Here comes the rain: Wenatchee photography

We've been having a lot of weird weather lately. Specifically, lots of rain, in a place that typically has 330+ days of sunshine a year. With the rain come thunderstorms, which are always pretty cool to watch and listen to. We learned our dog, Gator, a massively large Golden Retriever, is afraid of thunder, and each boom sends him trying to hide in a ridiculously small space, usually under my feet.

Two of my three daughters are out of town for a bit and it feels so weird to just have one here. And the one here is 16 so we don't see a whole lot of her right now either. It's been a little taste of what it will be like when they've all flown the nest. Lots of time to do what I want, but at what cost? I will have a bad case of "empty nest syndrome" for sure...In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "Oh I can't think about this now! I'll go crazy if I do! I'll think about it tomorrow."

Here are a few shots of the one at home in the last rain, with another to follow on Wednesday's Before and After.

Wenatchee senior portrait: Before and After

Well, the best laid plans...I said I would really try to do a Before and After every Wednesday and then managed a whole...one. The problem was honestly that I forgot, plain and simple. It isn't a habit yet, so never occured to me again until I saw my old post that included the first one and realized I'd fallen off the wagon, so to speak. This is why New Year's resolutions never work for me. I literally forget I made them until, like April. So while I'm thinking about it, I'm doing one now (Monday night) and setting it to publish Wednesday a.m. Ha ha, I feel like I'm talking to the future.

In this photo you can see the RAW SOOC version, exactly as it was captured. Below it is the RAW file with it's basic adjustments set in Camera RAW. I shoot everything in RAW with Auto white balance (except sports, where I shoot JPG with a custom white balance) because the beauty of RAW is being able to choose the best white balance in processing, fine-tuning as desired. So you really see the light's color difference between the two shots. Once opened in Photoshop, I really did very little. I added contrast to the different values in her hair (making some of the lights lighter and darks darker for contrast.) I also lightened what I'll call the "bags" under her eyes - although they aren't really bags, like dark circles or anything. It's common in a lot of young people, that fresh little pad of fat that defines the eye. I actually love it in real life, but when you photograph someone with dark eyes, like she has, it tends to close up the eye area making them appear like dark holes in the head. I lighten them (don't remove alltogether or it looks fake) and brighten up the eyes a bit for emphasis. I also added a subtle vignette and some selective bluring in the lower part of the photo to put more emphasis on her beautiful face. A couple small blemishes were sampled out and the whole process took just a couple minutes.

Travel photography

Jay Reilly,an amazing lifestyle photographer, is having a travel photo contest with pretty fantastic prizes and the voting has begun. The best part about his contest is the entries are prescreened so only the really good stuff is entered. I entered one and was thrilled to have it accepted, so thought I'd pass on the link so you can check out all the amazing entries yourself. Travel photos make me want to GO SOMEWHERE so bad!

This was the one I entered, one of my favorite images from Challis, ID, where my dad and his family are from. In fact, I will get a chance to be there in about 3 weeks when I head over to pick up my daughter who is visiting my dad and mom there. Can't wait!

Pomp & Circumstance: Wenatchee senior portraits

Three posts in a row about my graduating daughter. Well, it is a busy time right now, or rather was. Come and gone so fast and now we're getting ready to register her for college this week. What's that saying about where the time goes?? Sheesh, it's ridiculous.

You'll notice the new look on the blog and website because, well, I like to design and it's really hard for me to stick to one look. But, I think I'm happy for now so I'll try to keep my mitts off and let things just BE for a bit. We'll see how well THAT goes.

My baby is away from home for the first time. Spnding 3 weeks with my parents in central Idaho. Big move for her and us. Don't know who was crying harder at the final goodbye. But know she will have a great time exploring and fishing and arts-n-crafting with my mom and dad and the time will fly, as it is want to do when having fun (her, not us - I'll be missing her too much and doing nothing more exciting than work.) I think it's awesome my parents agreed to take on a 10-year-old for most of the month, know they love spending time with their grandkids but know it will make retirement a little busier than normal.

Last minute Shade: Wenatchee senior portraits

She decided she wanted another senior session one week before she graduated so she had a few more photos to hand out (she didn't want to hand out the same shot to everyone) so we did a little impromptu shoot. Love, love how these came out, as did she, which was really my big goal for someone who doesn't like photos of herself. Gorgeous, if only she would see it! You can see several more in the senior gallery.