Oh My WOW! This was one of my most fun shoots yet!! Courtney is umm…STUNNING! I am really at a loss for words on this post. All I can say is that I think I am going to push my business in this direction as well. I love photographing babies and children and always will but I am now going to start taking photographing High School Senior as well. I am so excited!
It was so much fin Courtney! Enjoy your sneak peek.
Meet Jude
Last week my daughter came home from school asking to buy a present for one of her classmates. My first thought was that there was yet another birthday party to attend, but my daughter explained that this was actually for a child who would be leaving school on the first of May to have his 4th Open Heart Surgery. (She has such a big heart) My first reaction was to offer this child’s family a free shoot. Jude’s teacher was able to put me in contact with his family and we scheduled a time. Shooting this kid was just so much fun, he’s an amazing child and his presence lit up the room!
Please take the time to keep this brave little guy in your thoughts, I know his family would be so grateful.
So a couple of days ago my daughter came home with a nest of itty bitty hummingbirds, she said that she and her friend found them in their nest in the street…
poor little guys…. so she brought them to me and asked if she could take care of them..I told her no she couldn’t because they had a mommy who missed them.. The little guys looked hungry so we did some research on humming birds and with them being that young they can’t eat the man made nectar for more than 24 hours or it will harm them..and apparently they also need to be fed like 4 times an hour..so we called some hummingbird rescue numbers (5 to be exact) and no one answered..Sigh…
Well after all that we went back to where we found them and looked for a place to put them and we finally placed them in a bush, sheltered from the wind, but off of the ground and we really hoped momma hummingbird would come and take care of her babies (we were hopeful) but we knew that they had a better chance out there than they had here..I felt terrible. They were so cute.
Being the animal lover that I am I really didn’t sleep that night thinking about those little guys so about 5:30am I went outside to check on them and one baby had been EATEN BY SNAILS!! They were up pretty high so that was crazy…but the other one was alive so I scooped him up and brought him home..I thought that it would be better for him to die with me than be eaten alive my carnivorous snails…so we fed him sugar water and he was doing really well..super feisty little guy! We finally got in touch with Project Wildlife and drove 30 mins up the road and gave him to them…I am so glad I went and checked on him..
I took a couple of pictures of them..I couldn’t help it. hehe..Its not often you see a Hummingbird up close especially babies…They are sooooo small! About the size of a prune.
So here they are. My custom actions. We’ve all been there, processing away, getting frustrated with skin tones that are over saturated and working with actions that aren’t adjustable. So I started making actions on my own.
These are the actions I use on my own photographs. I have had awesome testers, as well as hundreds of satisfied customers, and everyone loves them… especially since everything is super adjustable.
I thought I would share two of my favorite actions – Vintage Haze and Colorlicious.
Just a little side note. I now have a flickr group for sharing your photos using my actions.
I would so love to see what you come up with!
The entire collection for just $45.00
Ashley’s action set is a set of 30 fully customizable actions for Photoshop
Included in your purchase:
- 2 color pop actions for that extra punch of color
- 5 black and white actions that can give you a variety of different looks from a light black and white to a dark black and white and I also have some tinted black and whites.
- 4 cross processing actions
- 6 vintage/haze actions These actions can give you that soft dreamy look or a vintage feel depending on how you adjust the layers
- 1 paint with light action
And a variety of other useful goodies such as:
- add light
- add contrast
- enhance
- resize for web
- and border actions.
I read this article on my good friend Deb’s blog I really wanted to share it…
From REAL SIMPLE’s website…
Note To Self
Get Professional Photos of Your Children
I’ve never forgotten an invaluable piece of advice that I heard from an older friend right after my first child was born. She told me, “One of my greatest regrets about my children’s childhoods was that I didn’t have more professional pictures taken.”“You didn’t take many pictures?” I asked.
“I took tons of pictures,” she said, “but the fact is, professional photographs are so much better than even the best snapshots.”
I absolutely agree—professional photos are better. And keeping her advice in mind, ever since my daughters were born, I’ve been zealous about getting their photos taken professionally at least once a year.
While it’s a lot of fun (and also a pain) to take pictures myself, it’s terrific to have some pictures that are truly excellent. These photos don’t take the place of the on-the-spot pictures that I take myself—I still take scads of photos at birthday parties, first days of school, on the slide, with a popsicle—but these pictures memorialize my children’s childhoods in a different way.
Plus they make great family gifts. I can never figure out a good present for the grandparents and great-grandparents, but they always love to get a really great photograph—especially the relatives who don’t often get a chance to see the girls in person.
Also, research shows that one way to boost your happiness is to reflect on happy times, and looking at photographs helps keep memories more vivid.
It’s a splurge, of course. Professional photos aren’t cheap.
However, I figure that the money I spend on these photographs will strengthen family bonds, enhance happy memories, and capture the fleeting moments of childhood. They give me more pleasure than practically any other purchases that I make. That strikes me as pretty good happiness bang for the buck.
A friend’s family had another great photography tradition. For her whole life, at every milestone, her parents took a picture of her and her brother sitting exactly the same way on their front stoop. It’s fascinating to see them change through the years. Along the same lines, the artist Nicholas Nixon took a photograph of his wife and her three sisters once a year for 33 years. The collection of these photographs, The Brown Sisters, is riveting.
Getting professional photos take is a great example of the tiresome fact that happiness takes thought and effort. These photographs are easy to arrange; in the scheme of things, not terribly expensive; contribute greatly to our family happiness—and yet it probably never would have occurred to me to do it if my friend hadn’t suggested it.
Rubin, Gretchen. REAL SIMPLE.
http://simplystated.realsimple.com/life/2008/03/unforgettable-a.html
