MomShots

The MomShot Tip of the Week is that June 18th is the World Wide Photowalk presented by Scott Kelby. If my extremely pregnant sister is not having her baby at that time I am planning on participating in down town Provo, UT.

The Provo photowalking group’s information can be found here if you are local and interested in joining. The Photowalking Utah group’s information can be found here if you are up in the Salt Lake area. If you are interested in participating you can find a state by state list of all groups that are participating here.

It is going to be so much fun and a great opportunity to meet new people who have similar interests and find new inspiration. Point and Shooters are welcome too. It isn’t just an SLR-Snobbery meeting. It’s for everyone!

Check out our most recent Tip of the Week for a really fun Neon effect.

Thanks Tye!!!

Here’s my personal Neon Graffiti for the night. It was fun to play around with the settings and see how things interact. Photoshop is such a fun program!

The new Tip of the Week is up. Please look it over and reply. Tye wants to customize her Tips for you and this is your chance to make that happen. I know how much you all love the Tips. Please reply so she can make them even more awesome!!!

On a similar note, I found out that if you are currently running Photoshop Elements you can upgrade to their new full blown Photoshop CS4 for the incredible price of only $299. That’s a SCREAMING deal!!! If you are interested in this just click here.

I know many of you have mentioned interest in upgrading. If you can budget that price in you will not be disappointed by how awesome CS4 is!

Tye has brought us another Tip for this week.  It’s a really fun one.  She talks about Line Art and how you can incorporate it into your post-processing and scrapbook pages.  It can be a really fun way to add another level of personal touch or just make your photo look like the most awesome thing to hit the Internet.  Either way, it’s a great thing to learn.  

Enjoy!  I did.

First off… Thanks for all your comments and love with the guest post.  I had a lot of fun writing it and it was really fun to read your comments and support.  You are all a great group of people!

So onto the meat of this post!  Our Tip of the Week is back!!!  I know you have been excitedly waiting patiently.  Your patience has paid off today!  So check out this page and remember to Keep It Simple Silly!

If you are new to MomShots don’t forget to stop by the parent Tip of the Week page and brush up on past topics.  Tye’s written a lot of fantastic advice for Photoshop Elements, CS and design in general.  She is a fantastic resource for us all!!!

In case you were wondering, this picture is pretty much only here because I like it and I like the majority of my posts to have at least one photo in them.  That doesn’t always happen but today it did!!!  Red Cowboy Hat Ulysses for you viewing.  I was playing with Pioneer Woman’s actions.  I used three of her actions.  That’s still keeping it simple isn’t it???  :)  

Enjoy the newest Tip and keep those cameras ready!

*Edit*

Thanks to Melinda for showing me to the I heart faces site.  I’ve entered this shot into their current contest.

Wasn’t that a cool post by Anne?!?  I had so much fun reading it and thinking about the ones that aren’t going to make it into the final running of my Christmas cards and photos.  Please share your Christmas or Holiday ideas with us.  Leave a comment and let us know what ideas you are pursueing, leave a link, whatever you feel comfortable with but please share.  

I, personally, am in much need of inspiration lately.  I have been going a million miles a minute for the past few weeks and not getting enough sleep.  Consequently my creative wells are feeling a bit low.  I enjoyed looking at the links Anne shared so much.  I hope to see what you are doing this year as well.

This leads me into our AWESOME Tip of the Week - I is for Inspiration.  I was so thrilled to read Tye’s latest creation that I could hardly contain myself.  What a great Tip!!!!  Like I said above, I have been feeling a bit brain dead lately and so these ideas and thoughts about Inspiration are like a breath of fresh air.  I really am looking forward to checking out the links that Tye provided and coming up with some new ideas too! 

And finally, because Momshots is all about photographing our children, I have to share with you just how sweet my 4 year old is.  He is learning to read and write and this morning he wrote this special birthday note to me:

If you can’t read it, it says, “I love (heart) mom”  He’s such a sweetie!

Before I go, I just want to beg you to share your Christmas ideas with us.  Spread the inspiration around and we can all benefit.

Last night I was so inspired I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed trying to will myself to sleep while my uncooperative brain kept running around like an over active 4 year old.

Earlier that evening I spent some time cruising the Internet. I was looking at galleries and portfolios of professional photographers. I was specifically looking at baby and maternity shots with some older children thrown in just for good measure.

You see, we are going to visit our family in Southern California for Thanksgiving and we have recently had a new member addition and another to be born in early 2009. I really want to try my hand at both photographing babies and pregos. I was looking at all these sites to get ideas of shots I could emulate and props I could use. I am hoping that I can produce something that looks halfway professional.

I’m planning on bringing both the D100 and the D40x. I decided on using the D100 with the 50mm lens because then I can use the auto focus feature. My eyes play tricks on me and when I think it is in focus it isn’t. Then I also plan on using the D40x with the kit 18-55mm lens so I can utilize the zooming features. Plus that lens will auto focus with that camera. I was thinking that I had better be using auto focus because I don’t want to have to reshoot the same shot over and over and over and over and over again while I’m trying to find my focus. Anyway… just some thoughts about that.

So the new baby is a girl, which is totally fun for me. I’m the mom of three boys so I don’t get a lot of sugar and spice photos. I get a lot more frogs and puppy dog tails kind of photos. That’s kind of where my mind is most often so it is really fun to think outside of my self-imposed box. So I’ve got a piece of pink textured faux fur, a hunk of black fleece and a cream colored sheep skin in my mental prop arsenal so far. I’ve also got a basket. So those are a few of the things I’m thinking about bringing with me… I am sure her mom (on the left) will want some pictures taken with this tutu wearing sock monkey (made by her sister on the right) as well…

Suggestions for props or sites to be inspired from are MOST welcome!

Well, back to our regularly scheduled Tip of the Week. We’ve got a great Tip for you today and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Tye really makes a good point, but I won’t spoil it for you. Read it for yourself and give it some thought.

I hope you have a great day. I’m having a lot of thoughts running through my head that I want to share with you but I think I’d better save those for another day. I’ll leave you with a Momshot I took of Gar last Friday. We went up to a ranger station and got a tag for a Christmas tree - this is a ticket that lets you go out into the National Forest and cut down your own tree. We went for a walk in the snow and I took a few shots of the kiddos.

Really I have no idea how to spell that word.  It is “two” and “for” shoved together.  Hopefully you’ll read it and understand.  Basically, this week’s Tip of the Week is a double whammy.  Tye wrote us up two tips for the price of one!  They are both awesome tips and I’m super excited to put my kids to bed and play around with Photoshop tonight (only 8 more hours to go; I don’t think putting them to bed at noon would really fly that well…).  I want to try out both of these processes very much.

I realized the other day that I really need to learn Photoshop much better.  I am just limping along using my actions and a few things I know (that I have learned from Tye’s Tip of the Week tutorials) but I have a long way to go.  I see so many photographers and I often think that their post processing skills are what makes them great.  There is usually a little more to it than that, but I think if I had better post processing skills my photos would look a bit more professional.  So I need to practice that.  Just like I am practicing my photography skills, I need to focus on post processing as well.

So I will.  Practice that is.  Tonight after I put the kids in bed, I will try to get some practice in on these two Tips.  I’m excited!!!

So… you read the post where I got a new camera?  I still am limping along.  I have really been struggling to find time to read the manual.  I took it with me to the gym yesterday and read it while I was on the stationary bike, but this morning I decided to sleep in instead.  Tomorrow!

I guess I have the Auto mode fully figured out.  And the preset modes aren’t that hard to understand either.  I am just having a hard time figuring out how to use the manual modes.  I mean, I can’t figure out how to adjust the aperture.  Strange.  It’s a pretty automated camera and that’s cool.  It’s kind of a cross between automated and manual.  I just haven’t figured out how to use the manual yet.  I will.

More practice.  And reading.  And then practice.

I thought my learning curve would be a little less steep.  I thought I’d pick it up and be as comfortable with it as I was on my old Nikon D100.  I know I will in a week or two but it’s just taking more time than I thought it would.  Plus, I have felt really busy and haven’t actually been able to set time aside for playing with it.  I grab it when I’m cooking dinner or when I am waiting for something.  I haven’t really given it my full attention.

Ok, I should sign off.  Mag just unrolled a full roll of paper towels and is playing in it.  He’s wrapping paper towels around himself like a cute little mummy baby.  Insert imaginary picture here -> <- 

On last thing…  Don’t forget to think about what you would like to learn to be able to scrapbook your photos.  We got some great ideas yesterday but would love some more.  Let us know what is on your mind.