Ode to My Husband

I love taking road trips with my husband. I learn so many things about him...

...including the fact that we already own a Nikon 50mm 1.8, which he neglected to tell me despite reading my posts about wanting one so badly. Isn't he a peach?

No, but seriously, I had a great time on our way across the state. The first half of the 6 hour drive was taken up with nothing but photography talk, mostly me picking his professional photographer brain. And then to top it all off, he "suffered" through a musical with me last night, with no complaints. Gotta love that man.

Ode To Flickr

I resisted, I really did. I was loyal to Picasa for as long as I could be...until I became more serious about taking photos and posting them so they looked good. Once I started wanting to leave my edited photos at their original size for printing purposes, rather than editing them down to web size, I realized I was going to need a better photo storage site.

So I broke down, turned my back on Picasa (I'm super loyal to Google programs, that was difficult), signed up for Flickr after reading blogs of several other photographers who used that site, uploaded my first photo....

...and fell in love. Oh my stinking heck! Did you know that you can, with the click of a button, choose which size you want your photo to upload as, without it changing your original photo? With Picasa, if you changed your photo size, it's changed it permanently. Or if you click on the "more properties" link, it brings up every single piece of information you could possibly want on your photo? Date and time taken, date uploaded, camera type, focal length, shutter speed, image size, photo dimensions...the list goes on and on. I'm sure there are more great features, but those are the two big ones that have stood out to me since I signed up last night.

Don't get me wrong, Picasa is still a good site. But I've noticed the difference; Picasa is great for those who just want to put together albums to share with family and friends, while Flickr was made with serious photographers in mind as a place to store art. Love it.

Donations Welcome

Anyone feel like donating around $100 so I can get me that purty AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens I'm droolin' over?

Ha ha ha.

No...really.




Now you're wondering if I'm being serious, aren't you?

Fun With a Horse Trailer

Our neighbors next door, the ones with the burned down house that has been sitting like that since before the boys were born and gives off an awful armpit smell, have an old rusted horse trailer sitting next to our garage...perfect photo fodder. It was also almost the perfect lighting outside for taking photos, overcast and just after sunrise, so no harsh shadows...although I do like me some shadows sometimes. I also got up close and personal with our garage door, which has paint peeling like crazy, as I wanted to play some more with depth of field.

After I was finished taking the photos and had thawed my hands out (it was only 30 degrees outside), Carly gave me some helpful hints on subtle (or not so subtle, depending on your preference that day) editing techniques. Here are the results:

Bricks in the alleyway next to our house. Made black & white with gradient map, then adjusted the blacks and whites with a level adjustement layer. Tied with the third photo for my fave.

Garage door, up close and personal.

Chains and a leaf on the horse trailer. Used both a curve adjustment layer and a levels adjustment layer to adjust the colors.


A small chain hanging from the side of the trailer. Not my fave, as the focus isn't exactly where I wanted it, but I still like it.

More Oregon Trail

Here's a couple more photos of my fun morning up at the Interpretive Center.

The older wagon with the Elkhorns in the background. "Lovely & Ethereal" action.

A fence line on the way down to the ruts. I did quite a bit of tweaking, just playing.

My trusty dog, Bandit. It took forever to get him to hold still long enough to snap a decent photo.

I'm sure I'll add more photos later, but I've found that I honestly have to walk away from photos I've taken for a day or so before I'm able to pick out ones that I actually like, ones that I can fall in love with after editing. I had so much fun getting more practice on adjusting shutter speed and aperture, and it's so encouraging to realize that yes, I CAN take decent photos in manual mode as long as I trust myself and push myself to get better with every photo. Shooting in manual doesn't leave room for casually snapping pictures, you have to think about how your depth of field and exposure are going to be effected, and how zooming in or out is going to change your settings, along with a host of other things. I love it. It gives my photography experience a depth I've never experienced before.

Photo Perfect Morning

This morning, when I got off work at 7 am and walked outside, I encountered a perfect morning. The sun was just beginning to rise above the Eagle Mountains and the sky was a flawless blue. So, needless to say, I raced home, grabbed my camera and my dog, and headed up to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center above our valley. The Oregon Trail runs right through the hills outside of my home town, and the interpretive center is on a hill that affords a wonderful view of the mountains above and valley below. Not to mention that there are photo ops everywhere you look. And Bandit, our Springer Spaniel, had a complete hay day...I don't think he stopped moving the entire two hours we were up there.

I walked 1.4 miles almost all the way down to the wagon ruts and back, but it wasn't until I got almost to the bottom that I realized that the white balance on my camera was set to indoor lighting...which would be why the first half of all of my photos had a blue tint to them. Not cool. Thankfully, I was able to replicate most, if not all, of the photos on the way back up the hill. Granted, the lighting wasn't quite as good was it was an hour before, but I lived. And I won't be making that mistake again.

Here's just a couple of the 113 photos I took up there. I did do some actions on them, mostly things like PW's "Boost" and "Fresh & Colorful", but there are a couple of stylized edits.

One of the wagons with "Fresh & Colorful" and "Boost". Love the colors!

The Elkhorn Mountains to the west of our hometown.

One of the wagons with the Elkhorns in the background. Tiiiiiny aperture for large depth of field, PW's "Heartland" and "Boost".

A box on the side of the wagon in the photo above. With "SuperFunHappy" action. Yum

A very yellow wagon wheel with some color tweaking to really bring out the yellow.

Needless to say, I had an absolute blast and I would love to do it again sometime when the temp is higher than 40 degrees, the wind is blowing less than 10 mph, and I can get out there as the sun is coming up to catch the pink on the Elkhorns. But believe me, I'm not complaining about the time I had today. Not at all.

Detracting?

Maybe it is taking away from my photos as they are, straight out of the camera (SOOC), but I am still loving playing with the various effect actions that I've found. Last night I discovered the blog of another woman who makes actions and then gives them away for FREE! I love free, it's my favorite price.

For example, take this photo of my son, Levi.


SOOC, his face was a little blurry, his eyes bland, the colors were...ok, I guess. What can I say, it was only my second day playing with the manual settings on my D70. So I busted out a few of the actions that I downloaded tonight. First was Coffeeshop's "Little Perk", which boost the photo's color balance and sharpness slightly. Next I used PioneerWoman's "Sharpen THIS", from her second Action set, which creates a mask over the photos and allows you select which parts of the photo you want sharpened. In this case, Levi's face. Then I used PioneerWoman's "Bring On The Eyes!", which creates another mask that allows you to brighten just the eyes of your subject.

With each of these actions, the changes are HUGE, to say the least. In fact, they're a little too huge, so I backed off on the opacity on each of them, making the changes a little less dramatic. Otherwise Levi would end up looking like a small alien child with bright white eyes. Creepy.

Here's the before and after.



Then there's this photo that I look for the Mission24 challenge, of a statue my mother in law got Nathan and I not long after we got married. I love this statue, it reminds me every day that we have to support each other with love through everything. But the photo itself? A little boring. Hey, it was 1 am, my sources of lighting were, to say the least, limited.


PioneerWoman came up with an amazing action called Heartland. Combine it with her Boost action and it gives me yummy shivers all over.

Now if only I could be awake during the day, so I could take photos of things OUTSIDE of my home. Yeah, that would be great.

Oh Actions

I'm still fiddling around with the free actions that I received from Totally Rad Actions. The one I played with a little bit tonight was Super Fun Happy. I just love how this guy names his actions so appropriately. Now normally I don't go in for the whole soft focus effect, especially the photoshopped version, but every once in a while I'm feeling a little whimsical. Like tonight. So here's my son, Asher, our second born by one minute, hanging out in his bouncer with his brother, Levi, in the background. I had the f-stop a little too wide open, so this was really the only shot that came out with his entire face in focus.


I love that since I'm using the Minima Stretch template, I can now post larger photo images, don't you?

Minimalism

I've discovered through my various art explorations (photography, graphic design, theatre, drawing) that I am a minimalist at heart. Too much going on makes me a little uneasy, a little frantic. So when I was trying to figure out what in the world to create for my photography blog banner and background, I just couldn't be happy with any of the designs I had come up with. They were too...busy. To me, a photography blog or website should be as clean as possible, so as not to take focus away from the important stuff. You know, the photos. The actual things we're there to see. Weird, no?

Anyway, after attempting to be clever on several different banners, I finally realized that what I really wanted was a white background. No pattern, just white. With one simple something to the right side, "Lindy Labunski Photography" in pretty flowing script, and an opaque bar behind the script to anchor it. Oh, and a very thin black border around the white background so you can tell there's a banner there.

Then I remembered the calla lily I had hand drawn years ago in college and then scanned into my computer because I loved it so much. Thank the maker, I was able to find it. Create a circle, fill it with color, slap the calla lily drawing on it, lighten it from black to white, and you have a logo. Mmmm. Ok, it took a lot more than that, a process that included layers, erasers, resizing, tweaking, starting all over, doing it all again, etc. The end result is what you see at the top of this page. Simple, clean, happy. I like it. I think I've settled on that script for my watermark as well, which will make the watermark match my banner. How cohesive of me.

Hope you like it, cause I'm not going to change it if you don't.

An Old Friend

I was looking through the left over photos from years ago on my D70 memory card when I stumbled across the last photo I took with this camera about a year ago. Every morning when I came home from graveyard shift, the light from the window would hit this chair just so, and the combination of the yellow wall, the black of the chair, and the shadows always caught my attention. So one morning I decided to have a go of getting a photo out of it.


A couple of runs of Slice Like A Ninja action, a few tweaks to the color balance, slap on a watermark, and away we go.

Oh My-Lanta

Ok, I couldn't stop. I have a problem but I don't think there's a twelve step program for this one. Plus laying down did not feel good, at all. Yuck. On top of that, I have a ton of phlegm in my throat and my head hurts...stuff you always wanting to know, right?

Anyway, I've played with my watermark some more and I think I like how it's turned out. Now it's just a matter of seeing what you folks say about the font. Oh, and there's this website...called Totally Rad Actions...the name isn't lying. I emailed the guy and automatically got sent some sample actions. There's this one called...something about Ninja...I dunno. Anyway, look what it did to my wine glass photo!


The crispness, oh the joy! Please, feel free to compare.

Wait...was this suppose to be a blog about the boys? About my familial going's on? Maybe I should start a blog devoted to my photography/Photoshop adventures, so you don't have to keep logging on to this blog and being disappointed over seeing yet ANOTHER photography post.

Sorry 'bout that.

Ick.

It's 4:22 am, and I'm home sick. I feel nauseous and after sitting at my computer at work attempting not to throw up for an hour, my partner sent me home. Unfortunately, the combo of having slept all day and not feeling real great is leaving me sleepless, so it's back to my old friend Photoshop. This time I found some fun actions for free online, so I tried out the watermark action, which is something I've always wanted to have. Before making my watermark, I tried to think of a creative "studio" name. Ah heck, Lindy Labunski Photography sounds just fine to me. I'm down to a few watermarks that I really like, but I can't decide which font fits my style the best, so it's now up to you to give me your feedback.

Here's Number One:


This would have to be in my top two. It's simple, yet with a little bit of flair to it.

Number Two:


I like that this one looks a little more modern and clean. This one is in my top three.

Number Three:


This one is quite similar to Number Two, but slightly different.

Number Four:


This is a font that my friend Carly, who is a wonderful professional photographer, used for a font a little while back, and I just fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. But I feel a little bad using the same font, even though she's not using it anymore. Opinions? I also like that this one doesn't have any capitol letters in it. Definitely in my top two, but again, I'm kind of being a copy cat. Mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery?

Number Five:


I can't help but feel that this one is a little over the top, but maybe that's just me.

And last but not least, Number Six. (Sorry to give you so many choices, I'm indecisive like that.)


Not real thrilled with this one but I felt like throwing in something completely different. It kind of makes me feel like a little kid, not exactly something I'm going for in my photography.

Ok, there you have it. I really would like to settle on one so that I don't have to keep resetting my brushes and recreating watermarks, which is kind of a pain in the butt, let me tell you. I'm sure there's an easier way to do it and rest assured I will be asking Nathan tomorrow...if I remember. So now it's your turn. This is your opportunity to have an opinion.

And now I'm off to attempt some sleep. Hasta.

PS. Don't pay any attention to how light or dark the watermark is, I can always adjust that according to the photo it's being placed on.

Oh D70, Where Have You Been My Whole Life?

Or rather, for the past 3 years.

My senior year was, for me, a very discouraging year, photographically. I had, what I thought, a great photography professor, and yet my photo skills were not increasing. I've just started to realize that all of my frustrations have stemmed from one simple problem:

I never bothered to learn how to take my camera off of automatic and actually BE the photographer. I always relied on my automatic settings, never forcing myself to learn how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO all go together. It made for a sad, bleak world.

But then the other night at work, at approximately 3 am when absolutely NOTHING was going on, I 'snuck' onto Pioneer Woman's photography site and read through her tutorials. They managed to teach the basics of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO without being too overwhelmingly technical, yet without sounding like she was teaching a 5 year old.

So tonight, after my eyes started twitching from staring at the computer screen for too long, I dug out my Nikon D70 digital SLR and spent a good hour just fiddling with the controls. Oh my heck, it's like a whole new world has opened to me. I remember playing with my dad's old film SLR (I can still smell the film scent, Lordy how I miss that...where the heck is that camera Dad?) and always working on manual with that one because, well, it was old. And there was no such thing as an automatic SLR back then. Right Dad? But since receiving my Nikon N75 (film SLR, not old, automatic w/ manual option), I became lazy.

But never again! The closest I will ever come to putting this camera on manual will be the Aperture or Shutter Priority, which allows you to manually select the aperture and then automatically selects the 'best' shutter speed, or vice versa. But here's the thing that I've just learned...not all cameras are prefect. My camera, for example, shoots dark. So when I look at the exposure meter inside my view finder and adjust my shutter speed to match the aperture, the exposure is dark. So I have to adjust a couple of shutter speeds slower. Whew.

Let's just say I'm hooked again.

A week ago Sunday, I was watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (a weakness of mine) and the "hero" they were building a house for was a lady who did photography of preemies. She would go into the NICU and capture a family's moments with their preemie baby or babies, often times being there to share the child's only hours on earth. That spoke to me, having been through the fright of premature babies, yet I immediately dismissed it, not wanting it to be yet another thing that I become passionate about and then fizzle on in a matter of months. Plus there's the minor problems of a) we don't live anywhere near a NICU at the moment and b) I didn't think I had the skills necessary to take photos in the sometimes very dim light present in a NICU or hospital room setting.

But now...maybe...if we move somewhere with a NICU someday. Maybe this could be my way of giving back. Who knows. I guess we'll see.

What Can I Say?

I'm bored.

It's 3:30 am, Levi is asleep in the swing because the little stinker adamantly refused to sleep anywhere else. As in, he fought going to sleep in his crib for two hours, despite a clean diaper and a full tummy. Even after putting him in the swing, he cried for a good ten minutes. Yeesh. He hasn't fought going to sleep like this for months. Hopefully tomorrow night will be better.

Anyway, to pass the time, I'm playing with, you guessed it, Photoshop. Again. I found my photos from Ecuador, which I haven't looked at for ages. So here we go. A photo I took of a cross in the old Hacienda we stayed in, with some beautiful pink flowers in front of it. First is the photo in full color.


Now we do the photo tinting again. Utilize the burn tool over the entire photo (darkens the photo a bit without losing any of the color).


Love it. I think I'll print this one...someday...

Speaking of the burn tool. Next is a photo I took of a native Mayan woman in a small market. I just think she looks so stately. So...I'm not sure what word I'm looking for, but she captures my imagination.


Unfortunately, the color is pretty washed out, and the statues on the table in the foreground kind of takes the attention away from the woman. Bring in the burn tool, run it across her and the statues in the foreground, without touching the great color in the tapestry behind her.


Suddenly she becomes the focus of the photo again. She looks even more like the matriarch that she first struck me as.

Burn tool officially earns a Yum.

Birthday/Christmas List? Already?

I've decided that the Photoshop CS4 upgrade is on my birthday/Christmas list. That will probably make Nathan cry, as he would just love to have all of the Adobe (the company that makes Photoshop) upgrades so he can play with the CS4 version of Illustrator and Dreamweaver, but beggers can't be choosers. And we do be beggers. At least in this instance. Especially considering the fact that a Photoshop upgrade is $400 less than the entire Adobe Creative Suite package upgrade. And that's just because of a limited time offer. Normally it's a $600 difference. Yeesh.

...I felt the pucker factor on that one, folks.

Anyway, if there's anyone who would like to to donate to the cause, I'll set a tin cup outside of our door. All donations are tax deductable.

Fun With Photo Tinting

Usually when I come home from a graveyard shift, I stay up for an hour or two in order to wind down, and also to give Nathan a bit more time to sleep before I crawl into bed and wake him up. During that time, I've started playing with different aspects of Photoshop, as is demonstrated by my banners, backgrounds, etc. While browsing through some tutorials, I found one on photo tinting. Combine that with my love of macro photography, and we have magic, people. Pure bliss. Observe.

First we have a white tulip with some of the yellow pollen that has fallen off into the center of the flower.



It's cool enough as it is, I guess. A little blurry except for the fallen pollen. (Hee hee. Fallen pollen.) And it's honestly not all that exciting. Take the same photo, however, turn it into black & white, bring the yellow of the fallen pollen back, and we have something more exciting, more enticing. Suddenly the blurriness of the rest of the photo isn't as apparent and your eye knows where to rest.



Next we have the inside of a pink tulip. Pretty cool, but notice the center. Looks pretty bland next to all that hot pink, doesn't it? Not much color variety to it, and it's definitely not what draws your eyes.



But what if we were to get rid of the hot pink?



Suddenly there's a rainbow of colors within the center of this flower. It's amazing what happens to the boring girl when the show off is removed from the equation, no? I just want to note that I did NOTHING to enhance these colors. All I did was take away the color to make the entire photo black & white, and then erased the black & white adjustment from the center. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that's what happened in layman's terms.

Sigh...I love Photoshop. Now if only the magical Photoshop Fairy would put a copy of Photoshop CS4 under my pillow...we're currently running on plain ol' CS, which is only 3 versions old. Ah well, I work with what I'm given.

For Your Consideration

Tulips, compliments of my mom. No flash used, just really bright kitchen lights and my trusty super micro point and shoot digital.



















Wait...those aren't tulips! But they ARE two cute boys! (Asher left, Levi right)

And So It Begins

I decided it was time to stop taking the attention away from my family by posting all of my photography and Photoshop adventures on our family blog. As a result, here's a new blog, shiny and sleek...and boring, for the time being, until I have time to fashion myself a decent background and header. I'm also going to attempt finding a way to transfer my previous photography and Photohop posts from our family blog to this one; wish me luck on that.