring it to her mouth.
She's always loved her car seat and driving but now she is turning her head in the car seat so that she can watch us while we are driving. It's a little creepy looking.

There are lots more but i don't feel like boring you anymore then i have.

Over all Virginia is wonderful, healthy and just the best little thing to be around. We love her. :)

An Awesome Find!!

As I was doing some googling this afternoon while baby slept i found this.. Don't know where i found it, who made it or i would give credit where credit is needed.

I love me some 'How I Met Your Mother' and some Barney Stinson for that matter too. 

As in the words of Barney "it's going to be... Legen... wait for it.... Dary!"

I believe this needs to be a "words to live by" side image!

Peace

Thoughts and Things

Many things have been on my mind. Mostly where the heck are we going to be by next year. It's kinda exhilarating and scary not knowing. Dan graduates next May and we know we will not be here in El Paso. Not that i'm not learning to love it here and that I might just miss this place... seeing how it is the first place Dan and I made our life together, our child was born here, family lives here, our ward is the best ward ever!! Seriously my ward rocks and i will argue with you till the sun goes down at how my ward can out do your ward any day. :) Go 5th ward!!! .... the list is pretty short when it comes to El Paso.

Side thought of El Paso... it's getting down right depressing here with our sister cities violence. This last weekend there was a mass murder of teens. 14 deaths... 19 injured and in the hospital.. WOW! You want to know the way that Dan and I found out... On NPR local news and they just mention it as if it's a regular occurrence, cause it is.

Second... photography has been on my mind... as much as i love/hate shooting family, newborn, children and weddings.. i miss doing my fine art. That is really where i want to make my money.. It's hard but so worth it. I have so many fine art ideas floating around in my head that i just don't have the means to do it right now... I will get to do it. I will show my work in a gallery one day. And my fashion photography, that is a whole other story in it's self. I'm so grateful that my designer friend wants to work with me still. Even though i live a few states away. Thank you Beckie!

Third work.. I LOVE my office but there is one lady that is bugging me right now. Hopefully it will pass but for now i am annoyed by her and its not going away.

Fourth my baby. I love my baby so much. This is kinda a silly thought but it's true. I know God loves me cause he sent me Virginia! She is perfect and I know all parents secretly think that their child is better then their friends or relatives, just like their relationship with their husbands....but my baby... she is beautiful and awesome. I love waking up to her smiling little face and giggles. I love hearing her coo and sing. I love being a mom! She definitely is up to standard with my families children... like Audrey, she is crazy but super cute crazy and steph's kids... i love seeing photos of them they are beautiful!! good job randy and steph! and my cousins here in El Paso, Nick and Jenny, their children are to die for!! sweet beautiful and well behaved. I get to shoot their family portrait later today. I am excited about it.

I also felt like a change... to my blog.. if you don't remember what my other blog header looked like here it is..

Then here is my new one.

I like it and for some reason i am way into bird silhouettes... odd right?

My thought right now

Peace

Family Photo Shoot

I have been wanting family photos for months now and then one day last week I told Dan that he better go and get a hair cut before he comes home cause we are going to be doing a family photo session later that day. Being the awesome husband that he is he got one. :) I have been bugging him for a while now. :)

Here are some of my favorite ones.

Here are two of my favorites. If you want to see more go here. It's a little surprise if you go there. :) I've been putting off getting this up and ready for awhile now... like a pregnancy, and a new baby.... and no motivation, which has changed. Hopefully you enjoy it. If you go here you see the whole site.

It was a pretty fun photo shoot. I set up my camera on my awesome tripod that my Dad and Veniece got me for graduation and then had to go back and forth between each shot to set the camera off. I believe I did a pretty good job with the images. I really do need to get a wireless release button. Oh well the images turned out fantastic and now I have two hanging up on our new family photo wall. 

Peace.

Michelle

Fix-It-Friday No. 4

I did it again, I heart faces' Fix-it-Friday. I knew i would be working on the activity this morning because all of our principle architects are out today. HOORAY!! I send everyone to their voice mail and no busy work from them :)

Well lets start the show.....  i know everyone one is seated at the edge of their seats waiting for my wonderful images.... Na I'm just kidding. (I hope you all heard the sarcasm in that sentence) :) I also have a treat for everyone... meaning the three people that read this site... I have not one image to show, you but two. that is right TWO.... woo hoo...

Here is the originial

Here is numero uno..

Work flow

I did almost the same thing i did with my photo fix No 3.

I duplicated the background layer twice

changed one layers blending mode to screen and the other to soft light

 Here is what i added

I used a curves adjustment layer. ( for those of you that don't know... an adjustment layer is the circle at the bottom of your layers palette that is half black and half white.)

and pulled the line, right in the middle up a little to give the straight diagonal line a small curve upwards.

I then created another curves adjustement layer to make the coloring.

I played with the different color channels. Red, Green and Blue

I just took screen shots of what i did instead of telling you. You can go into each channel and duplicate the line.

Red Channel

Green Channel

and Blue channel

Now play with the channels and make it your own.

If you like what you see keep your opacity at 100. I changed my opacity to about 75.

I then, brightened up the eyes with my eye pop effect that i did in my fix it No. 3. This time i duplicated the eye layer twice, so i had two eye layers. I just thought it need more eye pop then what the one layer was giving me.

I then saved the image as a png and psd.

I opened my png

Duplicated the background layer and sharpened the layer by going to filter > sharpen > sharpen.

I thought it was a little harsh so i changed the opacity a little, you decide, then i saved it as a png again.

That's it.

Numero Dos

Work flow

Starting with my psd i just saved.

I trashed my two curves layers then created a hue/saturation adjustment layer and changed the saturation to 0 to make it black and white. This adjustment layer should be your top layer so everything is black and white.

Then i duplicated the top most colored layer and changed it to soft light, (cheat way, ctrl j duplicates the layer).

I then went to filter > other >  high pass.. and made the radius pixels about 30ish... you decide. This makes a good what they call... milk and cookies effect.

I then flattened everything and made another duplicated layer changed it's blending mode to screen and changed the opacity to about 25ish. Only do this if you think it's to dark.

And this is what i got. :)

Oh, and I cropped the image if you can't tell. :)

I hope my workflow helps you and they make sense

Peace :)

Life

We haven't really done anything to exciting for the past week but there were some firsts for us.

Friday was our first real date since baby has been born. We had to premeditated the event, then we needed to ask the grandparents if they were free Friday and if it would be okay if babes could sleepover for the very first time with out mom and dad. We got a reassuring yes... we got dressed up and went to dinner and a movie... Serious and a movie! For anyone who has had small children I now know how hard it is to get these evenings planned... i don't even want to think what it's like with more then one.We actually were kinda forced into doing this date and night off from baby. Next week we are going to UTEP's Dinner Theater and seeing Singing in the Rain. I'm kinda excited about it. Singing in the Rain is one of my all time favorite movies. I could watch it over and over again and never get bored. Dan and I went to Rent last year and had a great time. Since it is a dinner and a show we wont get home till super late and we planned on leaving baby at grandma and grandpa Morgan's to see how well she was going to do when we leave her in November at their place. For our 2 anniversary we are going up to Cloudcroft. A small mountain town about 2 hours away and baby is going to be spending the night with the grandparents so all of these little sleepovers are to prepare her for that. We didn't want to just leave her without having done it before, then if something does happen or she is not okay with it, which my baby is honestly okay with everything, we wouldn't have to drive 2 hours to her aid, just 10 minutes.  So instead of giving her one night to get used to the sleepover we decided we might as well try a few times. That is why we got the date night. :)

We went to Chile's... I know so romantic... but we had a gift card from Dan's birthday and decided to use it. We also never see movies in the theater anymore, usually we only see one if someone else is paying like... we got a gift card or are going with parents etc... It's pricey stuff... and we got a gift card for the B-day boy. Dan got to decided the movie cause it was technically his gift card and because i got one for my birthday back in April and I told Dan. "It's my card, so I get to decide the movie" and i dragged him to How To Train Your Dragon, which was AWESOME!!! It was only fair and he choose... drum roll..... The Social Network. We both had been wanting to see the movie. Almost every online rating site like, meta critic and rotten tomatoes was giving it a 95 plus. Up got a 95 plus on those site and that movie is amazing. Pixar never ever disappoints. I digress, The Social Network was a really a well done movie. I enjoyed it and so did Dan. If you want a good movie go and see it.

The next morning baby graced us with her presence at about 7:30 in the morning. Grandma and Grandpa Morgan had to be somewhere early. She was so super cute when we got her into our bed. I love my baby and I did miss her for the night but not enough to be depressed about it. Dan and I loved having the night off. We love our baby but it was nice to have just a minute or two of just us. :)

We also Tivo SNL. The Host was Jane Lynch from Glee. She was quite good. We Tivo SNL cause some/most of the time the skit are super lame and we just don't laugh at them but there are those rare ones that make us just crack up laughing.. and this was one of them.

If you don't already know Dan and I LOVE us some football, more Dan then me, so we watch almost everyone Sunday. And the 49ers are Dan's teams, so this was even funnier. Enjoy

Here is Faith Hills 

Here is Jane Lynch's Version

Sorry that the hulu version has a commercial before it. It was the only version i could find of it to embed.

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 3

Today I find myself doing the photo Fix it hosted by I Heart Faces, again. Work was so busy all week long but Friday comes and it's dead....sometimes i hate it while other times i love it. I don't mind it's, super fun and I love photoshop and putting my little twist of creativity into it.

Today i decided to keep it simple. The image was simple and adorable. Why make it complicated.

Here is the orginal.

Here is mine.

My work flow was super easy too. I recently started playing with these settings and I've come to love it.

First, I duplicated the background layer and switched the blending mode to softlight, which adds some nice contrast with out going over board. 

Second, I Duplicated the new layer and switched the blending mode to screen. 

I still didn't like how the image looked so i duplicated the screen layer and  made the opacity on it about 30% So now I have two screen layers.

Third, It was a little blue for my liking, so i added a solid color adjustment layer. The color is a soft orange yellow. Then changed the blending mode to overlay and changed the opacity to 25%
.

Fourth, I wanted to make the eyes pop. I've read some articles about how to do it and have done them, but i never fully LOVED the way they looked. Then i decided to sit down and discover my own way of making the eyes pop. 

Here is how i made these eyes pop and use for almost all my eye poppingness.

I copy only the iris on both eyes on my background layer. The iris should now be on it's own layer just above the background layer so it gets all the pretty things i did to the image too.

There are several ways to do this. Quick Mask mode, Lasso tool... etc. 

Then i change the blending mode to Color Dodge. I sometimes change the opacity if i feel the eyes are a little intense. But that is all. Super easy right? Way better then some tutorials i have read. It take like five minutes to do their tutorials while my in like 30 seconds.

Anyways that is my work flow for this image.

Peace.