DIY Camera Fill Flash Bounce

Hello lovelies! I found this tutorial on DIY Photography and got so excited that I just had to share it with all of you!


It is so easy, but it makes all the difference in the world!

It is as simple as taking a white business card and cutting slits into one side to fit right in front of your flash on your camera. Like so...

I am trying a thin piece of cardboard for mine right now, it does great fill, but when you are trying to do straight forward shots, it puts your subject in a shadow. I am going to test out a plain piece of printer paper to see if it works.

So far, I am in love with the results though!

This is a photo with no bounce –

Notice how yucky and harsh the lighting is.

This is a photo using the business card light bounce. The difference is incredible.

[Neither photograph was photoshopped or enhanced, to show the true difference in camera]

I know this will cure all of my poorly lit indoor night photography!

Enjoy!

My Sunday Afternoon

This weekend was a bit crazy, but Sunday afternoon was nothing short of awesome. I went out with my husband and the guys and we all had a blast shooting targets with the .22 mag and .223 they each just got. We had a blast and it was a much needed relaxed time!

I got to shoot the .22 mag a few rounds and there is just something about getting behind a gun and just shooting a few rounds to loosen the nerves (that may be the redneck speaking in me). But, needless to say, it was a great end to a not so great weekend.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are already having a great start to your week!

Engaging Love

Hello lovelies! I hope you are having a fantastic Thursday! I am busy busy with my internship, school and reporting, but I wanted to take a post and congratulate my big sister Autumn and her fiance Josh on their engagement! We are all very excited in my family and can't wait to start planning the wedding!

In occasion of the engagement, and the fact that I will be their engagement photo photographer, I wanted to make this post about really adorable, yet simple and sweet engagement photos.

I picked a few collections that I loved from different photographers, so here we go!

{ Jessica Claire }

Most recently featured on Ruche, Jessica has taken some beautiful inner city engagement photos, which would be fun to do either in Old Town in Fort Collins, up in Golden on main street, or 16th Street mall in Denver.

What Jessica is known for is being attracted to putting lots of colors in her photos, which is different fom many mainstream, but something that I love. I will definitely try to dress Autumn up in her black peacoat with some bright colors sticking out underneath!

{ Rebekah Westover }

Rebekah is another photographer that has lots of beautiful color on the subjects in her photos and they just shine and look gorgeous. I love the blanket idea, but a big reason that I chose her to feature was because many of her photos include snow, which I would love to have on the ground about the time that I shoot future Mr. and Mrs. Shannon.

I love all of the super cute scarf poses in these, it just is so adorable!

 

{ Miller + Miller }

I love these creative in a laundr-o-mat photos that Ryan and Sarah Miller of Miller + Miller photography did. It is fun, cute and just plain fun! I love ideas like these!

This is another engagement couple that Miller + Miller did in a snowy climate. I love the heart in the snow above and the light shining through the couple below.

Those are some gorgeous engagement photos and I hope to capture Josh and Autumn in the same ways, in love! 

May Autumn and Josh have many happy years to come!

Dreamy Backlit Photos

So you may always be looking through online images, magazines, blogs, etc. and see these amazing photos that have this awesome lighting and great contrast. Well, I am going to share some secrets with you that I use to make my photos high quality, even when they originally are not.

First, when setting up your shot, try to set up with a window behind your subject (or yourself, if you are the subject) and set your camera's aperture to be really wide and your shutterspeed to be relatively low, so the light behind your subject is whited out, instead of showing all of those things that are distracting through the window.

So here is the end result we are shooting for, and I will go through some very simple and quick steps you can do to make the photo look a million times better.

 This is the original photo that I started off with, you can still see a lovely dirt bike through the window, but you don't want that to show in your nice photo, so here is what I did to bring more light and get rid of background noise.

 First open your file in Photoshop (this tutorial is using CS5 on a Mac, so it may be different commands on your PC).

 First, you want to create a new brightness/contrast adjustment layer.

 Change your brightness to +75 (or to where it looks best for your photo) and your contrast up to +30, so you don't lose those nice details in the forefront.

 Now, returning to your background layer, create a curves adjustment layer and stretch the line upwards to where you like the way it looks (don't grab the line from the center, grab it from the top third).

 Now, you can do one of two steps, 1. you can open up your levels panel (command-L) and bring up your blacks (left toggle), or 2. press shift-command-L to do an auto-tone, which also looks nice and gives a similar effect.

 Now what you want to do is take the clone stamp tool (in your tool bar) and get rid of any unwanted background noise that didn't go away with your adjustments. I covered up a heating vent, a wire and part of my sliding glass door handle.

 Now crop to your size of choice, I always crop to 300 ppi, no matter what dimensions I choose for a photograph.

And now you have a finished product! It is simple, fast, and makes a great photo for your posts.

Have fun Photoshopping!

Fashion Friday: casual

So, this was the very last day of actual classes for fall semester and thank goodness, because they were running out of things to teach. It was cold and foggy out this morning and as a daily bike rider to my destinations (work, school, shopping, you name it...) I wanted to be comfy, so instead of toughing it up and putting on that skirt in the closet, I threw on my comfiest Levi's (which are totally my favorite brand) and my favorite top and boots. It isn't glamorous, or super special, but it is me and that is always something I enjoy being in these super stressful times (ahem...like the day you need to start studying for finals..). Well, since it is okay to be fashionable and casual, this is what I wore today (plus a nice winter jacket and mittens to keep my little fingers warm on the bike ride). I hope everyone had a fantastic week and does super well on their finals, or work, or whatever you are doing next week.

I have been practicing knitting, but I can't say I have been getting much better... but it is fun ans soothing! So I hope you have a relaxed weekend and enjoy the time you have ;)

If you are interested in how I accomplish the editing and lighting on photos like this one, stay tuned for a post later today on how to set it up and photoshop your dreamy backlit photos.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sunrise

Good morning lovelies! Since I haven't had classes this week for fall break, I have been waking up early to take Mark to work. The sun is rising over these beautiful lakes just a block from where he works and today I took my camera with me and stopped at the lakes after I dropped him off. It was so magical, I haven't seen such a beautiful sunrise. I know pictures don't do such a beauty justice, but I am sharing this with you.

I hope you are having a beautiful week!

Capturing dreams photography style

The past two nights I have been cheating on you. With amazing speeches at school by James Balog, a world renowned photographer and environmentalist. His works have been displayed in multitudes of magazines including my dream work: National Geographic.

He was so incredible the first night, I brought my husband to his second speech about his photography adventures. This guy is absolutely incredible. All of the things he has accomplished is like a world come true. What an inspiration to take my photography to the next level!

[James Balog]

[James Balog]

[James Balog]

These were a few of my favorite pieces!

Enjoy!

Little adventures home...

I know it is getting into that season where you aren't supposed to travel the roads in Colorado much, especially at 11 o' clock at night on a mountain pass... on a donut tire because you had a blow out in just outside of Denver... but at least it was the last clear weekend!

It was the best to surprise my mom and dad, I really missed them, and we crashed breakfast for pancakes! Yum!

Mark and I are such family oriented people, it is always such a blessing to be able to go home and see all of our favorite people.

We picked (more like stole..) raspberries from his Grandma Rita's raspberry patch, enjoyed dinner with his parents, enjoyed breakfast with mine and everything was just wonderful!

Who do you love to visit?

Snow Kayaking anyone?

Yes, I thought it sounded crazy too. But my friend Kristin from The Ginger Snap Society told me about it and I can' wait to give it a try!

Happy Friday!