And, we're back!

So, my computer shot craps and wouldn't turn on anymore.  I bought a new one....Surface Book.  I also had to purchase Lightroom again....which sucks.  I thought I had all of my LR settings backed up, but I was wrong.  So, I had to set up all of my collections, presets, cataloging, etc. again.  That was a pain.  But, it's finally done.  I was able to load all of my images again.  My images were all backed up on an external hard drive...thank goodness!

I didn't realize how much I enjoy my time editing my images and spending time creating little works of art.  Now that I'm finally set up again, I couldn't wait to start processing images again.  I started with the shots I took of Pat while he was welding together the deer shoot he created.  The man can work miracles with metal.

fun with letters

I saw this type of thing in a catalog and thought it would be more fun and unique to do it myself.  So, here is my first attempt at some letters.  I think they turned out pretty decent.  I think with the proper framing, this will look great.

Photo shoot #2

I offered to shoot a friend of mine's daughter and her BFF.  They were really cute girls and so patient with me.  I did remind them a couple of times that I WAS NOT A PROFESSIONAL!  This was after I was told to "get it together, Letisha!" haha  They were a lot of fun.  I learned a couple of things: I'm not great at action shots, shooting in bright sun is hard, processing photos of people is hard--especially when they are so differently colored, and taking photos is just generally a lot harder than I thought!

I ended up with 178 images and no even close to all of them were any good.  Maybe....MAYBE....half of them were decent.  It was frustrating....I'd find a nice one and then I discovered there was a leaf in a bad spot or shadows or SOMETHING!  It was frustrating, but I think I managed to come up with some nice photos of the girls.  What do you think?

This is one is my favorite from the entire shoot....

This one seems to show a helping hand and I really liked it.

This one proved nearly impossible for me to do.  I had this whole idea of catching a shot of the girls from behind and they were upside down.  Yeah, it never quite worked out.

This one was funny because I cracked a joke about someone that we all know...it backfired on me because they were cracking up and moving around!

This is a very grown up picture....she's only in the 8th grade by the way.

Just for fun.....I thought her eyes looked nice and her expression was funny....so I had to zoom way in!

She is a dancer....

My second favorite of her...

Just for fun....

This was the hardest shot to get.....

Update:  I purchased some new presets and tested a few of them on this shoot.  So, here are a few more images...

Luminous--add sunbeams and vintage coloring...

Added creamy bokeh and a vintage finish...

A nice, sharp black and white finish....more like what I used to do but without the grain.

Winter haze on the b&w finis with snow flurries....just for fun.