New Pics (Week 12)

New Pics (Week 10)... Labor Day Weekend

So let's see.  What did we do this past Labor Day weekend?  I'm actually asking myself this question because we were non-stop from Friday morning right up until the evening of Monday that I'm finding it a little difficult to remember everything!  First of all, it was an extra long weekend for us.  My husband took Friday off and then of course had Monday (Labor Day), so an entire four days to spend with each other was exciting!  My husband, Bob, got to spend a lot of time with Livvy!  I think they both missed each other a little extra when Tuesday came around after being so close the past four days.  When Livvy woke in the morning and I was changing her first diaper of the day she said Dada.  It was the cutest thing! 

New Pics (Week 9)... Fabulous Friday!

You know why it's fabulous?  Because the hubby is home today and through Tuesday!  Woo Hoo!  We have some great stuff planned over the next 3 days!  Hopefully I get some pictures!

New Pics (Week 9)... Just 5

...Cause I only have 5 pictures to share today. 

So can you believe that all this time, at least for months now, I had the ability to maintain the quality of my images while still being able to resize for blog posts?  When I purchased the Miracle Makeover actions from Paint the Moon awhile back, it came with two web resize actions.  One converts an image to 500 px and the other to 900 px.  There is a VERY noticeable difference between using these actions to resize and just letting Blogger do it.  It's amazing!  I wanted to share the differences with you below.  My first picture was resized using the action, the second one was resized by Blogger (yuck).  The ones that were automatically resized became a little blurry and, more annoyingly, pixelated.  It's horrible!  Thanks again Pain the Moon!  Seriously, you made my year!

New Pics (Week 8)... A Noisy Saturday

I really wanted to title this post Silent Saturday because I'm too tired to write today but then I realized silent is not the same as wordless.  Hello!  So anyway, I went with 'A Noisy Saturday' because the following pictures were all taken with my ISO as high as 1600!  Yeah you heard me right.  And I hate noise!  I had no choice though.  I wasn't resorting to the flash.  I'm too in love with the look of natural light photography.  Anyhow, I'm starting to change my mind a bit.  About noise that is.  My sister said that a noisy picture isn't always bad especially when the picture is good.  She said you wouldn't notice the noise in a good picture and that sometimes (good) noise can add to the details of your subject.  That's right, I guess there is good noise and bad noise!  Boy my sister is one smart cookie!  In fact, I wouldn't have believed her as much until I saw it myself.  These pictures didn't bother me so much.  If this were about a month ago I would have labeled these 'ruined' and put them aside to collect cyber dust.  In fact, I was very happy with them!  I used PSE to reduce the noise a little but actually left a lot of it in!  In a way, the noise made the picture almost sharper!  So to stick to my previously written words of a prior post, 'I can tone it down', these edits were almost entirely to the color and lighting of the photograph ONLY.  No airbrushing, wrinkle removing or eye brightening actions used from Picnik!  Here is my Livvy, au naturale, in all her splendor!

Blog Hoppin' & A very random note to Livvy

Linking up to the Before & After Blog Hop over at Pixel Perfect.

I've attached my original, clean edit, and final below.

Camera Settings for SOOC:   Shutter Speed-200  ISO-400   Aperture-f/5.6   Focal Length-45 mm

Somebody stop me!

I wasn't sure what to do here but I just loved the picture that Jamie provided for the Edit Me Photo Challenge so much that I found myself still making edits to it even after I already linked up and entered my 'one' submission!  To me it's not about the photo challenge and whether this is entered in, I just wanted to be able to share my other edit with everyone because I fell in love with it.  I used Picnik as my editing software.  My goal was to focus in on those colorful striped knee socks so I converted it to black & white again but, this time, left the vibrant color on the socks and shoes.  To finish it off, I applied a vintage frame in PSE that I purchased from Paint the Moon.  The Polaroid was a frame provided by PSE.  I thought it was cute!