Cupcake picture

Not the best picture, but I never claimed to be a food stylist. I can tell you they taste great, though! :)

The Picture of Today

This is a candid portrait taken of my son last weekend when we were at a friend's house. He may not be smiling but I have a few others where he is. :)

Btw, I do have a few bluebonnet shots from this year, but not many so far. We went out on a VERY windy day and were in the field for all of 5 minutes. I got one nice one and a few more usable ones, I think.

More bluebonnets

Another Picture of Today that features bluebonnets. :) It won't be long now 'til I can get some current pictures, so I'm still getting myself into gear. And I realize that I need to get a Picture of Today that has my son in it!

For those curious, I'm currently working on a new set of video tutorials about using the Brush tool in PS & PSE. I also have a mini kit I need to finish for next month's Q & A challenge at Digitals. After that, I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing!

Picture of Today

Taken sometime during this last week, this photo is one of the ones I've been taking while I play with my new flash. I love my daughter's expression here, although I couldn't tell you what kind of expression it is! LOL! But I like it, whatever it is. :) For those who care: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/60 second, and the lense was at 135mm on my Canon 28-135 IS lens.

The Picture of Today is from a year ago!

I'm thinking seriously of getting this printed for display somewhere in my house. I love bluebonnets and we're creeping up on that time of the year again. :) Man, I love flowers! Of course, as I'm writing this there's snow on the ground. We've had several late winter cold spells here, which is pretty unusual for our area.

So, last year was my first time getting bluebonnet shots. I trooped out before 7 in the morning to drive 20 minutes away to get some sunrise pictures of a local bluebonnet field. It was a little cold and I was sitting on the concrete or kneeling in the mud a few times, but it was worth it. Then we took the kids there the next day around sunset and got some more wonderful pictures. I also went to the Dallas Arboretum a few times during Dallas Blooms to shoot some pics. Did I mention I love flowers? :)

Whoo hoo! Flash!

I'd been saving my pennies, and took advantage of a sale at Roberts* and I bought a 430EX Speedlite for my Rebel Xt. :) I love it so far, although it'll take me a while to get to the point where I'm really good at bouncing and getting some directional flash. (This pic is a bit flat, but has nice catchlights.) So this is my Picture of Today.

*The sale ends tomorrow if you're interested. $199 for the flash.

The Photo of Today, which is likely inappropriately named

While I'm calling this The Photo of Today (which, btw, is not called Photo of the Day since I doubt I'll have a new photo to post ever day), it was actually taken yesterday. It took me over 12 hours to get this off my camera and into Photoshop because I had a Photoshop crisis last night. Somehow PS lost my registration information/serial number and it wouldn't open. Well, that was annoying enough but then I couldn't find my PS disk anywhere and I needed it to reinstall & have my serial number. Holy moley, I was panicking! One hour (at least) later, I found the disk...exactly where it should have been. (Don't you hate it when that happens? Or is it just me that sort of thing happens to?) So, I got Photoshop reinstalled, everything was hunky dory, but it was bedtime. This morning, I still wasn't able to open the file because I needed to reinstall the latest version of Camera Raw. Ahhh, the joys of computers! :) Finally, everything is back to normal and I was able to edit the picture & get it ready for you to be The Photo of Today!

If you're wondering what this is, it's a flower/bloom off the tree in our backyard. This just goes to show that it's getting closer to spring, at least here in Texas. If I was a fancy-schmancy person, I'd call this picture "Springing" or something clever. When I saved it for uploading, I just called it Treeflower.jpg . LOL! For anyone who cares about such things, this was shot with my Rebel XT with my 28-135 IS lens racked out, using a Canon Close Up filter with manual focus, and handheld. (Yes, I know, Scott Kelby, you said I MUST shoot Macro on a tripod. But my tripod wasn't available to me at the time. That's my argument & I'm sticking with it! I used the IS plus steadied my camera on the bench where I was sitting.) ISO of 200 shot in Manual mode at f/18 and the shutter speed was 1/100. It was underexposed a bit but I shoot in RAW so it was bumped up in there. It also made the usual visit to the PS playground for some cropping,defog, noise reduction, sharpening, Soft Light color pop, and vignetting.

Gee, Chris, couldn't you have just said, "Here's a pretty picture of a spring bloom" and left it at that? Guess not! :)