Photography related links

I might have said that before, but one of the blessings and curses of scrapbooking is that it gets you into many other things, like photography, photoediting, cardmaking, painting, colouring, stamping, drawing, writing, stitching, sewing, crocheting and mixed media.

Like today, I should have been working on a new digistamp for my little shop, as I didn't release anything new this week. Or get to work on next week's PaperPlay Challenge. Or else, scrapbook the month of January for Project 12.  Or I could work on Shimelle's new release due next week in her digishop. Instead I spent my time in photo post processing related tasks. Didn't take a single photo though. Sigh...

As I have a stack of photo-less photo frames, I decide to select three photos for something I bought in IKEA. I thought it was a photo frame, but it turned out to be a ready made photo display with 3 photos (there's a name for it I just can't remember what it is).

I only have some fairly average recent photos with my two children in it. I got the white balance totally wrong. I fixed it in PSE (Enhance->Adjust Colors->Adjust Colors for Skin Tone..), but still I wasn't happy with it, so I converted to b&w, using an action from the Falling for Black and White by Sarah Cornish. I had previously converted to b&w manually in PSE and PSP but this is so much easier and the results are great. And you can tweak it afterwards.

 

(No, I don't have a single decent photo of my children together. 99% are like this one, daughter looking cute, son not so much. 1% has the perfect photo of son, but then my daughter is looking somewhere else.)

Then I had to email some photos to friends, they were taken in a restaurant in the evening. No other alternative than using the built-in flash. I covered it with a napkin - my theory is that it avoids the washed-out look. When I downloaded the phtoos, one thing that I noticed was that the girls with a darker skin (dark Irish, that is) looked ok, but the birthday girl, who is very fair & looked lovely on the night, appeared in the photo with the skin all red and blotchy. After a lenghty investigation in Google, I discovered that flash, fair skin and make up are not the best friends. And best still, I found the cure for it, thank you, Lee Varis. I'll print this article and keep it for future flash disasters.

After that, I went to a portrait photography forum I joined recently - ilovephotography.com It looks like most of people there are way above my level, it will take a while until I get enough courage to post anything, but it is interesting to look at the posts. 

I love looking at the portfolio of the real pros. You know that they are in a completely different level and whatever they charge is worth it because they know what they are doing, they have the eye, the understanding and talent.

Barb Ui runs jinkyart photography. There's a little video at the beginning, well worth watching. And her photos are delicious, part photography part documentary of a life.

Andrea Joki owns Ajaton Joki, her "children and family" portfolio is beautiful, I wish I could take photos like she does.