December 30, 2011

I hope that everyone had a very merry holiday season!  We spent Christmas morning at home and then left that evening to visit with our families who live out of town.  I always feel a sense of accomplishment for making it through the bustle of Christmas in one piece.  But now comes the melancholy part of the year as the long winter approaches.  There is sure to be several snows, and I'm not really looking forward to it.  Will hopefully get some fun photos from it, though.

My husband got me the full version of Photoshop for Christmas, so I'm incredibly excited to get that on my computer and start learning the ropes.  I've been working with Photoshop Elements until now.  AND, for my birthday (which is the week before Christmas) he also surprised me with the gorgeous Kelly Moore camera bag that I've been drooling over for so long!!!  I've been trying to win one of those suckers for quite some time!  So Facebook friends, thanks to my husband you no longer have to see those annoying status updates that say something like "Kelly Moore is giving away a bag of your choice..."  He really outdid himself this year!

I squeezed in a really quick Christmas shoot with a couple of friends and their 1 year old the week before Christmas.  You'll recognize them as they are one of the couples who show up on here regularly.  They're so sweet to always let me practice on them :)  It almost seemed as if the universe was against it that day, but we made it happen and got some really sweet images!

December 5, 2011

I signed up for a fun little "Picture the Holidays" Prompt-Me through Paper Coterie.  

Let me just stop and tell you how much I loooove Paper Coterie.  I ordered several journals through them for Mother's Day/Father's Day gifts and loved the finished product!  I also got a handful of Christmas cards from them for being part of a focus group.  They are the most beautiful Christmas cards I have ever had!  I follow them on Facebook, and I love the sweet things they are always posting.  Check them out - they also regularly email discount codes.

Anyway, back to my story.  So when they announced this prompt-me book for the holidays I decided to give it a try.  When you sign up you get an email every day in December with a photo prompt for that day.  You give it some thought, take a picture, and then upload it to your account on their website and it automatically compiles it into book form.  At the end of December you have a book with all of your photos from the holiday season.  In case you're interested and are now disappointed that it's already begun, I'm pretty sure it's not too late to sign up.  It's kind of a work-at-your-own-pace thing, so if you wanted to do several photos in one day then you just go to their site and read ahead.

I'm really enjoying it so far.  It's encouraging my creativity!  Here are my first 4 pictures:

Day 1: Holding on to Gratitude

(Something you're thankful for ... I chose our house because I'm still so excited to be living in our very own home!)

Day 2: ReFraming the Season

Day 3: All You Need is Love

Day 4: You Hold the Key

(What helps you to stay calm ... for me it's sitting and breathing/meditating)

Looking forward to the rest of the season in photos :)

November 30, 2011

Are you feeling the pressure yet?  It's the Christmas season!  I'm mostly relaxed at this point, but I have a tiny urge deep in the back of my mind to start freaking out because the Christmas gifts are not purchased and wrapped yet.  As I hear that silly little voice here and there, though, I remind myself that it isn't even December yet!  And I have to get through my son's birthday party this Saturday before I can turn my focus to preparing for Christmas.  We did manage to get the tree up yesterday, and I feel like that's a big accomplishment!  Let me clarify that it's just the tree right now, decorations not included yet.

My mother-in-law got us an Elf on the Shelf this year.  We weren't sure if my almost-2 year old would understand it, but he seems to really enjoy finding the elf every morning.  He even let me read him the entire story ... several times :)  I think it will be a fun tradition.  Part of the deal is that the child is supposed to name the elf.  Well, my son still has a very limited vocabulary, so he named him "What".  Here is our little "What" making his debut on the mantle:

What are some of your family's holiday traditions?

November 22, 2011

I know I'm getting old when I hear myself say things like, "It's already the end of November?!  Time is flying by!"  But it seriously does feel like it should be September.  And what's even harder to believe is that my son is a couple weeks away from turning 2.  Wow.  That feels weird.

I've taken a couple of classes since the last time I posted.  I took a 4 week SLR class at Bedford Camera in October.  I enjoyed being around other adults and talking camera things, but I was a little disappointed that I already knew most of what was covered.  It made me feel good to realize that my self-guided studying has actually given me a decent basic knowledge pool, but now I'm kind of stuck with a "where do I go next?" question because this is the only class that Bedford offers and the local colleges don't seem to have any intermediate classes.  The instructor suggested that we check out the Photographic Society of Northwest Arkansas (PSNWA).  He said that they are very active and have regular speakers and group shoots and sometimes classes.  I checked into it was interested, so I went ahead and paid dues and am officially a member now.  And I joined just in time to be able to sign up for a class about lenses.  The instructor was Greg Disch, and WOW!  What a great instructor!  Halfway through the class I thought, "This single class is worth the membership dues!"  So I'm hopeful that I will be able to learn more and learn it quickly.

Here are a couple of pretty fall pictures to say happy Thanksgiving to you :)  I took them for one of my assignments during the Bedford class.  I think it was a depth of field assignment.  Anyway, have a wonderful and peaceful Thanksgiving, and don't get too crazy out there on black Friday!

November 2, 2011

We had a lovely low-key Halloween.  My son is only 22 months old, so we didn't go all out this year.  He got a total of 4 pieces of candy :)

These are my favorites from a quick session at McGarrah Farms in mid-October.

October 30, 2011

So it turns out that the color issues I've been having (see the past several posts if you don't know what I'm referring to) have something to do with the browser.  Apparently Firefox has the option for color management, but a lot of the other ones don't.  And I always stick to Google Chrome, so there's my problem.  I still don't completely understand it all, but I guess from now on I'll upload photos through Firefox.  It's funny how if you look at a page on Chrome and then pull up the same page on Firefox, there's a slight color difference in the pictures.  I went through some of my favorite photographers pages that I usually view on Chrome, and when I pulled them up side by side with Firefox the colors in the photos look different.  It's so bizarre to me - I wish I knew about website design and coding and all of that.   There's so much that I need to learn before I die!

Speaking of website design, the blog has had a makeover.  I hired someone through Etsy to install a new blog template.  I still have a few more details to wrap up, but her part is finally finished!

And here are some of my favorites from that session I did back in September ...

September 28, 2011

I've been so looking forward to the session I got to do tonight!  This picture is my favorite from the bunch!  Thanks for being models, you guys :)

September 25, 2011

Oh, by the way, I meant to mention that I finally decided on a name, and it miraculously is not already in use, at least as far as I can tell!  Blue Acorn Photography.  (You won't understand this if you haven't read the very first post ... I had a temporary name until I could settle on one for good.)  It took a lot of brainstorming and bouncing ideas off my husband, who was very helpful in getting the creativity flowing.  I'm very excited and love it a whole lot - it feels like a good fit!  And I'm also excited that the blog will be getting a new, more professional look within the next week.  Yay!

Here are the other 2 photos that I snapped last week in that test location.

September 20, 2011

Over the weekend I found out that I won a free set of actions of my choice from Pure Photoshop Actions for submitting a video for their 1st birthday!!!  These 2 ladies are amazing.  AMAZING!  I'll have to write more about them later and the inspiration that they constantly give to new photographers.  I'll also write about a few other photographers that I admire :)  

A couple days ago I decided to order a grey card, and it came in today.  Gotta love Amazon Prime for the free 2-day shipping!  My husband is a student so he gets Prime free for a year.  It'll be a sad day when the Prime goes away.  Anyway, we went out tonight to test a location I'm thinking about taking my next shoot to, and I took the grey card along.  It's a Lastolite Ezbalance and came on recommendation of the Pure Photoshop Action ladies.  This is the first time I've used a grey card, and I think it went well, although to be honest, this was the first time ever that my white balance straight out of camera wasn't too far off.  I don't know why??  I accidentally left my ISO at a higher setting than I usually have outside, so I don't know if maybe that had something to do with it??  My 21 month old would not stand still for even 1 second, so I just snapped a couple quick photos to see what the light would look like here around 6:30 in the evening.

I edited these with my new actions.  And I still haven't figured out the color issue when I put them online.  These still look different than when I look at them not-online.  I thought it was an aRGB vs sRGB issue, but I tried to correct that and it didn't seem to do anything.  I'm working with Elements, not the big Photoshop, so I don't know if that makes a difference with the color profile settings.  Will be looking into this further...