MomShots

An alternate title could be The Magic of Photoshop in Skilled Hands.

Remember this photo that we talked about a while ago?

Before:

After:

Magic? Yes!

My dear friend, Tye offered to fix the background for me. She used her White Photoshop Magic and made the background look so much better. She got rid of the car and now it looks like a photo I would like to print out and give to my sister in law as a gift.

Now my stance on photography is that we need to do as much “in camera” as possible. We need to try not to make mistakes like this that need to be fixed in Photoshop. But when we do make those mistakes, sometimes they can be repaired with a little help from Photoshop (and awesome friends who can make the fixes look amazing).

I wasn’t busy enough… (sarcasm is oozing between these letters)

so I challenged myself to create a set of postcards.

I was trying to keep them within a self imposed range of non-personalness (yes, that is a made up word). I don’t usually take photos of object, mostly children, so this was a fun foray into another field of interest for me.

Shutter Sisters had a pen pal challenge a while back. You signed up and they paired you with another reader and then we would send snail mail to each other. I jumped at the chance to meet someone new and to send/receive snail mail. I love mail. Finding mail in my mailbox is just so fun. Especially when it is not a bill!!!

So with the pen pal project as my inspiration, I decided to make these postcards and then either send them to my new pen pal and/or to send them to people I actually know, kind of as a surprise.

I printed these through moo.com. I was really pleased with how fun and easy the whole process was. I made each image in Photoshop and then uploaded them. Then I received them about a week later in the mail. The quality was great. I will definitely order from them again!

Did this just turn into an add for moo.com? Unintentionally.

Just a fun thing you can do with your photos. You can use them for all sorts of things; invitations for parties, thank you notes or a fun surprise in the mail for your mom or a friend from high school. Your imagination is your limit!

They aren’t called Fan Pages anymore are they?

Well whatever they are called, I would love it if you would click on the “Like” button and become a fan of MomShots.

Maybe one day soon I’ll even post a new, exciting and informative blog post.

Maybe, if you’re lucky.

hehehe…

If you see this post today, I would like to encourage you to click on this link and head over to JPG Magazine and vote for one of our favorite DadShot contributors, Shaun Nelson. He has a great photo of his son in his luchador costume that is perfect for the current theme of Heroes.

I voted.

I hope you will too.

Because it is an awesome DadShot.

I am comfortable with my actions. I am comfortable with the mid-levels of PhotoShop that I know. I have learned so much since I started using the program and am MUCH more comfortable with it than I first was. I’m not totally intimidated by it anymore. I can let myself experiment and try new things.

But I am comfortable in the little rut I have gotten into.

Curves are an important and useful tool in regulating how your image looks. I have never really played with them. I didn’t really “get” it. I still don’t totally “get” it, but I am now inspired and excited to learn and eventually fully “get” it.

I found a great post by Mommy’s Camera in my RSS feed this morning about using curves. I tried it out and it turns out I’m not totally scared of them.

Yay me!

If you are like me and would like to understand Curves a bit better, check out her post and then pick a photo and go experiment.

This may not be the best example but it is one of the best ones from a little photo shoot yesterday. Here is a picture of Eva Marie (and the back of her adorable cousin Miles’ head, who happened to be born on the very same day!!!). It was a bit dark and I used curves to lighten it up. Ok, so it’s not a good example at all because I hardly did anything. I don’t even know if you’ll see the difference.

Original:

Curves adjusted to make slightly lighter and brighter.

Well, that’s all I’ve got today. Go check out the post on Mommy’s Camera about curves. She has a some great examples and gives some really great advice and thoughts about using curves. I really enjoyed it.

Posting may be sporadic for the next few weeks. I hope you can forgive me. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with some helpful tips for newborn photography. You can bet I’ll be taking a whole lot of pictures!

My very talented friend, Luann Hawker of Whole Grain Photography did a maternity shoot of me last week. It was really fun and kind of super strange to be on the opposite side of the camera.

I am really glad that I took the chance to do it. Since this is supposed to be my last pregnancy, I now have some great documentation of the experience. Plus, I got to ask any strobist questions that I could think of and see how Luann set up her off camera flashes - something I have zero experience in. It was a really fun day and I now have some great shots to remember this time in my life by.

Thanks so much, Lu!!! I love them!

Here are a few of my favorites:

I think the moral of the story is that if you are pregnant, it is very nice to document this seemingly endless, yet in reality, very short period of your life. It goes fast. Plus, it is so important to have photos of yourself included in your family collection. My family photograph collection is severely lacking in photos of our “momtographer”. Here’s a little effort to remedy that.

Do you get the Photojojo email newsletter? I’ve talked about it in the past. Some days I skim over it and delete, other days my imagination is captured. Today was one of those imagination capturing days. Not in an “I’ve got to make that” kind of way like it usually is, but in an “I like looking at pictures of people” kind of way.

The photographer Simon Høgsberg was featured in today’s newsletter. He made a GIANT photo using pictures he took over a period of 20 days. You can see it here. I think it is pretty fun and interesting.

Now I want to grab my camera and take random pictures of strangers.

Or create a project I can be obsessed with and excited about for more than a few days.

Does that sound creepy?

Tomorrow is Photo Camp Utah 2010 and I could not be more excited. It’s going to be so much fun. I know I am going to leave so inspired and excited. I am going to learn some really great things and hopefully make some new friends.

The tickets sold out fast and so there were a lot of people that didn’t get a chance to get one. They only had 300 spaces and those were gone in one day. Who knew that year #2 would be such a hit?!? Pretty exciting, if you ask me!

So if you were one of the people who were not able to get a ticket, put away your sadness! You will be able to watch live streams of some of the classes on the internet. Ustream.com will be broadcasting the event, thanks to photographer Shane Dansie (follow him on Twitter @NikonRookie).

You can either click on this Ustream.com link or go to Ustream.com and search for #PCU2010. Both ways should work.

Obligatory MomShot:

We went to the park yesterday. I took my camera but didn’t end up with very many “good” shots. I do like this one though. I am thinking I may have over processed this one but I’m not sure. I have a hard time telling. Oh well. I’ll figure it out one of these days and when I do, I’ll write up a post about it.

Note from Jessica: I’m super excited about this guest post. Kim, from our post on Friday, is going to share with us information about her 2009 journey of documenting her families adventures. I was really inspired by this, I hope you will be too. Plus, I’m also excited to use these great coupons and add to my digital scrapbooking folder!

Hello Momshots readers! You may be wondering what a girl whose camera is too big for her britches is doing writing up a Momshots post. That’s right. I have a more than awesome Nikon D40 and I still use automatic settings and only dabble with manual. I’m overwhelmed. But that camera, ooooooo how I love that camera. And I WILL learn how to use manual settings!!! And being a Momshots reader myself, I’m learning more and more all the time.

My photography story begins in the middle of January last year. My partner in crime, Glenda, and I decided to partake in the Project 365 hype that was going down. We started a little late, but technically, my adventure is from 2009. And here’s where I give you Momshots readers some ideas…what do we do with our photos once we’ve taken them? Most everyone I know these days has a digital camera, and because of this, all of our awesome shots are stuck on our computers. This is one of the reasons that I started digital scrapbooking. Momshots’ very own Tye offered a class at the local community college and after taking that, I was hooked.

So I started taking at least one picture every day. But what do I do with all 365? I decided that since scrapping was my ‘thing’, 52 layouts to showcase my photos was the way to go. “Seven pictures on one page?” you ask. That’s right. But, I had help. A lot of digital scrapbook designers specialize in templates. Some of my favorite templates were from Sweet Tomato Designs, but there are a ton of options out there. And kits to make each page unique, they’re out there too. Some of my favorite designers are from Stuff to Scrap. Most designers sell their kits, but on occasion will offer freebie add-ons or even full kits for free!

Some examples of my adventure (click on them if you want to see them a bit larger):

Week 9 Credits: My Kind of Rocket collab. from Digital Candy and Template by Yin Designs

And just for being Momshots readers, Digi-Designs by Nicole, Nibbles Skribbles, and Flower Scraps are offering coupons to their stores!!

Well, Momshots readers, I hope I have inspired you at least a little to get out there and scrap those pictures sitting in a file on your computer. As for me, I’m off to reread Jessica’s post here and take some more pictures!!

If you’re interested in seeing some more examples of my work, you can check out my gallery here and check out my blog where I will on occasion let you know where to snag some super scrapping freebies!!!