You Can See It In Her Eyes

What do you think?

I’m uncomfortable working too much on pictures of my wife in Photoshop because she is already beautiful and perfect.  But I have to practice somewhere.  In between my photo shoots and edit sessions (starting touch ups on the Anderson family pictures tonight), I’m doing additional photography and Photoshop training when I can.  The latest training I’ve done has been on touching up eyes.  For the picture above I:

- adjusted colors
- removed the old catch light and added a new ones. 
- whitened the whites and removed reds in the whites
- touched up the pupil
- enhanced the color of the iris slightly
- added a sharper contrasting edge around the outside of the iris
- added some more eye lashes
- added eye liner

Definitely not something to do on every picture.  Here is the photo without the eyes touched up.

The next lessons also included touching up lips, teeth, skin, eye brows, etc.  I think the coolest part is adding make up in Photoshop.  Crazy what you can do.

Color Treatments

Thanks again to the Anderson family for letting me practice with their family portraits.  I’m trying a slightly different work flow.  I had been posting low resolution proofs online for viewing.  This time, I gave the Anderson of DVD of the full resolution of the photos with minor color correction and cropping.  This should allow them to better decide which pictures they’d like me to touch up further since you miss some things in the low res versions.  I did forget to give her examples of different color treatments that I have though.  So, here is this post on that. 

Chris/Monica,  These are just some of the color schemes that I have.  Let me know if there is something else you’ve seen or that you know of and I’ll see if I can find it or do it myself.  These are fairly easy to apply.  So, I can apply color treatments across any of the photos you want on top of the other edits.

Note: For those interested in the color treatments, these are all Lightroom presets either from the standard set that comes with Lightroom or that I pull off of lightroomkillertips.com.

The Standard – This is what is on the DVD I gave you with some background touchup (#30)

Twilight (Lite)

Hawaii Five-O (Strong)

Fairytale

Cold Tone

Cream Tone

Lightroom’s Standard Black and White

Antique Gray Scale

The portrait that you liked of the Cook family with the sun behind them was actually done with “Hawaii Five-O (Medium)”.  Too bad we didn’t have enough sun out for the backlighting you wanted.  But here is an example with the color treatment on the ones we tried with the overcast sky in the background.

The Standard – This is what is on the DVD I gave you with some touchup (#142)

Hawaii Five-O (Medium).

Hawaii Five-O (Strong)

I like this last one.  Hopefully, this gives you some ideas.  This is all practice for me, and appreciate your family’s time and help.  So, let me know if there are any questions or anything else I can do to help.  It’s all fun for me.  Thanks again!

Recital, Photo Shoot, and Party

A busy day yesterday, we had Savannah and Rebecca’s piano recital, a photo shoot with the Anderson family, and the ward Christmas party.  The photo shoot went well, but I could have done better with the recital and Christmas party.  Someday, I’ll get over the feeling that I’m flying a commercial airliner when I don’t even have a pilot’s license.  I bring my camera to events thinking of all the great photos I’m going to get and then feel to sheepish to stand up and move around to find the best shots.  Someday….

Rebecca and Savannah did great at their recital.  They’ve come so far in piano.  I was going over the costs of piano lessons with Christi yesterday and questioned whether or not it’s worth it.  I didn’t have piano lessons and I turned out fantastic!  But, I don’t play the piano well either.  :)  I know Christi will say that she knew it (because I often play the devil’s advocate in these situations), but hearing good piano playing does make it worth it.  It makes me want to learn too. 

Becca opted for video.  So, I only got pictures of Savannah playing.  Here is the ONE angle I got from my seat.  Don’t you wish I would have moved around?

The Anderson’s photo shoot went well.  It was a different experience with no little kids.  I could tell them to smile, take the shot, and not have to take any more of that pose in case I had to swap heads.  But I did it anyways, because that’s the way I’ve operated so far.  Note for next time:  Don’t need as many pictures if the picture will turn out the same as the previous.  I’m still going through them, but here is a glimpse of where we did the shoot (our yard).  Christi and Simon were out helping scout spots to set up.

Our peach trees have some great yellow and red leaves right now. 

My photos from the Christmas party aren’t even worth posting since I DIDN”T GET OUT OF MY SEAT!

I remember listening to a motivational speaker during some All-Star Games in high school.  There were probably four of five hundred high school seniors in the auditorium.  The speaker had a brand new brief case and asked if anyone wanted it.  Immediately, a kid jumped up out of his seat and ran up and took it from him.  The speaker gave it to him.  The lesson was that when great opportunities come along you can either sit there and watch it go by, or you can act reap the rewards.  I foresee a New Year ‘s resolution (starting a month early) to get out of my seat more.

Stockings

On top of the ornaments and nightly Christmas story readings, Christi has made stockings for each of us.  They are just the right size except that every year we seem to think we need more than what will fit in there.  I remember using my own socks as a kid.  We have nine children in my family and Santa usually just dropped off all the candy in one of those large silver mixing bowls.  I’m sure he just didn’t have time to put candy into each stocking… or was worried about what had been in my socks.  Memories can be so great!  That’s why I’m glad my wife takes the time to build good memories with our kids.

Playing around with Lightroom’s print layout tools.

Last Year we had Lindsey staying with us at Christmas time.  Since she didn’t have a stocking she got this one.  Minus the Josh.

I’m sorry to say that it did not get completely filled either.  With Lindsey up in Washington now, we should send it to her full of sunshine from Sunnyville (The name our kids gave our homestead – I should post the song some time).

Christmas Traditions

On top of reading a Christmas story to the kids every night, my awesome wife has brought along a couple of other Christmas traditions to our family.  Every year she frets over getting just the right ornament for each child to open on Christmas Eve.  She looks for something that represent something significant for that child from the last year.  We also get one for us.  Typically we try to find one on a trip.  Here are few examples.

The first year that Caleb went on a hunt

Savannah’s first Christmas ornament

Becca’s ornament the year we got Lucy

The year Josh was in Chess Club

Jonah’s ornament of tools – the sentiment was in how helpful he was at that age

Trips Christi and I took

You get the idea.  We used to have less meaningful decorations, but with six kids and nearly fifteen years of marriage under our belts the less meaningful decorations stayed in the box this year.  It’s about time to get a second tree…