Beach Portraits: Vignettes

As in every family, there are fun stories and/or facts about the members of our family. While I was trying to get a good picture of all the girl cousins, I snapped this candid that I really like. Its not really a great quality photo, but it captures a story.

These girls are the first girl grandchildren in the family. And they were born nine months apart from each other(it was a busy two years in our family). The cousin on the left is the oldest. Nine months later my daughter (the one on the right) was born. Then nine months later,the blond in the middle arrived. Its been fun to watch them grow, dress them alike at Easter, etc. I look forward to lots of pictures of the three of them together as we watch them grow up.


This cousin, "B", was born right before my hubby and I got married. During the first years of our marriage, we lived near his family. As a result, I watched him grow up. Now that I have a son, I see so many similarities between the two of them. You may not see it so much in how they look (although they are obviously from the same genes), but the way my son acts just like his older cousin did amazes me.


This picture shows "B's" dad and older brother. While photographing all the kiddos, I glanced up to see these two standing next to each other. I swung my camera around to capture the like-father-like-son pose!

Beach Portraits: Just The Boys!

This is my favorite of the boy cousins. I love the grass and sand. And aren't these handsome boys?


Here they all are taking a look at the ocean. The hands in their pockets make me grin; especially the younger boys. Its like they are trying to be so grown up.


Again, aren't they handsome boys!

Beach Portraits: Just the Girls!

It's fun to me that of the ten grandchildren in my hubby's family, there are five girls and five boys. My children love their cousins and have such a great time on the rare occasions they all get to be together. As you can imagine, any family photo opportunity must include pictures of the grandkids.

Here is a picture of just the girls:

Joel's sister, Dawn made the matching pillowcase dresses and his sister, April made the hair bows. I love how cut they all look! And the white and pink are perfect with the blue of the sky and sea.

I played with the black and white here. I converted the photo to black and white, then "erased" the black and white on the ribbons of the dresses to allow the pink to come through.


See the man walking the beach? I tried as hard as I could to shoot in a way to avoid seeing the other people on the beach. But it just didn't happen every time.

Thank goodness for photoshop! Here is the same photo after applying the "healing brush"(and a few adjustments to contrast and color).


Here's another edit in photoshop just for fun. Have I ever mentionned that I DON'T know what I'm doing? I DO know I'm having lots of fun!

My Little Man and Photoshop

I just wanted to post some of the fun I've been having with photoshop. This photo was taken of our son a couple of Sunday mornings ago. This shirt has a pink stripe in it, which bugs my hubby. That's why I took the pictures of our son in it!

Anyway, the photo on the right is the original photo. The one on the right is enhanced by photoshop. I used the auto contrast, unsharp mask, adjust hue/saturation and omni light features.




















Here is the same photo converted to black and white.

Here's another shot: the original is on the left, the right is converted to black and white!

Summer Snapshots

Some photoshop fun: I applied the watercolor filter to the above picture to get this pretty effect:

P-Bug!

Having just recently acquired photoshop elements, I am slooowwwly learning how to use it! Some of the things I am playing around with are black & white, the sketch filter and opacity of a layer. So here are the results:

This is my niece, nicknamed p-bug. This is the original photo (not taken by me):



Unfortunately, I don't remember the steps I took to get each of these effects, but its fun to experiment. In the following, I was messing with the opacity of a layer:


With this one I was messing around with the sketch filter..I can't remember all the steps.

This was created with layers, masks, etc. I guess I should write down what I do while I'm playing if I plan to blog about it, huh?
I know this isn't a helpful or informative post by any means. But at least you got to see my beautiful niece!

The Eyes Have It

I just acquired Photoshop Elements on my computer. And even though I already have enough distractions from my everyday duties (I'm always looking for ways to avoid housework), I am now addicted to figuring out how to use it. Its a slow process, and the dishes are piling up!

This morning, I took a picture of my daughter so I could play around with the eyes. She has beautiful eyes, and I wanted to try out a technique I had read about on Pioneer Woman. Since this blog is my place to put all my fun without boring everyone who reads my "regular" blog, I will now post the results of my playing:

Before playing:

After playing:

What do you think? I think the second picture really showcases her awesome eyes and even highlights the cute freckles on her face.

Did I adjust too much? Do the eyes look unnatural?