some short shots of what i've been working on {in photography}

Just like the exceedingly long title to this blog post says, these are a few of the photographs I've taken lately. I hope you enjoy them. I also hope you're all getting plenty of chances to get out there and smell the roses (or daffodils, or carnations, or forsythias, or whatever happens to be in bloom in your area) because they only bloom for so long.

uke can do it even if life plays you like a banjo :)

I'm a big believer in positivity. I try to keep a smile on my face and look at the lighter side of life, as you could probably already guess if you've been following this blog for any amount of time. So, today, I'm going to give you all a bit of Friday encouragement. There are no strings attached (literally, as you can see in the pictures). I am just going to tell you. Don't worry. Life is hard, but "Uke" can do it. (even if this is a banjo)

let's talk photo shop

I'm an amateur with a passion for capturing the things I see in this big world. I'm a super-amateur in the photo editing world.

But I'm trying to hone my skills. In Photo Shop particularly. When I first started taking pictures, I thought Photo Shop was super boring. Why did people rave about it so much? I wondered. There were too many complicated things about it and the only thing I actually liked about it was the fact that you could add a lens flare.

Well, very very VERY recently I've started using it for a lot more than adding watermarks. I went on a Picasa and Picnik craze for quite a while, and that's what I used, for the most part, to edit my brother's wedding pictures, because, for one, it was super easy to use and it had lots of cool effects (that I thought Photo Shop didn't have).

Then one day, when I was opening a picture to edit in Picnik, I nearly went into a major depression when I saw the notification that Picnik, like Ringo, is going away for good (I still miss Ringo. It was the bomb).

Well, I begrudgingly thought, I'll have to start figuring out how to use this Photo Shop more. There were LOTS of sighs on my end over this. Photo Shop is SO boring, I thought.

Well, they say change is good (still arguing that one), and this time, it's proved to be true. I've started to figure out new tidbits (there are all the same features on Photo Shop and you can play around with the effects even more than Picasa), like how to cross process a picture, blur objects, and, my personal favorite, which I discovered last week, the history brush tool. ITS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

I've drunk the Kool-Aid. I've become an addict. And it's Photo Shop for me from now on.

So today I'm going to show you some befores and afters. I hope you like them.

this is the original, unedited picture.

This is the one that I originally presented my brother with. I added a lens flare because I thought it was "cool"

I figured how to take out the annoying minivan in the background. It wasn't quite finished yet, though.

Behold! the finished product! I absolutely love this picture. (And so does my brother. Which is MOST important)