I Love Fall!

There is nothing better that waking up to a beautiful crisp fall day. The sun is shining upon the golden corn fields. Those corn fields make the most delightful rustling sound as the breeze blows. It is gorgeous and just makes you thankful to be alive! Can you tell that this is my favorite season?

I really need to get outside and shoot some photos. These are from a few years ago before we had our SLR camera. It was when we were building our house and I was in the habit of taking photos everyday to document the progress. I also managed to get some beautiful shots of the golden corn and beautiful blue sky. The fields around us are planted in rotation so they alternate between corn, beans and wheat. I have to say that seeing corn in the fields is my favorite, though. I am loving the fact that this year we have corn both in the field behind us and in front of us.

What is your favorite season? I love the golden colors of Fall along with the crisp air. You get similar temperatures in Spring but they are accompanied by humidity and rain and mud. Alternatively, the Fall gives you dew on the grass and mist in the air. It is perfect for sitting outside in the evening around a fire. We have done that several times already this year. The kids love roasting marshmallows and making s'mores, watching the harvest moon rise over the corn, and witnessing the stars appear and trying to figure out the constellations. Such wonderful simple pleasures!

TTV: Fun new technique

If you aren't familiar with TTV, if stands for Through The Viewfinder and it refers to a technique of using a modern camera to shoot a photo through viewfinder of an old antique camera. The result are usually dirty, scratched and distorted. AND kinda cool. You can also fake this in Photoshop (which is what I did).


I was reading a bit in the blogsphere and stumbled onto Katrina Elizabeth's site that talked about this technique. I had seen it before, but usually they were the real TTVs. Since I do not own an old camera, I couldn't try it for myself. Her site also had a link to a great group on Flickr that is full of overlays that can be used for this purpose. I got excited and had to try one out real quick. I think it's very fun and you will probably be seeing more of these from me in the future.

Photo Colorization and Tinting Tutorial

What is it about a kid that makes them act like this when you stick a camera in front of them? I know they can't be thinking, "Hmmm...THIS is how I want to be remembered."

This is a photo SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera). I can't remember who had snagged the camera from me on this day and taken this - it was either my oldest daughter or my hubby. Either way, I thought it was cute scrapbook material. I have to have something to blackmail my children with later in life. Right?

I rarely use a photo SOOC because it doesn't take much adjustment in Photoshop to make a good photo even better. I am not going to take the time here to go over everything I like to do to a photo. What I wanted to touch upon today was how to colorize a photo. I decided to use a playful set of elements on a blue background to create this layout. (Credits for this page can be found here. )

I thought that a color version of the photo wouldn't blend as well with this page, so I decided to convert it to a black and white photo with a slight blue tint.
Like this:

This is pretty easy to do. I will show how I did it in Photoshop CS, but I am sure that something similar can be done in many photo editing programs.


The first thing you do find the half black half white circle at the bottom of your Layers palette in Photoshop. This will bring up a list of adjustment layers that you can create. Click "Hue/Saturation." If you aren't familiar with adjustment layers, you should be. They allow you the freedom to change your photo in a way that is 100% editable later. If you change your mind, you can tweak or even throw away the adjustment layer and your original photo is still intact. An adjustment layer adjusts all the layers that are below it.

When I clicked on "Hue/Saturation," a new adjustment layer was created with its own layer mask. We'll talk more about that in a minute. A new Hue/Saturation window also opened which is visible in the screenshot above. In this I clicked the "colorize" button and made adjustments to both the Hue and Saturation sliders. The Saturation is moved to the left which removes color from (desaturates) the photo. If I moved this all the way to the left (0), I would have a grayscale-looking black and white. I left it at 9. The Hue slider adjusts what color tone is applied to the photo. I am using a blue-ish tone, but with this slider you can pick any color of the rainbow. When you are pleased with your results click "OK." If you want to adjust this later, just double-click the layer icon and this window will open again.

Now I took this a step further. I really liked the dark red stripes on my son's shirt and wanted to see them in the finished photo. I clicked on the layer mask in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to work on it. Layer masks are great tools. The mask is created solid white. Anywhere you paint black on this mask you will block out the current layer. I selected my brush tool. Using a small round brush and painting in black, I drew on the photo where I wanted to block out the colorized effects of the adjustment layer, allowing the colors from the layer below to show through.

This is a useful trick if you want to "tint" the eyes and cheeks of a face in a black and white photo. By using a brush on the layer mask, you can effectively "tint" a black and white photo with its original color.
This is also the technique I used on this photo. I used a black brush set to low opacity and lightly painted on several areas of the photo to bring out these pretty colors.


Give this technique a try. It is really fun and easy to do. And if you have any questions, leave a comment.

Light & Shadow

In everyone's life there's a bit of light as well as shadow.
I have a lot on my plate right now with a couple of good sized projects I am working on for church. On is slides for a memorial service and the other is a 100 page photo book for the Photos of Faith contest the church sponsors.

So, I guess what I am saying is that there is too much on my brain come up with a coherant blog entry, so I thought I would merely share this photo. I love the play of light and dark within it.
Enjoy!

Dandelion Dreams

Believe it or not, this is what our yard looked like last week. Of course, now, its not quite so pretty as all of these lovely dandelion flowers have gone to seed and I am looking at a weedy mess. I love dandelions. If only they would stay looking like they do here. My children think they are glorious. Someday after I no longer have to put so much effort into getting grass to actually grow everywhere in my 4 acre yard, we will probably spray to get rid of all the dandelions and clover. I'm sure the yard will look better overall, but I will miss photo opportunities like this one.

Great Inspiration

The kids and I just pages through the book "America Wide: In God We Trust" which is full of panographs (panoramic photos) by Ken Duncan. The photography is beautiful and gives you a wonderful yet brief tour of the various terrain across our country. I have to say what inspired me most in this book was in the section at the back of the book called "Photographer's Notes." Because I love taking photos myself, I really enjoyed his tips, especially this one,

"I believe there is a force at work much bigger than you or I. The
key is to tap into the Creator's power rather than your own technical
understanding, which by comparison is very limited. This is a hard pill
for many to swallow (especially'techno-heads') because people love to be in
control. Personally, I would rather be out of control. I'm just an
average photographer with a great God.
I have definitely not perfected this area of
reliquishing control, but I'm working on it. It's exciting! How
small we are and how big He is."

Wow! Couldn't that be said for many areas of life - not just photography? For example, when people find out that I have 5 kids, I often get the "So, how do you do it?" question. Many are very serious and wait expectantly for some profound wisdom to come from my mouth. Frankly, I don't have any. To be honest, some days I have no idea how I mother 5 kids and do all the things that I do. I suppose that I am just an average woman with a great God.

I found this on Ken's website: Enter the Sanctuary

14th Anniversary of Motherhood

It's hard to believe that it has been 14 years.
14 years since I held this girl as a tiny baby.
14 years since I became a mother.
It is 14 years that I am so thankful for!

Take note of this photo because it is a rare thing. Typically my daughter hides from the camera and I have shot after shot of her blurry hand or the back of her head. On this day, something special must have been in the air and she actually looked at me and half smiled. Note the new stylish hat she just bought and the wii controller in her hand. She is my teenager and I adore her! Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Back home again...

in Indiana....

I'll let you guess which of these photos was taken in Indiana and which one was taken in Southern California where I was able to go with my hubby last week. Hmmm...tough one, huh?

I'm glad to be back home with the kids, but the couple days we had out there went way too quick. So, if you catch me daydreaming, I may just be imagining myself on the balcony at the Ritz-Carlton watching the dolphins and listening to the sea....

Everyday Life

Yesterday, I was feeling run down and took some sit down time in front of the computer reading some favorite blogs. I ran into several people doing daily photos of everyday stuff. I am always intrigued by this. I know that I am bad about keeping projects like this up, but I got the bug to walk around the house snapping photos. I put them together into a quickie layout using FotoFusion this morning. Even if I could do this once a week, it would be really cool.

Here are a couple Photo-a-Day type blogs I thought were neat:

3191

Soule Mama

So, confession time here....you can see in the photo here that we still have our Christmas stuff up. I know; it's bad. I was really enjoying leaving it up this year, but then life got busy and I just didn't have time to deal with it. I am going to try to make today the day it goes away.

I have another big project I need to get done right away. Last week I popped into a Hallmark store that is going out of business looking for some good deals and discovered that they were giving away all of their bookshelves for free (this particular store also sold books). I ended up getting seven big double sided bookshelves. As a homeschooling family we have no shortage of book around here and I have been storing the bulk of them in rubbermaid tubs and boxes because bookshelves have not been in the budget. Well, now I can really set up a fantastic library! We had to unload them off the truck and trailor quickly, so they ended up going in the garage for now. This means that my van is sitting out in our current bitter cold weather so I am anxious to get these carried down to the basement where they will permanently reside. I can't wait to get this set up!

I also got another great bargain from that store. I got a computer for $5 complete with monitor and printer. Can you believe that? Good friends of ours had one they were looking to donate and were wonderful enough to think of us a couple of weeks ago, too. I have been wishing for a bank of computers for the Rich Hearts Homeschool and these will bring us up to 4. Now I need to reorganize the school room and get them set up properly. There are several educational things that I have wanting the kids to do on the computers, but it was hard to do sharing just one. It will be great to finally be able to do that!

So if I am quiet on the computer, it is just because I am busy with all of these projects in my real life.

Everyone keep warm and have a great day!

The Wood Prince

Meet my little wood prince. I had so much fun creating this piece of art that I just had to try my hand at another one. This time I chose my son and I just didn't have the heart to turn him into a fairy. Someone commented at Scrapbook Graphics that he was a Wood Prince and I love that. He has a crown of leaves and a wheat sceptor. Credits for all of the goodies included in this can be found here along with a before and after picture.

Beautiful Art for Worship

Just wanted to pass along along a link to a site I ran across with beautiful artwork called MO'EDIM MESSIANIC ART. The artwork was created by a homeschooled girl, Carly Rose Hennigan. Her photography is amazing. Since I have a special place in my heart for worship art AND homeschoolers, I just wanted to share this.

A bit of fun photo tweakery

I was perusing the gallery at The Digital Scrapbook Place earlier this week and found some unique pages that caught my eye. I discovered that they were done as part of a stylelift challenge. I wasn't even familiar with a "stylelift" which is to copy the style of a particular artist. This month's stylelift is based on the altered art of Jessica Dittmer called Wish You Wells. Unfamiliar with her, I checked out her site and was immediately in love with it. She plays with photos and gives them this combination of an old photo and a drawing. Then she adds goodies like crowns, buttons, and pixie wings along with some sort of verse. Well, I decided that I really wanted to be able to do that! You can see my attempt here. It is close, but not exactly Jessica's look. It was incredibly fun to do, though! I have also shown a before and after shot because the difference is pretty dramatic. Credits for the goodies I used can be found here.

This was so much fun, that I will probably do this again. Shoot, after seeing how much one of these custom art pieces costs on the Wish You Wells site, I am thinking that I am in the wrong line of work. Anyone want to buy one? I'll cut you a great deal!

The Big Birthday Boy

Here is my big 6 YEAR OLD boy. He feels so big now! Yesterday was his official birthday and I told him that I wanted to take an official birthday photo of him. It was beautiful outside, so we found a spot under a tree to snap some shots. I was unable to post this yesterday because I had promised him that he could play Age of Empires with his big sister, therefore I was not able to get anywhere near the computer. He is currently obsessed with that game. He is constantly begging his dad to play it with him.

So happy birthday little buddy - love ya'!

My Little Birthday Fairy

It is a frazzle-day! Why am I frazzled? Well, you see that cute little fairy-girl in this scrapbook page. She is currently cutting 2 teeth and is not dealing with it well. In fact, she has been dealing with it by screaming at me in the most piercing way that a one year old can. It tends to wear on the nerves! This too shall pass. Hopefully, I will keep my sanity in the process. Adding to the chaos around here is the fact that I have a couple of energetic preschoolers who really need to go outside and run and today it has turned kinda cold. They got up and dressed like they have been lately in shorts and short sleeves. I sent them outside not paying attention to the temperture and they came right back in saying it was too cold. Shoot - I checked and it is only 46 degrees!

In other news, I did a little "scrap-therapy" to cope and relax a bit. I had so much fun turning Rachel into this birthday fairy. I took a bunch of pictures of her on her birthday in our homemade basement studio. It is laughable how many BAD photos I got. She is just not about to be troubled with sitting still long enough for a picture! This picture is one of the better ones and she isn't looking my way at all. When I went to create a layout using this, I realized that I did not have a kit that quite matched this photo. I wanted something with an aged look with just a touch of yellow. So I pieced this together from a bunch of kits by Doris Castle. Full credits can be found here.

I am off to check some math...have a great day!

Lunar Eclipse

Did you see it?
I set my alarm for 4:30am so that I could witness the lunar eclipse this morning. My two oldest girls sat out on the front porch with me in the dark and watched the earth's shadow pass in front of the moon and make it disappear. Very cool! Poor homeschooled kids - their lessons start even in the wee hours of the morning!

From this photo you can see that I really have no idea how to shoot something like this and I was dreaming about a big ol' telephoto lens for my 20d. Oh well...someday.

We were fortunate enough to see the moon completely eclipsed before the sun rose and the moon dropped over the horizon.

I find it hard to believe, but my baby girl is already 8 months old. Where did that 8 months go? It feels like I have merely blinked. She is crawling and into everything, eating tons of solid food and has even said "Mama." She was playing in the living room the other evening and was totally bathed by the setting sun, so I grabbed my camera. So here is Rachel chewing on my lens cap - is that the true sign of a photographers daughter?

Life has been incredibly busy lately. Right now I have too much on my plate. But I have been working hard and getting projects checked off my list. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon. I haven't had a moment to scrapbook in weeks and I miss it.

Today the kids and I are going to the zoo with Grams and Gramps. We decided to go in the morning to avoid the 90 degree heat that has been forecasted. Hopefully we will not run into every school group in the county on a field trip. I am spoiled with homeschooling because we have the freedom to do things when kids are in school and avoid the crowds. My kids are so excited about going that I am sure we will have fun no matter what.

My name's in the paper!

Check out this article! It is actually a great piece about my good friend, Kim, but she was so sweet and mentioned my name:

"With the support of church members and the creative assistance of her good
friend, Trish Richhart, she came up with “Photos of Faith” in 2004."

Speaking of Photos of Faith...pray for me. Photos of Faith is a photography contest that our church sponsors where scripture is used for the theme. It is a wonderful opportunity to visually express your faith. I ask for prayer because once again I have taken on the task of scanning all of the wonderful entries and compiling a photo book and a video with them. It is a project I love BUT I have to do it in about one week's time. Please pray for peace in our home and me and for God to magnify the hours I have available to me.

VOTE for me

On a whim, I submitted this photo to a photo contest. The theme was "The Meaning of Life." There are a LOT of entries and the winner is decided 50% by votes and 50% by judges. I figure that if I am going to have ANY shot at winning the cool camera prize, I need to solicit the help of my friends to vote. HERE is a link to my entry. The only catch is that you have to be registered at the site to be able to vote. Registering is easy and FREE. On the entry page there is an orange button that says, "Log in here to vote." This takes you to a login page. At the top of that page, there is another orange button that says, "New User? Sign up here!"

If you have the time to do this, I would be so appreciative of your vote! Thanks!

***EDITED***

Well, since there were over 1700 entries into this contest and no one would realistically look at them all before voting, Crestock decided cut it down to just 500 entries. Sadly, I didn't make the cut :-( [sigh] Oh well. Thanks for looking anyway.

Label tool