At the races.

If the sight of blue skies....

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.”

-Eleanora Duse

Warm Spring Day

Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?
- Neltje Blanchan

Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.

If we had no winter,
the spring would not be so pleasant.
Anne Bradstreet

Hubby's Silhouette

Actually, I'm not positive if it's considered a true silhouette since there is still some coloring left in his shirt. I blacked it out in another version but just didn't feel the photo at all so I left it in at the end.

I took this photo on July 30th, 2008. Our two year wedding anniversary. Because, you know, you just cannot celebrate something like that until you go up to the lake five minutes from your house and go fishing ;)

It was honestly a bunch of fun though. I love fishing with my husband and our son! I was six months pregnant with our daughter at that time, too, so it was {extra} H-O-T outside!

The only thing about this photo that bothers me is how his shirt sleeves are kinda poofed out and make his arms look weird. He was cutting my fishing line out of the tree though because I, uh, sort of got it stuck up there when I went to cast it.

BUT! I loooooooooove how in the full size version (and this one, a little bit) I can see his eye lashes, goatee and even the hair on his arms so defined! Love, love, love it!

So I just wanted to share because I was nosing through all of my photos and found it. A treasure that I didn't even know I had :)

--

Side Note: Maybe one day I will be able to decide on a decent water mark for my photos and wont have a million different ones *lol*

Two that I forgot to share the other day :)

Waiting for Summer & warm weather....getting closer!

Even MORE.... I know you're excited!

Here are some from when our electric came back on and we returned home. My camera's battery died and I couldn't find the charger (found it yesterday though, yay!) so I had to use my S3 IS. Which is nice because I could zoom in a lot farther since I don't have a long zoom for my dslr YET (!!), but you can notice the quality is much different from one camera to the other.

I couldn't get the memory card to load the photos onto my computer so I plugged it into my husband's laptop and they worked there. So these are all SOOC because I don't have Photoshop on his computer. I had to resize and watermark in Paint *ha, ha*

And please remember that all of these (and most of the others) were taken from inside. I'm battling a cold and wasn't able to venture out like I wanted, but did take a few from my husband's papaw's porch.

Oh yeah, and before I stop rambling on and on.. the majority of the following images are going to be HUGE because I couldn't resize right with Paint! Man, I love Photoshop *sigh*

Antique Church with a Hint of Sun flare

I took this photo the same day as I took the photo of our county courthouse (two posts below); December 9th. It was also taken out of the car window, but this time we were headed home from my husband getting his hair cut.

The sky is blown, which is a no-no... but I actually really like it! I think it helps the sun flare stand out that's going across the left side of the church beside the windows and the sign. Also, I like the itty bitty round ones on the door and just above. And the small clouds that are just barely peeking out of the brightness makes me smile. I love photos of churches :)

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!

Oldies, but goodies (I hope *lol*)!!

Here are a few before/after images that I worked on today. They're not really all that old; maybe two to three months. Somewhere around that range. Just wanted to play with some landscape*ish photos and so I pulled these from my portable hd.

Yesterday's Sunset.

Beautiful ending to a beautiful day (my Dad's birthday, so a fun time with all my family)!

From Graceland, to You! {& more}

Went on vacation with my parents and two year old son July 14th-17th while my husband was in Ohio attending apprenticeship school for work. On the 16th, we were in Memphis and toured Elvis' home. Graceland was really beautiful and I enjoyed it thoroughly! While walking to the Presleys' grave sites, I got a shot of this statue. Or, would it be called a monument? Either way, it was stunning and I wanted to share :-)







& then here are a few more shots I just wanted to share in this post.

Saturday, my husband finally got to race his laydown for the first time this season. Between work, school & weddings... he's missed pretty much the whole race season.


Before:




After a color boost:




After making it vintage:




*SIDE NOTE* Oh, and our two year old wrecked his little 50 four wheeler there! Pushed the throttle and got away from me (cant really run being 27 weeks pregnant, but I tried really hard - running behind him and screaming the whole way!). He drove smack dab into the fence, flew over the handle bars, smacked head first into the fence and then crumpled to the ground beside the four wheeler. I have never been so scared in my entire life! He cried, but wasnt seriously hurt - just mostly scared of what happened. He got a little boo boo on his hip and ankle, a tiny scratch on his forehead and then a big bruise showed up on his arm a few days later. He could have been seriously injured, but God was watching over him and kept him protected from anything worse.

Ok, back to the photos. Sorry! Gotta share my Mommy experiences sometimes; good or bad!

Did you know that we have a goat? Yup, her name is Nosy... VERY fitting!




& finally, two purple flowers: