Week Eight - Silhouettes - Brothers

The theme this week was silhouette, here are my two sons looking at each other through a magnifying glass. I just loved the moment captured and how you can see the smiles on their faces.

 And here is the colour version, I think I much prefer the black and white.

Week Three - Childhood Memories

This weeks 52 Week Photo Challenge subject was Childhood Memories. It's funny the little things we keep as objects from our childhood and the memories we keep and those traditions of childhood that we pass on to our own kids.

Last year I did the 365 Project, for those that don't know this is where you take a photo a day for a whole year. It might not sound that hard but boy it is, it's challenging, very very very challengin and some days when you are rushed off your feet it's hard to find that time to get that shot and it's so easy to just think; "No more, I give up!". But I didn't, I perserveered and I completed it. And I'm proud. Very proud.

It's been nicknamed The Year I drove The Family Mad, but I hope (and I sort of know) that in a way it's looked upon with a smile and with fondness and I know already that Callum loves the memories of it all, heck he even told me this morning how he missed the project. At the end of the Project I made a little video up of all the shots I got of the boys throughout the year. One day I will get round to getting it put on disc and printing up the photos for them and I hope in years to come they will look at it as childhood memories. Anyway enough about that, that was last year and this is this year and a new project and new photos and new memories!!!

I had (and hopefully will be able to get the photos) so many ideas of what to photograph. I won't mention them at the moment with the hope I'll be able to update this with them in and what they mean to me.

I do however have this shot:

It's of my youngest son, Riley, and his greatest love... CARS!!!! What is it with boys and cars? I bet every grown man can still remember and has plenty of stories to tell about when they were younger and their favourite toy car or train or aeroplane. And I'm sure my boys will be the same. Callum can still remember the day we brought down his big bucket of cars and tipped them out and sorted them into colours and counted them.

What 326 cars look like

He still asks if we can do it again and we have done so but with a two year old now here it isn't so easy. But Callum still talks fondly of that day. And I'm sure there will be a day when I'll do the same thing with Riley, heck as I'm typing this I'm playing cars and aeroplanes with him.

As mentioned I do have other ideas for photos and I'll see if I can get around to taking them but with this week being busy with the last week of school and more important this weekend being Callum's Birthday I've had a lot going on.

Another Childhood Memory... Action Figures!

Click

Sometimes I edit a photo and the next day I forgot what exactly I did editing wise. In most cases I do keep the PSD file as well as a jpeg but this is fast filling up my external harddrive. So I'm going to try and make a note of what editing I did as a reference and so I don't always have to keep the PSD file as well as the original RAW file and the JPEG. So to start off here are some photos I took yesterday of my youngest son Riley out in the garden enjoying the much needed sunshine. Riley has lately become a little attached to my little point and shoot Nikon camera and yesterday while out in the garden he wanted to take a few shots, so it was only natural that I take some of him taking shots of what he wanted. 

Here are the photos unedited:

Nothing (imo) much wrong with the photos I just wanted a little touch up though.


Here is the first one edited:

And here is what I did, the layers run from bottom to top like this:

• Background (no editing done on this layer)

• Ctrl J to duplicate background (you don't have to do this but I like a back up duplicate incase little fingers decide to go editing without me knowing, when you have finished and are happy you are more than welcome to delete this layer or just keep it in)

• Photo Filter (Warming Filter 81) 50% Density, preserve luminosity, 75% opacity

• Colour Fill - colour blue (1a2274), Exclusion blending mode, Opacity to taste but in this case I used 75%

• Ctrl J on original background layer and move to top, 33% but this is down to taste and then you can use this layer for any dodging, burning, sponge to taste.

• Levels Adjustment Layer From right to left 23 - 1.14 - 229 and for  Output 19-255

• I then saved the PSE 10 document and online opened up the JPEG version in the website picmonkey where I used the Burst (vibrant) icon on 14% to add just a little vibrancy to the shot. Then saved at the largest size I could.

 And here is the second photo edited:

It is edited identically to the first apart from the Colour Fill layer where it is 52% opacity.

And that is it, nothing major but to me makes the photos more to my liking.

Sunglasses Smiles

The other week while out shopping I picked up this fab pair of sunglasses (at a bargain price of £1). Not long after coming home I found my youngest son Riley sitting on a chair in our dining room watching his tv shows wearing them happy as larry. Luckily the camera was in the same room and I managed to snap off a couple shots of him in them. I just love the absolutely cheeky cuteness of him here. Also I bought myself a hat which he then saw and pointed to and said photo, who can resist a request like that:

A Sprinkling of Sunshine

As already mentioned in a previous post (http://snwhitephotography.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/lashings-of-lashes.html) I am taking part in an online photoraphy course. For Module 2 we were set the task to take a Head and Shoulders Portrait photo with the suggestion of it being outside and in the shade. Here is my entry. I need to give a big thumbs up to my eldest son Callum who even though we were having a heatwave braved the very cold water of the hose for this shot. More photos can be viewed here.