Sneak Peakamus Maximus

So. . .last week I ended the week falling into a fireplace, bruising my head by banging my camera getup against my forehead and my feet were eaten alive by fire ants. Just another day in the life of a clutz. I’ll work on elaborating more on the fireplace story later. :D

I have been a busy girl this past week as I have had more photo jobs in this time than I have had in a very long time. And it has been gooooood.

So here are a few sneak peaks.

First up: BellaBee. My amazing talented friend Wendy creates all kinds of domestic goodies in her Etsy shop. Do me a favor, and check her out.Then on Saturday, I had the great privilege and pleasure of photographing an incredibly lovely wedding.

Then the next morning, Spencer and I woke up to photograph a large family that I had not photographed since before Spencer and I had started dating.

 Then my cousin Matthew and his girlfriend Megan were sweet enough to allow me to experiment on them. ;)

So, all in all, it has been a BUSY week and I will have more goodies on here in the near future.

contact me or view my online portfolio. . .

No more Atlanta traffic, no more...yeah yeah yeah

So....me....my life....is CHANGING.

As of September 29th, the day I turn 28, I will be returning to a previous job that I held...with mixed feelings. I didn't love my previous job at American Homecare where I was a collector of money from insurance companies, but I did like the people and the company. It is also closer to home. This is advantageous for several reasons 1) 12 minutes away from the house as opposed to 55 minutes, 2) This means I can sleep an hour later which is GREAT!! 3) I can come home over my lunch break, 4) I can take Liam to school in the morning, which he is so stoked about, and 5) I will be working with my mother-in-law again which I really liked actually.

And all that means no more traffic...as pictured below.

I took these on my phone one dayon the commute home to show exactly what I would NOT be missing anymore. As you can somewhat see from the top left photo, traffic is backed up BOTH directions.

The bottom left photo shows the source of all evil on my ride home. The Wesley Chapel exit. One of the most poorly planned exits for an interstate. It comes less than a mile after I-285 merges onto I-20 so it causes great congestion from the people on I-20 trying to switch lanes before they miss their exit and the people coming off of I-285 who are trying NOT to get off on that exit. General yuckiness ensues. The bottom right is my usual look as I am sitting in the mess that results.

One more not so great photo for your perusing pleasure but with a much happier story.
This is David Jay (aka DJ by all of his friends, which I hope to be someday...geez I sound like a stalker) and I after the conclusion of the Free to Succeed tour in Atlanta on Monday night. I think this seminar may have been a turning point in my life as a photographer.

Let me explain for those of you who don't know who DJ is. He is an incredibly successful wedding photographer who never had any formal training in the field. Learned as he went...kind of like me. He has been touring with a very informative seminar Free to Succeed. Since it is now over, you won't be able to attend yourself but if you go here you can get the DVD which I highly reccomend if you are thinking about starting a photography business.

So investing the money to go to this seminar was totally worth it. I am glad I followed [b]ecker's advice and went. I am now armed with the information and confidence that I need to really start pushing my photography...finally. Considering I started shooting weddings when I was 18 (1998) and then just slipped out of it in the past 3 years or so (having a kid and getting married kind of does that to you) it's about flippin' time.

So I have a friend of mine working on a logo for me so that I can start branding myself and I have some friends lined up as guinea pigs so that I can refresh my portfolio and I am going to start arming my friends with information needed to start selling me. ;) I also started a facebook so I can start networking my photography a bit more. And I am getting in contact with some old photography friends so that I can start networking through them.

YAY! {{deep breath}} Here's hoping that this time next year I will be able to quit my day job and pioneer.

Liamisms and other such updates

I know I have not been on here for some time it’s just that a LOT has been going on and I haven’t had the spare time to be able to edit any pictures. I have SO many to show all of you they just are in their rough state right now. Photoshop has ruined me. :(

I have a few Liamisms to share though that are too cute to keep to myself.

The first is one that my mom told me about a little bit ago. She and my sister have two female dogs. And we all know what dogs do to clean/scratch certain areas. Well one day Liam says:

“Freckles, stop licking your penis!”

Mom immediately corrected him, “Liam, Freckles is a girl, she doesn’t have a penis.”

“No,” Liam agreed “boys have penises, girls just have a line down there.”

!!!!!

I don’t think life gets much better than laughing at things like that.

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On Monday Liam asked Spencer and I where he was going the next day. “You’re going to big kids school again.”

“But, I don’t wanna go to big kids school. I wanna go out in service.”

Don’t we all sweetie? Just want to skip our other mundane responsibilities and go out in service everyday. Welcome to your first taste of the grown up world.

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Last night on the way home from the meeting, Liam and I were singing the bits and pieces of different kingdom songs that he knows. We are almost home when he asks:

“Mommy, when we get home can I watch a Jehovah movie? Because I want to learn more about Jehovah.”

I immediately wished that it wasn’t so late just so that I could oblige such a sweet request as that. It makes me forget about the fact that school has been a bit rocky so far. . .

Wait! I haven’t told you about that yet have I?

**********

Liam’s first day of school, the teacher’s aide calls us up to let us know that Liam had his scissors out when he wasn’t supposed to and cut his hair. Why oh why, we don’t know. He has used scissors at Pre-K, Grandpa’s house, AND our house without ever doing any such thing. . .but at school, he felt the urge.

Liam’s second day, he gets a squiggly face on his daily agenda because he was continuously talking and making noises when he shouldn’t. When I talked to him about it that night, he told me that he had been making himself burp. {{HUGE SIGH}} It seems I am raising a class clown.

Day three of school and Liam gets another squiggly face for hitting a boy…twice. At this point I am near tears because my baby boy is not showing his best side and making himself, not to mention his parents, look bad. :(

Day four he finally came home with a smiley face. Since then it has been up and down with his conduct. He has already had to be moved to his own desk because of talking too much. As always, it makes me want to call Mom to apologize profusely to her since I also was an incessant talker through my school years.

Hopefully I will have some pictures up soon. I have some from my lovely in-laws anniversary weekend with all the kids down, I have some from the beach and I just remembered I still haven't posted Pirate Party pictures! Oh goodness me! :) And those are all edited and ripe and ready to share. I will endeavor to get those up VERY soon.

Amalgam

Good lord what a weekend. It was such a LONG weekend for being only 2 days long. Packed to the gills with fun and work and fun work. The Pirate Party was this Saturday and OH BOY was it cute and fun and HOT as hades! The humidity was enough to make a person exclaim, “I’m melting…melting away! What a world, what a world!”

Directly after that I had to rush home to finish cleaning up the house for the girl’s night that I had been planning to have BEFORE Spencer lost his job. You never realize fully how messy your house is until you know people who have never seen it before will be coming over. {{rolling eyes}} First impressions and all. I decided to make something that I thought would be easy and inexpensive. Swiss style cheese fondue. Not easy and not inexpensive. It called for Gruyere cheese, which is almost $10 for a block and Kirsch Liqueur, which they don’t sell in Georgia by the way. It took both my best friend and I to make it and I still don’t think it came out the way it was supposed to. At least it tasted okay.

Fast forward to Sunday and after the meeting at the Kingdom Hall, Spencer and I came home and crashed before going to a “Jazz on the Green” going away party for some friends of ours. Fun times considering it stormed all afternoon before the party. Undaunted, we all spread our blankets and mats on the lawn anyway and snacked and enjoyed the live singing.

Picture wise I have lots of goodies to come. I am finally almost finished editing and post processing the tea party pictures only to have to start on the Pirate pictures. {{SIGH}} Just in case you guys wouldn’t have guessed, my little man was the cutest gentleman pirate EVER!! Then I also have pictures of the jazz night to work on. YAY! On the good side, after being in Covington for two years people are finally starting to realize that I have a gift for taking pictures. I have never been one to push myself but I would mention my photographic past to people at random times. I guess because photography is one of those “hobbies” almost anyone can say they are good at, my statements didn’t hold too much water until the evidence was seen. :D

While you patiently await the above-mentioned peektures I will grace my blog with some more of the picnic pictures mentioned previously.

Now I promise I am not going to plague you with ALL of the “before and after”s but be prepared to scroll for a while with all of the pictures because after I learned some kick butt tricks from my favorite Pioneer Woman, I opened up this picture folder and went to town on them

So here we have my little man showing how truly froglike he can be to accent his lovely face painting job.Here we see why photoshop is the best thing since sliced bread. What seems to be a good picture can be made great by a few clicks of the mouse and all of a sudden you have the colors and so forth that you remember seeing and not just some blah imposter colors.
You may remember this picture from a previous post? Can you believe the difference. I feel ashamed for sending out the bbq pictures to family and friends before I got the chance to "fix" them.

Another cute as can be butterfly girl.This is the lovely artist at work on her first volunteer, JJ. As you saw, he got a frog so Liam had to follow suit.

These are the lovely hosts of the BBQ. Please ignore the colorful shirt on the gentleman below. I must admit they are a bit accentuated by the action I chose.

Turns out I still was not able to post ALL of the pictures I wanted here from the BBQ as time would not permit. More to come later, if you can stand it.

My cup almost runneth over

Did you know that fingernail polish remover will only remove the fingernail polish if you don’t rub it? If you accidentally get it on your nails and avoid all friction thereon until it dries, it will not harm your perfectly done nail job. Amazing.

Soooo…let’s update. Last week found me with the revelation that my husband just might be right and I need to start getting to bed early to make my life less of a living hell (see this post for the full explanation). Now ask me how well I have done putting this theory into practice.

Do you even have to ask?

Let’s just say that Monday night I was up until a little after 1:30. L NOT good. Needless to say, when my alarm went off for me to get up early so that I could get to work early to make up for the torture chamber visit yesterday…I turned it off subconsciously instead of snooze. And this would be the one night that I forgot to ask Spencer if he had remembered to set the alarm.

Do you know that they say firemen are more likely to die early from heart problems? This is because they are in a state of rest, or sometimes sleep, when the fire alarm rings and then it jolts them awake and causes their heart to jump (not literally…at least I don’t think) and this is detrimental to their heart.

6:15 a.m. scenario at my house. Spencer sits bolt upright in bed and looks out the window. “What time is it? Oh shit! What time is it?” (side note: my husband never cusses so he was definitely panicked)

I immediately jump out of bed, wide awake, cursing the whole time.

I feel sorry for firemen.

But I must share with you the fruits of my labors. I have within the past few weeks, and even more so this weekend, learned more about Adobe Photoshop than I have the whole time since I have been introduced to it. I don’t know how I ever survived without it. Once I begin working on it, I am totally addicted and entranced. Even more exciting for me is the discovery of this website. This woman is absolutely amazing and hee-hi-ho-larious to boot. She has this kick butt tips on how to use photoshop and a whole new world has been opened up for me. My cup was about ready to spill over because I finally see what my photos have been missing to where they don't quite "POP" like other peoples. Only thing that would have made my joy complete is if I could afford the printer I so desperately need...want. SO let me share some of the fun I was having with it.

This is an image of my absolutely gorgeous friend Leslie from Cali. Good shot, I love it so that is why I decided to play with it.

Now, you probably can't tell as much until you make the image bigger but I used a few newly learned tricks to make create more blur while still keeping her features sharp. This way her skin looks creamy and dreamy...ok that didn't sound so good, but you know what I mean.

Now, THIS is more dramatic. I call this my "movie star" shot. I was able to accomplish this by using the altered photo you saw above and adding a cool new action that I downloaded from the pioneer woman's website.

In the middle is the original shot and surrounding are my alterations.

Unfortunately, the way blogger works, when I create a diptych, they do not upload so very big but hopefully you can click on this to make it bigger to get a better idea of what I was talking about. :D I'm having so much FUN!

So much so that I continued playing with the same technique mentioned above on my favortie shot of a bride from the last wedding I shot OVER A YEAR AGO....sheesh I am out of practice.
Cool huh? And here I selected the eyes and then desaturated the rest of the shot to give it an old timey feel. I'm really digging it.

So, I'll have to show you guys the pictures I worked on of this adorable little boy in our congregation next time. I think I have inundated you with enough pictures for today.