Okay, I decided to show you my newest favorite photo before I show you my Christmas and zoo layouts. This photo was taken on Whidbey Island at the Deception Pass State Park. We had been walking along the beach and Rob picked Matthew up and they were between me and the setting sun and I knew I had to take the picture. I’m so happy with it. I saturated it a tiny bit but really not much, it was so beautiful out! I got a whole bunch of beautiful pictures of the setting sun and the sun through the moss in the trees too. I also got a whole bunch of beach, rock, sand, wood, and cement pictures to use as textures and brushes for my digital scrapbooking design stuff. People must have thought I was loony taking pictures of weird stuff!! Haa. Oh well. Anyway, on to the photo:

I am constantly amazed at how big Matthew is getting!  He’s learning so quickly and is starting to communicate, but not yet with words.  I love that both of them are in silhouette and the slight angle of the horizon.  I love that I didn’t directly center the two of them and that I got lots of the sky in the shot.  What do you think?

DeAnna

MCP Actions has a great new FREE action on their website that makes it easy to add a texture to your photos.  I love tiny newborn baby feet, and this photo of Matthew’s feet (he was about 24 hours old in this shot) is one of my favourites.  I used the new action to add a texture from the Soft Translucent Tones pack I downloaded from ShadowHouse Creations.  I changed the blending mode to Hard Light because I liked the edge burn it gave, and the warm tone to the center of the image, highlighting Matthew’s baby feet.  If you haven’t checked out MCP Actions or ShadowHouse Creations, definitely go and browse your way through some awesome stuff!

Here’s the straight-out-of-the-camera shot:

And here is the edited photo:

I love the difference! Go check them out now!!

Well, it’s been a while again.  I found out from my doctor that she recommends I’m off work until the end of my pregnancy.  So, my last day of work is next Thursday, the 26th of February.  I’m 26 weeks, and still have 3 months to go!  Hopefully it means I’ll have some time to work on some photos and scrapbooking and put up some more posts : P

Good news – Jessica Sprague is offering a chance to win one of three chances to win free tuition to her brand new class – Photo Editing.  Just head on over to her blog for a chance to win.

So far, I’ve learned that taking a photo is all about light.  I’ve learned this from reading various websites and books.  I have also learned this from the new digital photography class I’m taking, Oh Shoot! from Jessica Sprague’s website, taught by Candice Stringham.  How much light you let in is very important.  Shutter speed and aperture; both are all about light, but in different ways.  Shutter speed is the mechanism in your camera that opens and closes to let in light.  How long it stays open is determined by your shutter speed.

 

The tricky part about shutter speed is it’s calculated in fractions of a second.  A slow shutter speed is about 1/60th of a second and under.  A fast shutter speed is higher than 1/60th of a second, up to around 1/2000ths of a second, or higher, depending on your camera.  My Nikon D80, for instance, goes up to 1/4000ths of a second.

 

A slow shutter speed will let in lots of light, but if your subject is in motion (such as a toddler, for instance, who we know are always in motion, right??), then you will have blur.  A faster shutter speed will freeze the subject.  I like a bit of blur to show the movement, but not too much!

 

Aperture, is the mechanism in your lens that opens and closes to let in light.  How much it opens is set by the f-stop.  Each lens will have a range of f-stops.  The range will depend on the lens.  My lenses range from: 1.8 to 22 for my 50mm f/1.8 lens; 3.5 to 5.6 for my 18-135mm kit lens; and 4 to 22 for my 70-300mm zoom lens.  I haven’t learned much about the actual f-stop values, that’s next week!

 

Anyway, here are the pictures I took for assignment 1 of Oh Shoot! about shutter speed.  If you click on the photo it will enlarge and show you the details of the photo:

 

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Next up I have a tutorial planned on how to use templates in photoshop for your digital scrapbooking.  Coming soon!

 

DeAnna

Well, I have officially finished Digi: In Deep, and here’s my new blinkie:

Hee hee! I can’t wait for Digi: In Deeper in October.

Oh Shoot! Digital Photography started Monday, and we took our photos tonight but I haven`t resized them yet.

We went to the beach on Sunday, and got some great photos with our new zoom lens – check them out.  I love how we froze the sand in mid-air.  Kyle had so much fun, and then got some kisses from a puppy!

 

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I haven’t done much scrapbooking lately, I figured I would take a week off since I finished Digi: In Deep only a week ago!  It was an intense class but I’m glad I took it!  Haven’t received my Shutterfly book yet, hopefully it will arrive soon.

DeAnna

I am so excited – I got an email today telling me that my album, Kyle’s First Year, is being featured on Shutterfly’s gallery! You can check it out here, or in my post here.  I love the album and I can’t wait to get the copy I ordered.  It was shipped yesterday and I hope I get it soon!

 

In the meantime, I finished Week 4 layout from Digi: In Deep.  This is a fantastic layout, I am so happy with Jessica’s layout design.

 

 

I managed to sign up for Oh Shoot! Digital Photography on Jessica’s website.  That starts next week.  6 weeks of digital photography learning bliss!  Weeeee!  To finally learn how to use my 50mm f1.8 lens

I had my final test tuesday night in Course 1 Wilton Method Cake Decorating.  For our last assignment, we had to do a whole cake, not just cupcakes.  I did a two‑layer chocolate cake, with white buttercream icing as my base.  I’m pretty happy with the way my final cake turned out, considering I didn’t have a specific plan in mind for how I was going to decorate it.  I kind of just went with it!  Here’s some pics for you (don’t drool too much, now):

 

 

 

I’m now terrified to make Kyle’s birthday cake though.  One of the ladies in class was trying to make a Strawberry Shortcake character cake and she was having a devil of a time.  I think that if she was at home alone doing it she would have given up or started cursing a blue streak!  Apparently character cakes are pretty hard to decorate.  My mom made a Ziggy cake for me for my 10th birthday, and she said “If I can do it, you can do it!”  Of course she would say that.  She’s always been very supportive and uplifting.  Anyway, I’m going to try to make Lightning McQueen for his birthday cake.  We’ll see how I do!   Next Lynn and I are taking Course 2.  At least I get a little bit of a break from cake for a week or so.  Our next course starts on the 8th of July.  I can’t believe next week is July already. Kyle’s birthday is coming way too fast!!

 

 

Oh, and because I didn’t get a chance to post a picture of the clowns we made in our second to last class, here they are.  They are very cute, and dead easy!  I like this picture because Kyle’s head is just peeking over the counter – he snuck into the shot just at the last second!  So cute.  He can’t say cupcake very well, so he calls them pupcake. :p  These pics are also in the gallery called Photos which you can find on the left hand side bar. 

 

I haven’t had time to work on my next lesson for the Jessica Sprague Now We’re Rockin’ class.  We’ve been prepping for our camping trip for the last couple of days.  I’m hoping to have it mostly done tomorrow before we leave so I can show everyone.  Check out the gallery to see some of the amazing layouts the other students have created!

 

DeAnna

 

So my friend Lynn convinced me to take a cake decorating class with her. I thought to myself, sounds like fun! Of course, I didn’t think about the fact that I’d have to bake cupcakes, lots of cupcakes, to practice on and bring to class. People at my office have a hate-on for me right now! I’m threatening their summer diets, don’t you know. I’ve gained about 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks! It’s been fun, though. Take a look:

 

 

Then, one day I was checking Kimi Kreation blog, and she was talking about how she was hating her D80. She wasn’t liking any of her photos, they were flat and lifeless. Uh, okay. I thought they were pretty good. Then she showed us what they look like after changing some of the custom settings as recommended by Ken Rockwell. Well, okay, I see your point! I quickly went to his site and made the appropriate alterations, and holy crap! What a difference in my photos. We took Kyle to the park and met Lynn and Nyla there. Kyle and Nyla make such a cute pair! Kyle actually asked Nyla to hold his hand. He’s not even two! Awwww. Just look at the saturation in the colours on Kyle’s shirt – beautiful. And check out the sky in this photo! Absolutely amazing! I’ve done nothing to these photos except make them smaller for the web. Unbelievable!

 

 

So then, this past Monday I started taking Jessica Sprague’s Now We’re Rockin’ digital scrapbooking class. Great class, so much fun so far, and we’ve only been doing it for 1 week. Here’s the layout I completed from Lesson 1, featuring, of course, my cupcakes.

 

I have also been checking out this great website, The Pioneer Woman.  This woman is absolutely hilarious, and has some great content, ranging from general farm life, her amazing love story, photography, cooking, etc.  You have to check her out.  I have laughed hysterically every time I have checked out her site!

Anyway, life is pretty crazy.  Kyle has his 2nd birthday coming up, we are going camping next weekend, and there is just not enough time in a day to do everything!

Talk to you all soon! 

 

 

While we were in San Francisco, we went driving around sight-seeing, heading in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge.  We drove through Presidio and came to a nice beach called Baker Beach.  From the beach you can see the Golden Gate bridge quite well, from the base of the bridge near the San Francisco side.  It was quite cold and windy that morning, and very cloudy, but I guess the locals are used to it because Rob found some people playing volleyball on the beach!  Kyle was sleeping in the car, so Rob was the one who had the pleasure of walking the beach to get as close to the bridge as he could.  Here’s one of my favourite pics of the bridge.

On the way back Rob saw this amazing wooden staircase, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to do some cool vignetting to it.  

That night in the hotel room, I was checking Kimi’s Kreations blog, and she had a link to this great website called Keep Designing, which happened to have a free download of some very cool vignettes.  I downloaded it, and this is what I came up with:

 

I totally love this picture.  It was such a great coincidence that the Keep Designing download featured a staircase in the woods!  I added a layer and filled it with a nice neutral colour, put a gradient on it and changed the blending mode to Soft Light.  I think it gave it a really dreamy look.

I think I might have to print that one out and frame it.

DeAnna

 

Well here’s a few new photos for the challenge.  These are pretty raw, I haven’t done anything to them except change their size to save for web viewing.  Most of these are from a day hike and bbq in Golden Ears Provincial Park on the Lower Falls Trail on the May long weekend.  It was an absolutely beautiful day and we spent it with good friends, Darren, Lynn and their daughter Nyla who is only 11 days younger than Kyle.  Rob tried to get a shot of the falls (which were much bigger than the last time we took a photo of them, but there had been some major run-off that week, so it was raging!).  There was so much spray that our UV filter was dripping wet when we took it off!  Check out this shot:

I have also come to the realization that I am not a good gardener.  My garden is so neglected that it has some major cobwebs!  There’s just not enough time in the day for everything.  So I decided to try to get some photos of the cobwebs in my garden and I think I got an amazing shot of one of my flowers just about to bloom.  I have no idea what this flower is, but it’s fantastic when it blooms, it becomes this giant orange puff ball. 

We’ve been in San Francisco since May 24, and we’ve gotten some amazing photos.  You should check them out on our family website:  www.allanfamily.ca  We`ve got some great videos on there too, especially one of the sea lions at Pier 39 at Fisherman`s Wharf.  Very cool!  I`m planning my scrapbook pages already.  We went to the Golden Gate Bridge, and the gift shop actually had a scrapbooking kit with 4 papers, tags, a photo grouping, and borders all about San Francisco and the bridge!  I can`t wait to get my photos ready and printed.  I think I have to start Kyle`s first birthday page first !!

Lynn and I also scrapbooked on the May long weekend, and I finally finished my Groovy page.  Check it out:

 

I really hope that we continue our plan to scrapbook once a month.  I think it would be completely beneficial to both of us!

Anyway, that`s it for now.

DeAnna