A thank you and a confession

The confession being: Apparently I am an idiot. Or an Ee-jit as my friend would pronounce it when I do something really stupid.

What could be so stupid, you ask? For all this time I have had this blog, I have never knowingly recieved any comments to my posts. I knew that was normal because no one knew I was out here in cyperspace anyway. (I hate the term cyberspace, by the way.) Well a certain amount of time has gone by and still, no comments. I'm not all braggin' up on my work, but I think I post some decent stuff sometimes and I am trying to post Before and Afters because one thing I am passionate about in photography (and design and everything else I like to dabble in) is education. I LOVE to pass on what I know (after all, someone passed it on to me at some point). So it was hurting my little feelings that no one has ever commented. Today I was looking at the "guts" of my blog (all the boring admin stuff) and noticed I had SEVENTY-ONE comments "awaiting moderation". 71! I felt like Sally Fields "you like me, you really like me." I was an idiot for not knowing I had comment moderation turned on. And for not checking earlier to see what the deal was.

So forgive me. All 71 of you who have taken the time to comment! I was not being a snob, really, my momma' taught me to be grateful and to always say thank you and I do appreciate anyone taking the time to drop me a few words. There were comments from so many talented people, people whose blogs I read and comment on myself, and I would be ashamed if anyone thought I was being rude. I've turned off the moderation and I'm going to make it a point to go visit all of your blogs (if you left an address) and thank you personally.

The pickup: Wenatchee couple portrait

Love , love how this turned out. An almost silhouette with a bit of mystery and steamy hotness. I imagine he’s convincing her to come back to his place, and she, of course, is being coy.

Before and after: Wenatchee portrait

Another before and after of a shot I made last night. Like always for portraits, I capture in RAW. This was aperture priority at f/5.6, 1/40, ISO 250, auto white balance. Important to note the +2 exposure compensation to help the matrix metering better account for the bright sky. Could have also used spot or center-weighted metering on his skin. Always more than one way to skin a cat, as the (oddly gross) saying goes.

In Adobe Camera RAW I cropped and straightened just a bit, adjusted the white balance for warmth (5550, -10) and to remove some of that redness Nikon seems prone to, took the exposure down 1/3 stop, recovered some of the highlights (53) and bumped up the contrast (+48).

Once in Photoshop I did a little standard noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise from within Topaz Adjust and added a bit more contrast and saturation. I ran three ColorShift (Jesh de Rox) actions: Color of summer (50%), Memory of a Friend (40%) and Rainforest (40%) which I then masked, leaving the warm tones on his skin and the cooler rainforest tone everywhere else. Sharpened to taste for screen presentation. Took about 5 minutes total. Not a huge transformation but a nice one I think.

 

Wenatchee couple portrait: stephanie + eric

Sneak peek of a couples session I did tonight. Have to admit I was worried it would be too hot to enjoy (was supposed to still be over 100 at 8 pm) but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. So I had to settle for how HOT these two were. More sizzlin’ portraits of them to come.

Portrait of Wenatchee summer or "ain't no cure for the summertime blues."

Lovin' the summer blues right now. Speaking about the color, of course. Those skies, fresh blueberries, cool mountain streams. So much blue -- there's practically no way you can get "the blues" this time of year.