Flowers for Memorial Day

This gorgeous red mini honeysuckle vine is just starting to bloom along the fence right behind the headstone of a returned WWII vet...They seemed to be standing to attention and saluting this old soldier.

Cleaning up the background

After a client makes their selection, is when I do the final edit to their images.
I remove blemishes from faces, brighten eyes, remove stray hairs...

and remove any background clutter that really has no business being in my photograph, as you can see in the examples below.

The power pole and lines are a distraction from the main subject, the for sale sign and mailbox unsightly white blotches, also drawing your eye to the wrong part of the image.

Once these are removed, the young girl and her shadow become the mail focal point of the photo.

The road becomes nice clutter free back country road with leading lines again bringing your eye back to our main focus.

Cleaning up your background both prior to taking a photo and/or in post production with Photoshop, is what will  help set your work apart from being "just another snapshot"

If you are wondering why I did not do this for all the images I take for a client, depending on the photograph it can be very time consuming, so would be a waste of my time to put that editing time into photographs that may not be selected.

Testing a Canon EF 35-70mm 1:3:5-4:5 A Lens

A friend was cleaning out and found her old 35mm Camera with a Canon EF 35-70mm 1:3:5-4:5 A Lens attached and since the camera was not working (she thought, I got it shooting and advancing the film again) she asked me if I would be interested in the lens for my DSLR.

Settings 1/125s 4.5F ISO 100 35-70@70

It is a little noisy and chunky sounding...Could just need to be loosened up a little more...The zoom was stuck when I first got it (could have been the reason her 35mm would not fire for her)

I am going to play with it for a few more days and see what it can do...might be fun to see if it will function as a macro...also would like to get a person in front of it and see if it is any good as a portrait lens.

Kelsie

Older siblings are important too.

While last night's shoot was to capture those precious turning 1 memories, it is also important to make sure we do not leave out the siblings...While Master One was taking a juice break, big brother Hayden and I took a moment, to take a short walk and capture a couple of shots of him too.

Thank you Hayden for being such a big help at getting all the smiles out of baby brother...You are a rock star.

Birthday Boy by the River

Since Facebook has rendered me powerless to post for the time being, I will be posting some sneak peeks here on my blog. Never know might get me motivated to update the blog a little bit more often lol



Master Avery turned one this month...and I was thrilled to be chosen to capture these future memories for his parents...He is just cute as a button and all boy...It was a very challenging day for this lady photographer to keep his focus so close to the Suwannee River, with noisy motor boats just calling out for a little boys attention. Despite the distractions, he did an awesome job being adorable.



And this would be an perfect example why we call this the golden hour...The only thing I did to this photo was brush the shadows on the baby with a 10% shadow to give him a little more pop, but the background is just as God and nature made it...the sun reflecting back up off of the water...truly magical.

A Whale of a Cake Smashing Time

It is always fun to match the Cake Smash theme with that of the Birthday Party theme.

If you are interested in booking a cake smash for your little one, make sure you give me plenty of notice...If you would like to use the images as birthday invitations you need to plan ahead and book the smash about 3 or 4 weeks ahead of when you would like to be dropping those invites in the mail.

If you want to display prints from the cake smash at your party, again you need to make sure you plan ahead and you get those selections back in within just a day or 2 of receiving your gallery so print orders can be placed and have time to ship to you before the big day.

Happy Party Planning
Kelsie

Wildflower Sessions 2013