Before and After

Here are some before and after edits I am doing for a friend, just for some extra practice.  The first I cropped, used some filtering to take the redness out of the skin, and cloned the blanket to fill the frame.  For the second I did a levels and curves adjustment to bring more light to her face and reduce the shadowing, and of course took the opportunity to convert to B&W as well.  I also did a little eye pop to bring more life to her eyes.  For the last one, I cropped in for rule of thirds (eyeballed it), and hue/saturation adjustment to pop the colors a little, and cloned out a few distracting things in the landscape.  Overall got some more practice and got to try out some techniques.  What do you think?

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

After B&W:

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After:

T

Backyard Flora

Simmerz

I found this super cute photo of Simba from when he was an 8 week old kitten!  This was taken five years ago, hard to believe.  My edit was very simple.  Just added a screen layer at 100% opacity to brighten it up a bit.  Then I did a nice B&W conversion using gradient map and brightness/contrast layers and a curves adjustment.   If only he worked on being this cute now and not so annoying!!!

Original:

Edit:

B&W:

More Lilacs

Teagan & Daddy @ the parade

& Teagan and I at the Lilac Festival Parade!

Before and After

I always loved this picture of Teagan.  She was three months old when I took it.  It was a little too shadowy and a little too pink, so I tried some adjustments.  I ended up liking a slightly more washed out, vintage look to the photo, so here is the final result.  Did a screen layer to lighten, and a photo filter layer in green applied only to her face to remove some of the pink, and then a hue/saturation adjustment layer where I desaturated the master channel.   A little USM, brightened the eyes and voila!

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After:

Twelve Weeks Challenge: Week Two

I got ambitious, and like the overachiever I am I completed the Two Peas week 2 assignment today as well.  Most of these are concepts I wanted to refresh rather than learn for the first time so they don't take long.  This week's lesson is on shutter speed and ISO.  The assignment is to study the effects of shutter speed on flowing water, which is very fast action.  The photos show how you can freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, and how the water appears to be flowing with a slower shutter speed.  All shots taken with Canon 20D, 35mm f2 lens, Tv mode.

SS 1/80

SS 1/1000

And for a little more close-up action (new shots, not just crops of shots above).  For these I tried slightly different shutter speeds.

SS 1/50

SS 1/500

I didn't do anything for the *bonus lesson* because pretty much any photo you have seen of mine since last November is an example of a photo taken in Manual mode.

Two Peas in a Bucket Photography

Week Two Lesson