announcements...

My favorite way to do announcements is through my

favorite place in the whole wide world.

You can get fifty, 6 X 7.5 size greeting cards including envelopes for $14.99!!! Additional sets of 25 can then be purchased for $5.99! I think this is such a great deal! They do have some very cute templates to choose from if you don't know how to make your own in photoshop. But...if you do know how to make your own...they will give you the same deal for your own design! I don't think all Costco stores have the option to use your own design. Every Costco in Utah that I have been to does. You cannot upload the design online, you do have to go into the store to order them. I usually drop it off, they print a sample and if I like it...they print the rest while I shop. Such a great and inexpensive way to share good news! And...being such a proud big sister...this is, indeed very good news!

Birth announcements, graduation announcements, wedding invitations, Christmas card (despite my denial that Christmas is even coming)...you name it! If I get enough time, and interest...I will try to create a tutorial on making these in Photoshop...is this something most of you already know how to do? Or would a tutorial be helpful?

How to get a black seamless background...

I get a lot of emails asking how I get a deep black/seamless background making baby look like they are "floating". It is super easy and doesn't take a lot of time. I know there are a lot of ways to do this, (even some actions out there that do it for you), I use the burn tool in photoshop. Good news is that you can do this with elements too! Choose an "airbrush soft round" set it to "midtones" and set the exposure to your liking. To get it all deep black I use it at 100%. Now just go over all of the black area. You have to be careful around the areas you don't want darker. I actually do this with a layer mask so I can go back over any areas that I accidentally burned. If you aren't sure what layer masks are....just be careful around the edges. (I am way too tired to talk about layer masks tonight!)

This is a screen shot of a picture before I burned the black...

After....

This method does take a little practice. You have to make sure you get every single area. I think this is key to making pictures look more professional!

Do I HAVE to photoshop?

Oliva asked a great question last week about photoshop. She asked if she was always going to be disappointed with her photos unless if she started to use photoshop. I wanted to take that discussion a little further today....First, let's start with an image.

(Click on image to make bigger so you can really see the difference.)

The top image is straight out of camera...meaning I did nothing to it in photoshop except re-size and sharpen for web. The second image has been fixed in photoshop. I wanted to show how subtle the differences really are. I felt like his face was a little underexposed because of the deep shade we were in so I did a slight curve adjustment on his skin to brighten it up a little. I also did a slight color pop on the overall image to give it a little more contrast. I also added a little bit of sharpness to his eyes to make them pop a little more. I find with dark eyes, it is nice to lighten the pupils a little. There are a million ways to do this. I use Scoot Kelby's method. Then I just sharpened a bit and added a watermark. Maybe spent a total of 5 minutes in photoshop with this image.

I think photographers go through phases as they learn photoshop. I know I have certainly gone through all the crazy stages. When you first start things tend to be WAY over-done. Making kids look like they have alien eyes, plastic skin, neon colored clothes, etc, etc. Sometimes I go back through my photos and think.."What was I thinking with that post processing job?" I am finding that my "style" is becoming a little more traditional and subtle. Some images I still go all out for, but I am settling down and realizing I want more realistic, real life photos that will stand the test of time. I think all photographers have to find their own style and stick with it. This is tough when trends come and go. One thing I am working on really hard right now is nailing correct exposure and white balance in camera. This helps to get good skin tones straight out of camera. It is all about skin tones for me right now. It is one of the hardest things I have tried to learn so far. When you photoshop an image you have to remember that anytime you do a color pop, it changes the skin tones too. That is why you see so many images with orange skin. Then when you add skin softening on top of that...you get a really scary oompa loompa effect. {Believe me, I have done this plenty of times to my fair skinned kiddos!}

I guess my point of today's post is to encourage you all to give photoshop a try. Yes, you will make mistakes. Yes, you will look back and want to slap yourself for what you did to an image...but it is an important phase you have to go through. Do I think you HAVE to photoshop to help you LOVE your photos? Well, kind of, yes. I think it is important especially when displaying photos on the web to at least sharpen your images for the web. Keeping things simple and using photoshop to enhance your photos will help you on your journey to loving your images. Just remember to keep it simple. Keep it real. And before you know it...you will LOVE what photoshop can do for you!

I will post more images from this session soon! Man, my friends have beautiful kids! Just wait!

Answering a few Questions....

Thought I would answer a few questions for people today....And, just for fun, I added my favorite bridal portrait of my little sister from last summer.

Katie asks..."your pics are incredible...found your blog via twopeas... you have great talent. But, I want to know what you do for your lighting and your backgrounds... are they photoshopped? please share your secret with me? please????"

First of all, Katie, Thank you for the compliments. It always means so much to me when people take the time to leave me feedback. I love to share on Two Peas. It is a great resource for photographers! It is also fun to meet so many people that share the same passion! As for lighting...I guess I would say I am mostly a natural light photographer. I feel like it is the most "natural" way to do things. One problem I have run into though (especially with newborn photography) is natural light is NOT reliable. A cloud rolls in and you have to re-do all your settings. With newborns, you do not have the time to keep adjusting settings. This is why I have finally decided I needed to learn how to use my studio lighting. It is reliable, dependable and I can keep my settings the same throughout the entire session, making only minor adjustments due to aperture desires. Wanting more or less bokeh, etc. I do not recommend going out and spending a fortune on lights unless it is absolutely something you want to invest a lot of time and money into. Not to mention the space you need to work them properly.

On to backdrops. I would say I'm mostly a "white trash" back drop kind of girl. I use sheets from Wal-Mart. (I do not endorse Wal-Mart very often...actually really despise that place...however you can get a killer deal on sheets there!) I rig my own back drop stand using all kinds of things. clothes drying rack, my fireplace mantel, even been known to use my treadmill. (At least the thing is getting a little attention, know what I mean?) For my niece's pictures, I did rent a backdrop stand as well as a canvas backdrop. While I didn't LOVE the color of the backdrop and actually changed the color on several pictures...It made a huge difference! I loved it. It is next on my list of things I just have to buy to make photography easier. I try to justify the expense of all this stuff...it really makes no sense at all. But...it is all in the name of making this mama of 3 happy with her hobby. Right?

I do photo shop the backgrounds. I like the "seamless" look. I usually burn the blacks to make it look all even. Since newborns are so small...I use a bean bag, draped with a sheet and usually just have the parent hold up the rest of the sheet behind to act as a back drop. I hope that makes sense. It doesn't give the depth you are "supposed" to have between the subject and back drop...but it works for me, so I stick with it.

Annie (also from Two Peas, a fellow Utah Pea!) asks: "Hi Kati...I'm from the Utah peas...CUTE AMAZING pictures :)wow!!!!!And you must share how you hung that chubby baby...I have tried and tried to hang a baby...I can't get them balanced then it throws the mom into a nervous wreak...LOL!!!you must share the secret :)"

I was actually REALLY nervous to do this shot for SEVERAL reasons! First...I don't like to be a "copy-cat" photographer. Someone came up with this AMAZING pose and now everyone is trying to get their hands on it. I guess I just decided that I can't feel bad about admiring other people's work and copying is the highest form of flattery, right? I felt most comfortable trying this shot for the first time with my own niece because I knew my sister in law trusted me with her baby. (At least I hoped she did). I will say there were a few times the baby arched her strong little back and neck and gave us all a heart attack as she nearly fell to the floor! I would make sure you have at least 2 people right there ready for anything! I wish I had some great advice for this shot. This was my first time attempting it. Good thing I had my friend Jen there with her super fast reflexes! I had a hard time deciding if I should drop "my baby/my new camera" to grab my niece. Totally kidding. Kind of. Totally would save my niece first. We tied and RE-tied the knot several times. The baby did tend to twist a little. My brother in law suggested getting fishing line and attaching it with a safety pin to each side so two people could pull, making the baby even. We didn't have the time to rig it up...but I think it would work. I think the key is getting your fabric hung evenly. We slipped the baby in and slowly got her positioned. It was TOUGH! I had enough back drop that I shot kind of from the side to make it look like she was hanging straight...but she really wasn't. One suggestion is to get the mom out of there for this shot. It will make you less stressed and the mom will never know! Ha! I can say that...because it isn't my baby being HUNG from a tree branch! I guess with everything else photography...just keep practicing and it will become easier each time. Truth be told...I am petrified to try it again!

Oliva asks some great questions..."Katie,I guess I should finally leave a message, considering I have been stalking your photography blog since it's birth. I love the pictures you take, and love the tips you share with each of us. I have been trying to improve my photo skills, but along with the one million other things I am trying to do in my life, I am not progressing very much. So I just have a few questions.

1) On your indoor sessions do you always use photography lighting? I noticed that one of your first newborn sessions you said was done at the parent's house. I always have trouble getting good shots indoors and I wonder if it is because the lighting sucks.

I covered this a little bit in the first question...but I will go a little more in depth here. Another key to indoor photography (in my opinion) is a really FAST lens. Without getting completely technical here...(y'all know this is not my strong point)....Lens speed refers to the maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a photographic lens. A lens with a larger maximum aperture (that is, a smaller minimum f-number) is a fast lens because it delivers more light intensity to the focal plane, allowing a faster shutter speed. A smaller maximum aperture (larger minimum f-number) is "slow" because it delivers less light intensity and requires a slower shutter speed. So basically...the lower the f-number, the better your in-door shots will be without using flash. If this does not make sense to you...I recommend reading up on aperture and shutter speed and really learning how these work with the lighting you have. This must be learned and fully understood before you will progress anywhere with photography...

2) Do you have multiple backdrops for your indoor shots, or do you just get creative with what you have available?

I hope I answered this one well enough in the question above from Katie. The thing about backdrops...is that I believe you really can just get creative with what ever you have. It makes your photography stand out because it is unique and it makes it your own.

3) Do you choose your aperture and shutter speed manually every shot, or do you ever choose the other setting on your camera like portrait, landscape, sports, etc.?

I almost always shoot manual. The new camera I got is better with the AV/TV modes than my previous camera, so I am learning to trust my camera more. Sometimes it is nice to just take the everyday type pictures without having to think so much about my lighting. I never use the auto modes, however. I recommend people start in AV mode when they are first learning to shoot in manual. This mode allows you to choose your aperture and the camera chooses an appropriate shutter speed to match what you have chosen. Pay attention to what the camera chose and make a mental note of it. Then...you will learn what works and what doesn't. You then learn your camera and how it works with different lighting situations and you can correct them in Manual mode.

4) Do you photoshop all your pictures or are a lot of them exactly as you shot them? I don't use photoshop (yet) and I want to know if I am always going to be disappointed with my pictures if I don't us it?

Because I shoot in RAW mode...I have to post process all my photos. I try to get proper exposure straight out of camera so I don't have to do a lot to my images in photo shop. It is very time consuming and photo shop should not be used as a crutch to fix any mistakes that should be done right in camera. That being said...I make mistakes all the time and I am so glad I can fix them with photo shop. Photo shop should be used to enhance your photos...but shouldn't mean the difference between you loving or hating your photos. I do think that since the trend with photography now is brightened over-saturated color pops, etc...you will only be able to achieve that look with photo shop. I use CS3. I love it. I didn't love the price of it, however. But...once again, with all things photography related...nothing comes cheap with this hobby.

Whew. That does it for today. Guess I will get back to my trashy novel and watch my kids rotting out their smart little brains with the Nintendo DS and watching way too much TV. What else should we do on this dreary cold Saturday?

Photo Shop Clone Tool!

Using the clone tool in photoshop has become one of my new favorite things. I have to admit that when I first tried to use the clone tool {probably over a year ago} I COULD NOT get it to work. I actually wondered why the heck that tool was even available. It was kind of tricky. I preferred the spot healing brush for blemish control and just thought the clone tool was pretty useless. Then I realized that I just didn't know how to use it properly. Usually when I don't like something it is because I am a little slow on the learning curve.

I can tell you now that I use the clone tool All. The. Time.!

I was trying to remove things too quickly. I didn't want to invest the time it actually took to get it right. You can't just sample one area of color and use that to clone out the entire image you wish to remove. You have to keep sampling to make sure the clone matches with each click you want to remove.

I felt like the pictures on the wall were too distracting in the photo. It seems like it would be an easy quick removal. The problem? The wall color is a lot darker {because of shadows} on one side than the other. I took my time and sampled with each click or two to ensure that the colors matched.

If I would have hurried through it, you would have seen blotches from where the pictures were removed. I just slowed down and took my time. {This is really hard for me.}
In this picture, I couldn't stand the Christmas lights wrapped around the column. It just screams..."HEY! These pictures were taken at Christmas!" I had to remove them!

The problem was the texture in the column. I wanted to make sure that I sampled an area right next to the light being removed so the texture looked right. This small task took quite a bit of time...but I felt like it was worth it! I liked the image a lot better once the Christmas lights were removed. Just like all things photography {As I am finding, at least}...The clone tool takes a lot of practice and patience. Neither of which I like. But...in the end I think it helps to create something better. Photoshop is an overwhelming thing for me. I have just been taking it a tool at a time. Learning the features. Practicing and figuring out how it can help improve my photography.

Tiny dancer...

My husband had the day off so he got to go with Haleigh to dance while I stayed home with the strep throat kids. I have to admit that he is actually artistically better at photography than I am. Not to mention, my kids aren't used to him snapping pictures so they are less likely to cheese it up. He gets really natural pictures. Pictures that I end up loving. Not because of the image quality...he usually turns my camera back to auto. (GASP!) But, because he isn't so caught up in the whole technical part of photography, he is able to focus on the subject alone. His creative pictures just make me so happy. The ones he came home with today are going to be printed for a shadow box that I intend to display Haleigh's first pair of capezio ballet shoes. I decided to play around with photoshop and make them look more like drawings.

This one seriously made me cry. Look at my tiny, little 2 year old dancer...pointed toes and all. After devoting about 25 years of my life to dance...

she is truly a dream come true.

I can't wait to get these printed to see how they turn out. Play around with the artistic function (found under filter) in photoshop if you want to get really creative and have some fun! Not all functions work with all photos...but you are sure to find the perfect artistic outcome if you play long enough!