Tutorial Tuesday-Watercolor Edit

This week we learned how to use Photoshop to edit a photo into a watercolor. Pretty cool effect. We are allowed to used archived photo's this week if we want. These are all archived.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Smile
No, I didn't manipulate this pic in Photoshop. The moon was in this position.

Stand Alone

It takes a special kind of funky to be able to walk down a pink flowery path!

 Rusty or Something Old

This definitely represents the something old. The original picture of the Kissing Sailor was taken on August 14, 1945. Victory over Japan Day! San Diego has a huge monument downtown on the harbor next to the Midway Museum. (The USS Midway is an aircraft carrier that has been decommissioned and sits in our harbor. It's open to the public to walk through and tour. It was recently featured on American Idol too.)

Artificial

Repeating Patterns

It's a stretch, I know. sigh

My Nighttime Forrays...

I decided to give night photography another try. So here we go...

This is the Mormon Temple in La Jolla, CA. It's right off the freeway and lights up gorgeous at night.

Next I drove down to Sunset Cliffs for a moon shot off the water. The neat part is that a planet was also easily seen(below the moon and to the left a little).

Then I crossed over Point Loma to the bay right across from Downtown.

I moved down the harbor towards downtown.

You can also see the Coronado Bridge.

Boats in the harbor with the Navy base(North Island) directly behind.

This was taken on the city side of the harbor by the Midway Museum. I just thought the trees looked pretty cool.

To Infinity and Beyond...

So, my friend Gina over at Chic Homeschool Mama has posted several times with photos of the night sky. She gets gorgeous star shots. I've never shot the night sky and had the stars show up. I have tons of practice with shooting the moon...but no stars! Gina was willing to share her tips on how to achieve this. Tonight when I drove hubs to the airport I noticed the moon was a sliver and almost over the horizon. Perfect chance to get out there with a black sky. I got the stars ok, I just need to work on my focus. I had to shoot in manual focus as my lens won't focus on a dark sky. But to manual focus I have to be able to see what I'm shooting. Hard to see the stars through an eensy teensy little window. All in all it was a little frustrating but I was still excited to get something. I'm more convinced than ever that I need upgraded equipment! Hubs isn't as convinced. I know for a fact *fib* that every shot I take with a Canon 7d will be simply perfect.

I drove about 15 minutes east outside of the city towards our local mountains. Such a gorgeous dark sky in the country. This shot was facing just to the left of the city lights. You can see the little dipper.

This shot I turned my back to the city lights and shot towards the mountains.

Yeah...so if you have any focusing tips for me to get crisper stars feel free to leave me a comment. **Seriously, I need help** Yes I was using a tripod and a remote trigger.

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Ashley Sisk over at Ramblings and Photos.

SOOC by Ashley

Edited by me

Tutorial Tuesday-Building A Lightbox

I've been wanting to build a light box so I had to jump on this band wagon. I had the box. I had the tracing paper. I did not have the poster board. I simply made a mad dash over to Michaels and bought some. (San Diego doesn't have a Hobby Lobby. I'm terribly jealous of all of you who are near one.) I think I waited until too late in the day to do this. My lighting sucked. I don't have enough artificial lights to work with. I may have cheated on this challenge. Here's what I did...I set up my light box, set up my object in the box, set up the camera on a tripod in front of the box then turned off all the lights in the room. Then I use a led flashlight turned up to the ceiling(the camera has to have some type of light to draw from), then I set my shutter to bulb and went from there. Most of the pics came out great at about the 30 second mark. I've used this technique before(without a box). It's great for having no shadows as there is no direct light on the object.

Anyhoodles...

If that's cheating the assignment then my apologies!

5 Question Friday

1. Where do you hide the reeeally good snacks? Well, those of us who don't have kids don't really need to hide the good stuff. Hubs doesn't even like junk food so it's really a non issue here.

2. Do u keep your vehicle clean or am I the only one who has things falling out of their van? My car is always sorta messy. Not crazy bad but always something gets balled up and thrown into the back seat. When needed I can clean up the mess in 2 minutes or less.

3. Have you ever been to Vegas? Yes

4. Warm room light blankets or cold room warm snuggly blanket? Definitely cold room with snuggly blankets. I don't sleep well if I'm not covered well. I will snuggle under a throw blanket in the middle of summer for a nap because I can't sleep with my arms exposed.

5. What is the worst airplane/flying experience you've ever had? No flying experience is great. But none are awfully bad either. They just are what they are. My most exciting was my first time. I was 19, it was pre-9/11 and I felt so posh and sophisticated. Yeah, I'm not sure why! Maybe cause I was actually going somewhere. I don't know if this was my worst flying experience but we were in a bad car accident while on the way to the airport to fly home after visiting my sister in WA. Thankfully, we were really early because we were supposed to visit my uncle for a few hours. We went to the hospital, I got looked at(the airbag burned my knees and legs) then we decided to come home anyways. The flight was more surreal than anything. Adrenalin and all.

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Marilyn who blogs at The Artsy Girl Collection.

SOOC by Marilyn

Edited by me

What I did:
I used Photoshop cs5,
I used Pioneer Woman's action Heartland,
adjusted the layers in the action till I liked it,
added a mask to slightly remove the action to the boat which allowed the color to bleed back through. (I only wanted a little color to come back so I kept the opacity on my brush low.),
flatten,
Done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Tara who blogs at Wild Ginger Photography.

SOOC by Tara

Edited by me

What I did:
opened the photo in Adobe Camera Raw,
adjusted the lighting and white balance,
opened in Photoshop cs5,
cropped and cloned the top left corner,
ran Coffeeshop's action Baby Powder Room,
masked the layers within the action,
flatten,
sharpened the pic a little,
Done!

"It's not my birthday. My birthday is January 10th"

Today was my Grandmother's 90th birthday. She has Alzheimer's and doesn't remember her last meal let alone that it's her birthday. Still, we picked her up from the home she lives in and took her to my aunt and uncles house for a family get-together. Whenever someone told her happy birthday she would reply "It's not my birthday. My birthday is January 10th". She does this every year on her birthday. What do you get a 90 year old who no longer uses stuff? You can't get her anything really because she doesn't remember it's hers so she never uses it. Chuck and I got her a huge Hello Kitty stuffed doll. She can put it on her bed. My mom and aunt always give her clothes. Clothes are almost the only thing you can give her anymore. My 90 year old grandmother is my last living grandparent!

My cousin's twins are getting so big. They are a year and a half now.

Totally out of focus but I couldn't share a pic of her twin and not one of her.

This past weeks moon shots.

Taken on Jan 5, 2012

Taken on Jan 8, 2012

Taken on Jan 10, 2012

Taken on Jan 10, 2012