Experiment with Hand Coloring

Ever since I read Bambi Cantrell's book The Art of People Photography I've been dying to experiment with hand-colored effect. I even had a picture in mind, just never the time. Now, thanks to a cooperative toddler and that I am still on vacation, I finally had a chance.

Even though I didn't get those Kubota actions for Christmas, it's not that hard to do in Photoshop anyway. Check it out!

Here's the original picture, my niece in her princess dress on her first birthday.

Here it is with the hand-colored effect:

I liked the original, but the wood floor in the background made it too warm. I tried it in black & white, but without the pink of the dress it was really missing something. With the hand-colored effect you get the best of both - I love it!

Snowballs for Christmas

The last week has been so hectic and I haven't had time to post anything! Christmas was great and we pulled off a full English-style Christmas dinner for eight without a hitch. I swear, Jude's turkey is getting better every year. Niall loved opening presents, and playing with his cousins and all the new toys.

The drinks were the biggest hit of the day, Jude made homemade Advocaat, which is a dutch eggnog usually made with alcohol like vodka and brandy. We haven't found it in the US, but apparently it was a very important part of his Christmas tradition. Anyway, I think snowballs are tasty even with Eggnog, so if you have some around you might want to try one!

Snowball

In a tall glass add:
ice
2 oz eggnog
1-2 oz brandy (or 1 oz each brandy and vodka if you want it stronger)
fill glass with Sprite/7-up

Enjoy!

Christmas Tree Photos

I've seen a lot of discussion lately about Christmas tree photos on different photography discussion lists and blogs. Now that we finally have our tree up and decorated I thought it would be fun to try some of these shots for myself.

I've always loved the way a Christmas tree looks at night, the way it lights up the whole room, so last night I got out the tripod and the wireless remote and took some long exposure shots. I was shooting in RAW so I didn't bother changing the white balance on the camera, because I knew I could adjust it during RAW conversion later. Not lazy, efficient.



Shooting in RAW and then using either Lightroom, Photoshop RAW, or your camera's RAW converter makes taking Christmas tree photos super easy. For these shots I adjusted the white balance, and for some of them I turned up the saturation. It's easy to just experiment and see what you like.

For instructions on how to get great tree pictures without shooting in RAW, Me Ra Koh has some great tips on her blog. Check out Christmas Tree Tips and More Christmas Tree Tips.

Choosing a Professional Print Lab

Getting great digital prints is easier said than done, and I think print quality is something that really sets the professionals apart. From the beginning I knew that print quality was a very high priority for me. Finding a dependable pro lab was more difficult than I expected! I was looking for a lab that could give me:

• great prints every time, guaranteed
• the ability to do everything online, easily
• access to help/support from a human
• the ability to proof and order online, set up password protected galleries for clients that they can share with family and friends
• other photo products available such as mugs, t-shirts, etc.
• reasonable price, given that I'm just staring out and not making money yet :)

I looked at several options, including SmugMug, Shutterfly, Pictage, DigiLabs, digitalrailroad, and a lab in Portland that I can't find the name of right now. If you happen to be shopping for a pro lab, this list is a great start.

Ultimately I chose SmugMug because their prints are beautiful, they met all my criteria, and they offer a lot of extras that set them apart from the rest, including:

• unlimited storage
• web site hosting with your domain name
• easy customization of your web site
• backups of all your data at three datacenters across the country - this is huge!
• reasonable pro package pricing

SmugMug is not just for pros! They can host all your family photos, and back them up in three datacenters, for a low yearly fee. Unlike Shutterfly, you can also make it easy for family and friends to download your original files. Best of all you can order the same high quality prints as the pros, and rest easy knowing that your family photos are backed up securely. I'm hoping to spend some time over the Christmas break moving all my family photos from Shutterfly to our new SmugMug site.

You can take a child to Santa, but you can't make him smile

On Saturday morning we took Niall to see Santa. I was really excited because we found a Santa event where parents were allowed to take pictures, everything was digital, and you could to download all the originals. Perfect! I had hoped to capture some great shots of Niall looking up at Santa with wonder in his eyes, or at least that the pro would get a good shot with him smiling and looking in the general direction of the camera.

Alas, it was not meant to be. At least he didn't cry. He did look at a toy with Santa briefly, but he was never sure. When asked if he wanted to sit on Santa's lap, the answer was a very firm no. I was so busy trying to coax him and make him comfortable that I was only able to take a few shots. Overall none of them were great, but I like this one because it shows the feeling of apprehension of this first encounter with Santa.

Christmas Card Spoiler!

I finally finished our Christmas card last night, and I'm so excited I couldn't wait to post the photo! I'm running so behind this year, can you believe Christmas is two weeks from today?

Here are a couple of the other fun shots I got that didn't make the card:

Book: The Art of People Photography by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen

I've been reading the book "The Art of People Photography" by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. My friend Kelly loaned it to me, and I think I'll have to get my own copy otherwise I won't be able to give it back!

Bambi Cantrell is my new hero. There are so many things in this book that I'm dying to try, she has really great tips for how to work with people of all ages in different portrait settings, and also great post-processing techniques like using the Liquify filter in Photoshop, and using Kubota Actions to get cool effects like hand-coloring and cross-processing. She even has a section on marketing and growing your business! This is a great read for anyone that wants to take better photos of people.

So I was just sitting down to type this blog entry about how excited I am about this book, and I thought I'd just quickly check email first. Imagine my surprise when I saw Me Ra Koh's blog post today! It's all about how she and Brian just had dinner with Bambi Cantrell - lucky! If you have a chance, check out her web site!

I can't wait to try some of the techniques in this book! As usual I have more enthusiasm than time at the moment, but hopefully over Christmas I can make some time to experiment and learn some new tricks!

Lightroom: Love at First Sight

Last weekend it snowed and for a few short hours everything was covered in beautiful, white snow. Of course we took Niall outside to play, but it was still snowing and I wasn't willing to risk the good camera so I took the little point & shoot out with us. What I captured was incredibly disappointing, but to just for fun I thought I'd try a few in Lightroom to see what I could do with them. Lightroom is amazing!

I've only just begun to experiment so I don't feel qualified to write a full review. I will say that it's taken some of my favorite things from different raw converters and combined them here. For example the Canon raw converter can display the before and after images, side by side so you can see exactly what is changing while you're editing. The Photoshop CS2 Raw converter was mostly what I worked with before and Lightroom has all that and more.

I took this shot on my Canon SD870 IS. It has a great wide-angle lens but I didn't change any settings to compensate for the snow so everything came out sort of a dingy, washed out gray.

Lightroom to the rescue! Here's what I did:

• used auto to set the white balance and then made a minor adjustment
• use auto to set the exposure and turned up the blacks
• added a vignette
• upped the blue saturation

Still not a great shot, but it's much better than it was. If you don't want to run actions or do anything complicated in Photoshop, Lightroom could be all you need and it only costs $299. However if you want to do fancy stuff like Actions you will still need Photoshop. Learning to use Photoshop and Actions is next on my list, and I heard a rumor that I might be getting a Kubota action pack for Christmas!

Restless Photographer

Ugh, I feel like I've done nothing but work on our home computers since Thanksgiving! Too much time with computers and not enough on photography will make a very boring blog, and a restless photographer. The good news is that my new computer is screaming fast running Photoshop and I rebuilt Jude's computer and was able to recover all the data from his hard drive. Yay!

Unfortunately we caught a cold this weekend and now we're all sick. Niall was up half the night last night with a high fever. I want to spend my spare time playing with Photoshop and Lightroom, but with a sick child there is no such thing as spare time. Sleep has become the highest priority, so on that note I'm off to bed!

Computers Take Over My Life

I feel like I've been working on our home computers non-stop since Thanksgiving. Ugh! Setting up my new computer, dealing with Jude's computer that has been struggling for a week or so now, trying to copy everything off my old computer, and and make backups of Jude's before disaster strikes.

It's officially too late now, disaster is here and Jude's computer no longer boots up. Rather than waiting for my shiny new Windows Home Server to arrive as I planned, I'll probably get a new hard drive and spend the rest of the weekend rebuilding his machine. I wanted to spend this weekend taking pictures, not trying to recover a hard drive! Oh well, at least I ran a big backup last week so if the disk is truly toast we shouldn't have lost much.

This is a serious disappointment though, and not just for the weekend I'm about to lose. I was processing the funniest pictures for the blog - outtakes from my family shoot with Sarah and David! My nephew Jude has so much energy, there are some really funny shots that nobody but me has seen yet! I guess everyone will have to wait a bit longer.