Thrift.

Nikon D300 camera
Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens
Manual
f/7.1
1/160ss
ISO 200

Little Red Corvette

May 2008.

Introducing our baby girl!!

•Little Miss Blondie was born Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 1:52 p.m.
•She weighed in at 8 pounds and 10 ounces (beating her brother's weight by seven ounces) and was 21 inches long.
•She has blonde hair and blue eyes.
•Perfectly healthy!

We were released from the hospital early Wednesday afternoon, and kept our cutie pie little boy with us the entire time we were in there (except for when she was actually being born; he waited in the waiting room with our family). She's a great baby. Very quiet, just like her big brother was when he was her size. He's adjusting great and is very protective of her. Daddy is loving having two little kiddos around. I'm enjoying life to the fullest and so thankful for all that God has blessed me with. Life is amazing, to put it mildly :-)




My guys, walking into the hospital Monday morning



39 weeks 4 days



Tiny little feet



Beautiful rose my hubby bought me



My hubby surprised me and came in with a new mini van he bought! It's a 2001 Oldsmobile Silhouette & I LOVE IT!! So many great features and it's in awesome shape. We have plenty of room now *yay!!*

From SOOC to Fully Edited

I'm really embarrassed to show this photo SOOC!! They're usually not this blah and ugly. I snapped it out the car window today (well, technically yesterday... I just havent been to bed and it's a new day) as we were driving by, and didnt have the time to adjust the settings in manual mode. Had I tried, I would have missed the opportunity to even get the photo at all. So, ya take what you can get.... riiiiiight?!!

I did not like this photo at all when I uploaded them onto my computer tonight. It just looked so... well, like I said before, blah and ugly! I could have scrapped the photo and not thought twice about it. But, I didnt! I thought it had some potential --just needed a little lovin' to make it look alright!


^Here is the SOOC;
only resized to 600px on the long side to share here.



^Here it is having only been edited in ACR;
& resized to 600px on the long side to share on here.



^Here is the photo with my normal editing done to it.
Some of the steps:
•Cropped;
resized to 600px on the long side.
•Cloned out the house with the red roof.
•Original layer duplicated;
soft light on top layer,
lower opacity,
merge.
•Sponged the whole photo on saturate to bring out the colors.
•Messed with the hue/sat to pop the colors a little bit more.
•Sky was too light for my liking, so I burned it.
•Used the sponge/burn/dodge tools throughout photo;
helped to add extra highlights and shadows where I wanted.
•Defogged and sharpened the image.



^Here is the final editing I did to the image.
Sometimes, I like to do extra editing on images to just spruce them up a bit more. This was one of those photos that I thought would benefit from doing so.
Some of my steps (using the last image):
•I blurred the sky to give it a more soft appearance.
•I duplicated the image twice;
high pass sharpen, set to overlay, lowered opacity,
duplicated, set to linear light, lowered opacity,
merged.
•Duplicated layer;
added gaussian blur,
set to overlay,
duplicated layer,
set to soft light,
lowered opacity,
merged.
•Sharpened.

Finally... Fall Colors!

A few from today; shot out the window of the car with my new Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4 lens :-)


















^my back yard

Caterpillar {loader}

Can you believe that my Dad wrecked this the other day? Well, he did! He got my husband to drive in front of him in his pickup truck to be the flagsman because the loader doesnt have any brakes & they were going to be going down a really small, hilly road.

So my husband gets to the bottom of the hill and turns the truck off and gets out to listen for oncoming vehicles. He said he heard this really weird noise and then seen my Dad coming down the road... the bucket down on the blacktop trying to stop him, but to no avail. So he turned towards the trees and smacked into them because it was the only way he could stop.

It scared my husband so he hurried up to my Dad. It crushed part of the cab in right at the steering wheel & they said if he'd been holding onto it, then his fingers would've been chopped off! But, thank God he was holding onto the little knob thingy on the steering wheel instead! His knuckles were busted up and his arm was cut and bleeding a little bit, but no major injuries. He's on blood thinners for his heart where he's had heart caths and stuff... so we're really thankful he wasnt hurt!

I told them both that they cant play together anymore b/c the other day my hubby went riding bikes with his friend and tried to point and show him that there were some gravels in the road... and he wrecked. Cut his knee up pretty bag and his foot (the end of his toe = NASTY!). So since they always get hurt, they're grounded!

A few from May 30th