I am gearing up for another “SHINE ~ Unleash Your Awesome” workshop, and I’m so excited! When I first started out with photography, I had no idea how to edit an image. I relied on actions and a lot of guesswork to get an okay image. Over the years, through lots and lots of practice and lots of trial and error, I found what worked for me. It took me a long time to even consider using Lightroom but I now am so comfortable editing in Lightroom. It is so easy to edit one image from a set of images and then just sync them all. I save SO much time now. I’ve always loved teaching (all my siblings are teachers) and so this workshop for me is a chance for me to teach something that I love doing: taking images and processing them.

If you are ready to take control over your editing and get the results YOU want, then this workshop is for you.

In this image, I loved the interaction but the colors were drab, and dang it, I wish I had noticed that the little girl’s dress was hiked up a little bit too much. No worries. I can fix all of that. I did most of the editing of this image in Lightroom, and then brought it into Photoshop for some final touches.

Who doesn’t love a good sky? I know I’m obsessed with them. A blown out sky can be so boring and adding a sky can make all the difference. Problem is, it’s hard to get a sky looking believable. Learn all my secrets of how I add a sky while keeping it looking natural. And yes, that is my foot in the original image. This was shot with a 15mm fisheye. When I first shot this image and all the ones shot that day, I was really disappointed in my SOOC’s. The color was so drab when I looked through my viewfinder. I remember driving home really upset. But once they were edited, they popped right off my screen! They went from drab to fab. Here, I achieved beautiful rich colors in Lightroom and then brought it into Photoshop to improve my framing by adding another tree. I also flipped the image and will talk about why I did that in the workshop. And please excuse my son’s expression. He wasn’t so thrilled with me making him hold his sister’s hand. Ha!

I loved the action in this, but regrettably, I had cropped off more of the bottom than I would have liked. No problem. Photoshop to the rescue! And that fence? Meh. That had to go.  And thank you Lightroom for making it so easy to get my colors just the way I wanted them, rich and warm. And then, boom, sync all of those images from the series, and I’m done and playing with my kids, instead of fretting in front of my computer.

I loved his expression (he saw a bee!) but again, the color needed work, and that road behind him really was distracting. No problem. Want to see more from this session? Right here.

This workshop is just around the corner. Don’t miss out, because honestly, I don’t know when the next one will be.

Interested in learning more? Get some details right here! 

And be sure to read the reviews. Makes me proud. …

This year, I am SO excited about a blog circle I am doing with some amazingly talented photographers. Each month, we will be exploring a different kind of light. Last month, it was window light. You can see those images right here!  And this month, we are exploring un-natural light, or artificial light… pretty much, any kind of light that doesn’t come from the sun! I was really excited about this month and also excited about another little thing that has been brewing in my head, so I figured I would combine both of those ideas into one, which brings me to my first image!

I’ve been wanting to miniaturize my kids for a while and finally got around to completing one of my ideas! I’m super happy with how it turned out! I shot the soap, bubbles, and my son with strobes and then manipulated the images in Photoshop to create my little baby boy sliding down a bar of soap!

I have other ideas but wasn’t sure that I wanted to do them with artificial light, so this is the only miniaturized kid for now!

And here are some other images shot with artificial light:

My daughter lit from the bedside lamp at night:

My daughter’s hands lit by a candle and my phone (Brightest Flashlight ap) held by my son, camera right:

And then a bunch of pictures shot in the rain and lit by my car’s headlights! This was short, but fun!

I’m pretty sure my daughter is attacking my son with the umbrella here.These were a challenge but SO fun! I seriously am just loving the idea behind this project and hope you do too! I hope to learn how to use light in new ways and was especially excited to play more with artificial light!

So, how this works is you get to go check out another amazing photographer who has also used artificial light this month! Go check out the wonderfully talented Bethesda, MD newborn, baby, and family photographer, Tonya Teran of Tonya Teran Photography! I love her work and if she’s sharing pictures of her kiddos, watch out. They’re ADORABLE.

If you like what you see, you can follow me on Facebook! …

My baby turned eight last week….

Eight.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for me, it is. He’s halfway on his way to being 16. He’s twice as old as 4. He’s getting big.

I can’t really explain the feelings I have for him. Sometimes I find that I am just staring at him and smiling with this expectant look on my face, like, “what awesome thing is he gonna do next?”

There was a time that he was incredibly agreeable to having his picture taken. I could go anywhere with him, pull out my camera, and the angels sang while he cooperatively played where I asked him to play and looked at me when I asked him to do so. That has changed. He’s not a fan of my camera lately, so I feel like all of these pictures are sort of extra-magical. Somehow the planets aligned perfectly for this shoot.

The night before, I had him try on some clothes that I had bought him. He put on this entire outfit, and I ooooohed and ahhhhed and then had him put them away, quietly thinking that I had to figure out a way to convince him to do an eight year old photo shoot with me. The next day, he put this whole outfit on without me even asking him to. I knew I had to strike when the iron was hot and take pictures of him THAT DAY. I didn’t think it would go well. I really didn’t. But for some reason, the stars aligned and these pictures happened.

I am smitten. I really am.

We’ll start with a picture shot the week before he turned 8. He cracks me up, and I love this because he still looks like a little boy to me.

But then a week later, I swear he just grew up.

The trees are confused here in California. We’ve had such sunny weather for January, they decided to just go ahead and bloom. Oh my.I may or may not have given him a piece of chocolate to keep him interested in taking pictures. Here he is licking the last bits off his finger.

If there’s one thing I can say about my son, he is expressive. As I was taking his picture, he saw a bee. And this is how he let me know about it. Good gracious, I love him.Mick Jagger meets Austin Powers. Lol. Love it. Did I ask him to do this? No. He just did because, well, because he’s awesome.Looking for something in his pocket.I seriously love this one. Just something about it.

I love this one…. There he is marching up to his future as….

…King of the World.

I swear, he’s such a beautiful boy. Full of adventure. Full of love. I adore this child. And if anyone was wondering, the sky was added in Photoshop. I like it better this way. He was yelling at some friends way down the hill. I hope his jugular doesn’t pop from doing that. Sheesh.And because the stars had totally aligned, I got my blue skies with clouds. Perfect.Whenever he gets hot, he starts to strip down. Luckily, I was able to convince him to just air out for a little bit. Lol.Mr. Personality.JUMP, dude. JUMP!He was getting to the end of his rope by this time. Fake smile, anyone?And, just like that, he’s DONE.Poor guy being forced to stand in the pretty light.Still can’t believe we have trees blooming in California right now. I’m sure the rain we just started having will knock these blooms away. Glad I was able to get a picture of them before that happened.

That’s all for now. Happy Birthday, my sweet baby. I love you.…