Mom Tried It

Friday, January 27, 2012

SHOOT.EDIT.SUBMIT. 01.27.12

Every week more and more people are joining in. I hope you guys are enjoying the fantastic shots and connecting with other photography junkies from around the world. I think it is great that there are more participants, but man you guys are making narrowing them down really difficult!

Awesomeville

The contrast and composition of this shot is spectacular. Truly beautiful! {Kim}

A Country Girl's Ramblings

Such gorgeous clarity and love the black and white conversion. {Misty}

Little Adventures

The bold, crisp colors are fantastic. The depth of field is absolutely perfect. {Kim}

Just A Moment

Gorgeous details and love the way this photo tells a story. {Misty}

Congratulations, winners! Grab your button!

And this week's #1 winner is:

Pieces of Contentment

Holy Cow. The detail captured, the colors, just the whole shot. I am stunned. LOVE.IT. {Kim}

Congratulations on being chosen as this week's #1 photo. Grab your button! You will be in the running to win a fabulous prize at the end of the month.

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Well, it's time for you to submit your entries! Be sure to grab the button below to include on your post.

1. Photo must be taken this week.(Sat - Fri)

2. Only one entry per person.

3. "Shoot. Edit. Submit." button or a link back to this contest must be on your post in order for it to qualify.

4. Link only to your blog post not your main blog url.

**Remember no theme, just your favorite/best shot of the week. **

(If you submit a photo you are granting us permission to copy and paste it onto our blogs if you win.)

By the way, if you haven't already, be sure to go meet my awesome co-host,

Misty at Through a Photographer’s Eye.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

As He sees me

This week’s prompt for P52 is “self portrait”. Can you say freak out? I don’t know about you, but I constantly wonder about what others think of me. I wonder how they see me. I wonder how they see me as a wife, mother, friend, photographer, etc. I don’t like the way I see myself most of the time.

So for this prompt I thought I would remind myself of how He sees me. Through all of my sins and faults this is what He still sees. I need to remember that.

Do you see yourself this way? I usually don’t. I challenge you to join me. See yourself today as God sees you.

project 52 p52 weekly photo challenge my3boybarians.com

How to Put a Watermark on Your Photo in Photoshop and PSE

Yesterday I wrote two ways you could make a watermark yourself. You could always just find one on etsy and buy it, too. ;) So today I am going to share my favorite way to add a watermark to your photo with Photoshop and PSE.

Let me start off by saying there are ton of ways to do this. You can create a custom brush, you can make it an action, I have read lots of ways to do it. But this is my favorite and I think the easiest way to have the most control over everything (not that I am a control freak or anything :/ ).

Your image should already be open in photoshop or PSE. I recommend saving your image before watermarking it. You never know when you may need it without the watermark. Go to File and scroll down until you see Place.

Select Place and a small window will open. Find your watermark (either black version or white version) and select it. Your .png file will appear on your photo with adjusting brackets around it.

Simply click and drag your watermark wherever you want it on the photo. You can also adjust the size by stretching or pushing the brackets in and out. When you find the right size and location for your watermark hit enter to set it.

If you decide it is not the right place simply press CTRL and T and the same time. The brackets will appear again and you can continue to adjust your watermark. When you have the watermark set you will want to adjust the opacity. Look at the bottom right corner of your screen at the layers panel. Your watermark layer should be highlighted. Simply adjust the opacity to the transparency you see fit. The higher the number the more solid the font. The lower the number more see through it is.

This is where you will be happy you have a black and a white version of your watermark. You never know when you might need the other.

Now flatten your image and select Save As and rename it so you know you watermarked it. I usually do “Camera wtrmk”. So I know just by looking at the name if it is the one I want, especially for blogging.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions at all please ask away. You can comment or email them to me at momtriedit@gmail.com.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

How to Make a Watermark .png file in Photoshop and Elements

There are so many ways to do this, but I am going to share two with you today. Tomorrow I will show you how to place the file on your photo using Photoshop or Elements.

Option #1:

Open Photoshop or PSE. Got to the File tab and select New. A window will appear asking you the name and size you want your new image to be. You want the pixel count to be about 80-100 pixels in height and 300 pixels in width. You want the background contents to be transparent. Name your image whatever you would like to, I used Watermark Logo. Hit OK.

When your box has appeared it will have a checkerboard pattern. That means the background has no color. Open a text box and type what you want your watermark to read. Adjust the size and font style. You can find a great selection of fonts over at dafont.com.

When you have the look you want, DO NOT FLATTEN! Select Save As. For file type select .png. You may get a warning that it will have to be saved as a copy. Just click OK. You are done.

Option #2:

If you want your watermark to match your logo, header, or button then you have to do the option above and use the same style from scratch, or you can take a long tedious process to convert it to a watermark. When I say long, I am talking about 30-45 minutes if you are meticulous like me. I will use my friend Rach from Life Ever Since as an example. Here is her blog button.

I made a new image in photoshop just as in the option above. But this time I cut words from her blog button and pasted them onto the image canvas.

Line the words up how you want them to be. Go to your tool bar on the left side of your screen. Right click on the eraser tool. Select Background Eraser Tool.

When you do this a circle will appear. When you erase with it, it will erase the background. You will want to zoom in a lot to get close to your letters. You can easily zoom in by pressing CTRL and + at the same time (zoom out CTRL and -). If your eraser circle is too big or small you can adjust the size by pressing [ for smaller and ] for bigger.

This is the tedious part. You need to remove all of the white from the screen. You will be left with the font and the checker board pattern. As you can see from the image above, I used the paint bucket icon to color the font black. Now you are finished. DO NOT FLATTEN your image. Click Save As. For file name choose your watermark name and then add “black” to it. For file type select .png. A warning will come up telling you that it will be saved as a copy. This is alright. Hit OK.

You will want to now repaint your font with the paint bucket set to white. Now Save As the same name, but replace “black” with “white”. Save as a .png file.

You are done with your watermark! Now come back tomorrow where I will show you my absolute favorite way to put your watermark on your photo.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions at all, please ask away. You can comment or email me at momtriedit@gmail.com.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Sweet Shot Little Girl

A local friend of mine came over yesterday for me to take some photos for her. She uses these photos for her online shop and with a partnership with other business women. They collaborate their goods (clothing, jewelry, and hair accessories) onto a model and then showcase the ensemble on their sites.

Here is her daughter on my front porch yesterday morning. Doesn’t she look so sweet? Hair accessories and necklace by Pocketful of Rosies and dress by Sweet Emma.

Here is the skinny on the photo data. Shot with my 50mm 1.8. Shutter speed: 1/3200, aperture: f/1.8, ISO: 200.

Hope you like it. I was told it was exactly what they were looking for to represent their products. Which made me very, very happy. :)

Losing the Crutch

I admit it, I use Photoshop actions as a crutch. I do not use them to minimize my workflow. I use them because I have no idea what I am doing in a program as complex as Photoshop CS5.

Well, I am trying to learn. Slowly but surely I am learning. It helps that I am also trying my hardest to get things right in camera, so I can just tweak and then add artistic adjustments.

I had a family shoot two weekends ago. After the shoot I tweeted how fast my edits were going. By the way, you should totally follow me on twitter. I am extremely dorky. Now back to the post… Here are my shots absolutely straight out of the camera (but formatted as jpeg, since I shoot RAW).

Don’t even get me started on how mad I am that I cut off her foot. She was moving so fast and that foot was tucked in next to the other one, then poof not any longer. I have been trying to line up my shots knowing I am going to have to crop some off to fit standard frame sizes (8x10, 5x7, etc.). So that is why there was excessive space to the left.

I opened this shot in Adobe Camera Raw. If you have Photoshop or Elements I highly recommend you use ACR. It is a free plug in. It has intuitive sliders that make adjustments easy to see and control. I increased my black levels, brightness, vibrance, contrast, and clarity to adjust to this.

Then I added a texture. Yep, I have been experimenting with textures in portraits. Who would have thunk it?

So this was the ending shot after a quick crop to make it fit the standard portrait sizes, and sharpening for web with a watermark placement. The entire process took me about 3 minutes. I talked with her mom when we were lining up the shoot and she specifically did not want any skin smoothing edits. She wanted her photos to look as natural as possible. Which I am all for (as long as it isn’t my photograph, then photoshop the snot out of it!)

Now after looking at it, I want to clone out the shadows from the trees in the background. How did I not see that until just now? Oh well, off to do it because it is bugging the crap out of me to see now.

So now it is your turn, honest critiques. Go ahead I have thick skin. What would you like to see in this shot?

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Identity Theft Protection

I don’t know about you, but as a mom I am always worried that someone is going to take me child at a park or store. It freaks me out. I give little thought to someone stealing me. My identity, that is.

With everything I do online and the fact that my information is on a million foster care forms that pass the hands of lots of people I really should think about it more. And so should you.

There is a site called IdentityHawk that is made to help you protect yourself. They have a free 30 day trial, too.

I am honestly going to try the free trial and see how I like it. I think we could all use identity theft protection. Just the thought of trying to clean up the mess afterwards is enough to make me just try the free trial. Can you even imagine the headache of dealing with credit card companies, banks, and then the credit reporting agencies? Ugh, no thank you!

So think about protecting yourself and your family. Yes, protecting your identity and your credit is protecting your family. Whether you choose this company or not, you should talk with your family about ways to protect your identity. It is an online world now, your information is out there. Protect it.

*This is a compensated post, but I truly believe this issue is very important. I will be trying the free trial myself. All opinions are my own and I would never share something with my friends I didn’t like or didn’t feel it was worth looking into.

Friday, January 20, 2012

SHOOT.EDIT.SUBMIT. 1.20.12

Last week’s submissions were really fabulous. Every week you guys raise the bar higher and higher. So encouraging to see the same people each week, too. I know I had a hard time narrowing my choices down to just two. I had about ten that I wanted to share. But we did get them narrowed down and here they are:

Jaromir Ka

So majestic and glorious. Again here is proof of an amazing Creator. Incredible capture.{Misty}

Danelle M Photography

The softness of this shot is amazing. It doesn't miss one spec of detail, either. Simply marvelous! {Kim}

Mrs. Southern Bride

Gorgeous choice of b&w for this image. Gorgeous details and beautiful DOF. {Misty}

Butterflies in Time Photography

I love the tones and the light. This one was my favorite. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. {Kim}

Congratulations, winners! Grab your button!

And this week's #1 winner is:

Photo by Ansku

Everything about this picture portrays peace and serenity. Stunning lighting and details all the way down to the water dripping from it's beak. Blew me away. Well done! {Misty}

Congratulations on being chosen as this week's #1 photo. Grab your button! You will be in the running to win a fabulous prize at the end of the month.

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Well, it's time for you to submit your entries! Be sure to grab the button below to include on your post.

1. Photo must be taken this week.(Sat - Fri)

2. Only one entry per person.

3. "Shoot. Edit. Submit." button or a link back to this contest must be on your post in order for it to qualify.

4. Link only to your blog post not your main blog url.

(If you submit a photo you are granting us permission to copy and paste it onto our blogs if you win.)

**Remember, no theme. Just your favorite/best shot of the week. **

If you haven’t been over to my co-host, Misty’s site. You need to. She is talented and has a great blog with neat series. Through a Photograher’s Eyes.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

More Kims, AAAHHH…Run!

This week’s prompt over at Life with My 3 Boybarians is “I Dreamed a Dream” for her P52. Side note: P52 is a project in which you take a photo every week. This one has themed weeks. Since I got pretty serious this week already with my post about experiencing racism, I thought I would do a fun shot.

I my head I had it all planned out. I guess that is where I messed up. ;) I wanted to do something else, but let’s not get into how my brain was writing checks my abilities could not cover.

I dreamed a dream…

that there were more copies of me, so I could get things done quickly. But only when I need there to be multiple Kims. I watched Multiplicity with Michael Keaton. I know how that can turn out.

Ta-Da! My dorky little pony tail and my small kitchen. But seriously, how great would it be to be able to shoot or edit a little bit while other you’s did the housework?!?!

Snow Crafts

I know that I have shared before that I contribute articles for a few places. Some of you might not know that this blog started out as a kids activities and craft blog. You can find them under the side bar category “Crafts and Activities” if you are interested.

Well, twice a month you can find me over at No Time for Flash Cards. You can also find my once a month over at Blissfully Domestic and at Everything Mom. No Time for Flash Cards is a fantastic resource for ideas and activities to do with young children. I just adore the owner, Allie. The other two sites are full of wonderful articles and ideas for moms. Beware it will suck up your entire nap time! I swear, so be warned.
This week two of my posts were published and I thought I would share the links with you. The first is a fun sensory activity to make indoor snow and play with it. My kids went nuts for this one. My house smelled like baby oil for hours, yummy.

The other one is for people that will be getting snow. It is a snow measuring yard stake. We decorated ours to look like Arctic animals. The kids chose an Arctic fox and a snow owl. My idea was to have them help draw, but they got too into reading about the animals. So they painted, glued, and stickered, but did not want to draw. That happens. :/

I hope you enjoy them and I will share my articles more often in case you guys are interested. Because I know not everyone likes to read me go on and on about depth of field and trying to compose a shot. ;)

I also share these on this site's facebook page and twitter. If you would like I would love to connect with you there. I don't do a lot of facebook updates, though. Probably once a day. I am a slacker, I know.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Interracial Families Dealing with Racism

I was talking with a person last week about the long weekend and they made a comment about MLK Day beign ridiculous and just wanting to celebrate something. They said something along the lines of that it is really no need for it because racism is practically gone.

Um, no it isn’t.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a wonderful man with the most amazing heart I have ever read about. He had class, compassion, and he made a country (even a world) listen. We should celebrate that day for him and for awareness of racism. While it isn’t to the same degree as it was in the 60’s it is still here.

Example:

I took the kids (Cole, Charley, and Little Lady) to Target. When we go to Target we stop at the concession stand and the kids get an ICEE and a giant cookie right when we walk in the door. It keeps them happy until we go to the toy section at the end of the trip.

So we get our food and go to sit down at the tables in the area. Only two tables are free. One that can seat 4 or one that can seat 2. Obviously we chose the table with 4 seats. There was a woman sitting at the table next to us. She was with a friend who was getting a refill on her soda. When we sat down she huffed and got up. She picked up her things and moved to the table that sat 2.

I thought no big deal, she just didn’t want to be around three loud kids woofing down a ton of sugar. Guess what, I really wouldn’t either.

Her friend came back to the table and asked why the woman had moved. Her response, “I don’t sit next to nigger lovers.” {Sorry for the harsh words, but I really feel that her disgusting choice is very relevant}

I didn’t know who she hated more at that moment, my (foster) daughter for being racially mixed and obviously part black, or me because she thought I was the biological mom and had a relationship with a black man. Either way I felt sick to my stomach.

I looked around the table and my beautiful children were smiling and laughing. In their own little world they were completely unaware of the hate and wretchedness around them. I will keep them there as long as I can.

My children are not blind. They know Little Lady has different skin and hair than they do. Charley picks ethnic Barbies and dolls because she says they are pretty like her baby sister. That is love.

So instead of doing what the 20 year old me would have done. {By the way if you want to know what 20 year Kim would do: I would have grabbed my kids’ ICEEs and poured them over her head and then I would have more than likely punched her.} Instead I laughed and ate with my children ignoring her. As we got up to go through the store I went to the counter and asked her how much the woman’s snack had cost. I gave the cashier that amount and asked her to give it to the lady and let her know that we bought her snack for her and God bless her.

Why? Because…

“Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We still have a long way to go.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

I Heart Faces: Family Fun

This could be one of my favorites from a great family/maternity session. The little girl “A” did not warm up to me as fast as I thought she would. She was overdue for a nap and her favorite cousin was nearby. So was not in the mood to take pictures. So some funny outtakes with Daddy did the trick.

We were all laughing and having and fun at this point. Tell me you are not smiling right now, I dare you. ;)

Trying to Capture a Small Scene

It probably is no surprise to anyone that has read this blog for a while that I love macro photography. I mean I love it, especially bugs (yes, I am weird). But I love looking at landscape and nature photography.

So when I was out this weekend taking photos at Giant City State Park, I came across an area with a ton of icicles. I shared some of the icicles on the cliffs with you yesterday. But those were really bits and pieces of an elaborate scene that took my breath away in real life.

I came across one spot that had over hanging rock formations with icicles hanging down over a half frozen pond. This could actually fit in one shot, I thought. Now to capture it properly. Crap.

While I know I didn’t capture it perfectly, after trying different angles and recomposing a few hundred times (it was probably more like 20, but it felt like 200). I told myself that I only had 4 clicks to get this. While my memory card had enough space for about 300 more shots, I knew I had to challenge myself. This one was what I felt was the best of the four.

Have you ever given yourself a limit to the amount of shots you were going to take?

Monday, January 16, 2012

Photographing Giant City Park

It was 35 degrees out and too cold for my wimpy Texas girl butt. But it had snowed earlier in the week and I was hoping for some neat photos. I pretty much had my wide angle lens (Sigma 10-20) on the entire time. I REALLY need to practice my eye for landscape, but there were a few I will not hang my head in shame about.

Thank goodness the scenery was just so beautiful and there were a ton of interesting things, because relying on my ability to put a shot together in this genre would not cut it.

The icicles…oh…the icicles.

I think the icicles were worth my loss of feeling in my toes for a few hours.

These icicles were as tall as me. I am not laying down or squatting to get these shots. These cliffs are pretty big. I will have a couple more shots tomorrow to share.

In case you were wondering, this is Giant City Park State Park. It is actually a part of the Shawnee National Forest, too. It is minutes from my house and every time I go there I wonder why I don’t go more often. This park is the whole reason I wanted a wide angle lens.

I am cheating and this is not part of a 366 project, but it is kind of a weekly rewind. So I am joining my awesome ladies, Naptime Momtog and Chic Homeschool Mama. The theme this week is Chilly.