The holidays have ended and things have simmered back down. I finally have a little time to blog some recent favorites.

First, my family. My insane, crazy, chaotic, annoying, hilarious, perfect perfect family. This Christmas the entire Morita family converged upon the same area all at once, for the first time ever. We have never gotten a family picture that included every member of our family…until now. And this was no easy task. We had to figure out a color scheme. We needed to coordinate without appearing matchy matchy. We needed a location that accommodate our big family. We needed a miracle. And um, yeah, it helped to have someone who just so happens to know how to photoshop, as multiple head swaps were in order. Go me!

The favorite family member is on the far left, in case you were wondering.

Dang, I love those people. Every single one of them. I am beyond blessed to have such an amazing (and beautiful) family. They make me whole.

Getting pictures of my kids lately has been entirely tricky. They know all my tricks, and simply aren’t interested in supporting my photographer obsession. Shame on them. So, I get what I can get, and sometimes I get lucky.

If it looks like my son is enjoying being hugged by his sister, trust me when I tell you, he does not. Lol. He’s more cringing with a smile on his face. And since I like to show off my picture editing, here’s a little before and after. The grass was a little icky, seeing that it hasn’t rained here in, oh, I don’t know, forever.

 Here’s how my son really feels about holding his sister’s hand. The pure torture I put him through.

And another before and after. This was mostly edited using Adobe Lightroom. I love how easy it is to edit one image, getting the color how I want it, and then syncing all my other images with the click of a button. Lightroom has sped up my workflow tremendously! I only brought this one into Photoshop to add the tree on the right. I just felt like it helped frame them better.

How about a couple pictures of my family? I’ll be back later to post more. But for now:

My brother and his daughter. Father and daughter. Perfection.

When he blew the bubble, I was expecting it to be much much bigger. My niece’s reaction simply didn’t seem appropriate for the size of the bubble. See what I mean? I think my Photoshop tricks payed off here, wouldn’t you say?

My beautiful nephew:

My handsome nephew:

His beautiful twin sister:

And one of my kids where for whatever reason, they just cooperated. Wait…was I begging? Threatening? Bribing? Yeah… probably.

I’m hoping to be better at blogging this year. We’ll see how that goes, seeing that my kids have ALMOST put an entire boycott on me and my camera.

If you are looking at these images and wanting to get color like I do, then you should definitely check out my SHINE workshop. You’ll learn how to better use adobe photoshop and lightroom. I promise. For more information, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE.

And just in case I don’t get better at blogging, you can always follow me on Facebook! …

For the most part, I am not following the rules of this month’s 11 on 11. It’s supposed to be images that I shot in the past month, but with my upcoming workshop and recent return back to work (I’m a home health physical therapist), I haven’t had much time to get out there and shoot. I’ve been spending so much time marketing and getting ready for this workshop, that my poor camera has taken a backseat. Sorry, sweet camera. Add onto that that I recently did a presentation for Canon and am gearing up to a a few more (squeal!)…life has been busy.

But I hate missing out on the 11 on 11. So I decided to share some before and afters. I love editing. Like, it might be a bit of an obsession…. I just love looking at an image and unleashing all the awesome. It’s fun!

And hey, I did shoot a little bit, so I’ll share those images too.

Let’s start with an image of my amazing mama and my son. Words cannot express to you what this image means to me. I had it printed and hanging in my house within a week of taking it.

I love them.

So, I’ll share some of the more recent images I have taken. This was shot on the tenth. One day before this blog post goes live. I’m taking pictures of my best friend’s family this weekend and wanted to scope out my location and make sure the light was gonna be good. I dragged my kids there after school, and my bookworm daughter just walked around with me from place to place while I snapped some images. I thought this was a nice transformation.

And this one cracks me up.

I see this image every day. It’s a 20×30 canvas in my house. This was shot a few years ago, but I still love it. I had forgotten what it looked like straight out of camera. Pretty big difference!

And here’s some from a couple of years ago that still really make me smile. Are they not completely adorable?

This little girl is so full of wonderfully bubbly personality, I could just eat her up.

If you have followed me, you know I was OBSESSED with underwater photography this summer. I thought I’d share some of my underwater edits. Editing underwater images is challenging since the skin tones are very blue straight out of camera. But I’ve gotten pretty dang good at getting the color right.

And I love me some creative editing….

The black area around him on the left is from the port of the underwater bag. I was shooting with a 15mm fisheye, and it’s such a wide angle lens, the port made it’s way into the image.

I loved the splash of my daughter doing a cannonball, but just wanted it to be MORE. Thank you, Photoshop.

After shooting this image that I loooooove, I decided I wanted more space around them. I like it better like this.

And yes, I did point her toes in this next one. I’m crazy like that.

Hmmm… maybe I should straighten her knee too?

I’m bummed I didn’t pull out my big camera for a self portrait this month, but I did get some phone pictures that I sort of love. Just me being silly with my kids. A rather common occurrence. I love them. My finest accessories.

So, if you like what you see and want to see more, please follow me on Facebook!

And if you are dying to know some of my editing secrets, you really should check out my workshop! The introductory price is almost over! Save some cash and register today!

Next up in this blog circle mania is the one and only Sally Kate Photography.  Her imagery is all sorts of beautiful. Go check it out!…

I’m getting geared up for another SHINE editing workshop! I’m really excited about this one. I have lots of cool things to teach you!

Check it out right HERE!

And if you want to see another example, check out this.

Are you wanting to get more creative in your editing? You’ll love this workshop! I’ll show you how to take this picture from straight out of camera to Lightroom and into Photoshop where some fun magic happens. Take a close look at that final image: lovely skin tones, the bright tip of the nose on the mask is recovered, completely different background, the cropped off tip of the mask on the right is now there, the tucked in collar on the right is now un-tucked. How did I do all that? Sign up and learn how!

You KNOW you want to sign up! Do it now! Seats are limited!  LEARN MORE HERE!

OK… OK…. one more. I have perfected the art of adding a fake sky to a blown one. It’s a pretty cool technique, if I do say so myself.

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