I ♥ Faces - Week 17 - HATS - adult

This entry is of my treasured friend. She would probably hang me if she knew I'd posted this, but I do love the portrait. 

This really is a portrait of HER in my eyes; it says so much of who she is:- The strong-minded, intelligent, confident, elegant and VERY beautiful Oxford lady, the passionate walker and lover of the peace to be found in nature, the great-fun-to-be with friend, the nurturer & carer that she has always been to me. 

To me her hat is the crowning piece of the picture :D. 

The picture itself  is not such great quality I know. It was taken before my Canon S3, on my little P&S. All the same - constructive criticism welcome! :) 

My own criticism would be that her skin is a bit red, but in reality she does have quite red skin (she is a farmer's daughter and has a pleasantly weathered face from many mountains she has climbed!!) - and I wanted to not take away from the portrait aspect of the picture. Also, her eyes are a bit to dark and hidden, but again, I didn't want to make them look unnatural by brightening them falsely. To me there is a brightness that shines from her eyes despite their lack of 'pop' iykmim - just look at those lovely smile-lines :D I nearly took into B&W to rid it of some of these points (and it would have worked), but decided in the end that the colour in itself was part of the painting. The colour reflected another aspect of R's personality to me!

I find editing pictures is a fine balance between enhancement and distortion of truth! In this instance I wanted more to maintain the honesty of the photograph - the painting of a character - than to iron out all the flaws (the many flaws). After all, the theme this week is about 'hats' - and in this shot - the hat is the essence!

Make sure you go and check out all the other

beautiful faces & their hats, at...

www.iheartfaces.com

Iheartfaces - week 15 - SP - Adult

I seriously don't like ANY of the pictures I have taken of myself, but this was probably the best of the bunch, so much as I don't expect to win any fame for this one, it's here and I've not missed an entry - and you get to see my face. In the sunshine you don't see me without shades and a hat (hence the shady forehead). We have an expression in our house - "if you don't like what you see, just look at the flowers." It's a long story, but I recommend you do just that for this one ;) !!

So there you go - I hate it , but I did it!

Be sure to go check out all the much more beautiful Self-Portraits this week at 

www.iheartfaces.com

Week 13 - My friend(s) and I - 20yr Reunion.

Ok - I know the description for this week is my FRIEND (x1) and I, but this truely was the best photo I have of myself with any of my friends (I'm the one in the middle), so I'm hoping you will forgive me having two friends in the picture! I'm usually the one taking the photo and hiding behind the viewfinder!!

The photo was taken at our school reunion, marking 20yrs since we all left school! Meeting up with these two, after so many years, was very special to me and made school seem but a whisker of time since. I hope it won't be another 20 years before I see them again, but time does fly by so very quickly...

Taken in a dark nightclub (by my husband), with auto flash on my little P&S, the quality is not top-notch, but all the same it does capture the moment well - and somehow I figure it is more important to capture the moment than to miss for the sake of quality (even better if both is possible I know!!).

I have pp'd this to improve it some - I hope you like the result :) . I thought I would go with B&W to give it a more timeless quality. I nearly went with a 1970's colour set (as we are all 1970's girls!), but this simply looked better in the end :) .

Make sure you go & check out all the beautiful faces of friendship this week at...

www.iheartfaces.com!

No Flash - IHeartFaces - Week 11

Well, for those of you who have seen my kids entry this week, like son - like father :D

Here is my shot of my husband this Saturday. I particularly liked the reflections in his glasses. I haven't done too much to this photo either in terms of pp. Autofix, crop, cinemascope and add text - c'est tout!

He's getting a bit fed up of me putting photos of him on here though, so I'm going to have to find another subject soon! I can't help it that he has such a nice photogenic face ;) I nearly used two of a couple of my friend's this week, but this one won over in the end - again!

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful 'no-flash' faces at www.iheartfaces.com!"

Two heads - Creative Crop - adult entry.

TWO HEADS ARE ALWAYS BETTER THAN ONE!

This was taken of my two good friends one New Year when they had stayed with us and were about to leave.

Here's the original - I really went to town on this one!!

 All feedback and comments welcome - good and bad - let me know what you think!

"Don't forget to go and see what fun so many other folks have had with their 'creative cropping' this week - at www.iheartfaces.com!"

Mr & Miss Messy

I had to find my entries in a hurry this week as I didn't know you'd changed the closing day - until today! So these are unedited. I wanted to concentrate on editing my beginners entry more this week - where I think I really am at in all honesty! Still these photos are fun, so enjoy :D

Adult entry; 

Paul feeling a little 'ogrely swamped!!' 

Sadly this picture is not in good focus and there's not much I can do about it, but it's still fun and VERY messy!! 

Kids entry;

This is a SOOC shot taken a couple of years ago - it's not too bad though :D

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful faces at www.iheartfaces.com!"

Pondering The Future

This was actually a self portrait by my husband (so if this wins technically HE gets the fame, but we share the blog so that's OK!), and it came out to be one of my favourite pictures of him.  I've edited it into B&W and tweaked the shades a little. You can see how far away his thoughts are as he was contemplating the future and soaking himself in the beauty of Lake Windermere.

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful faces at www.iheartfaces.com! This weeks theme is black&white :D"

SILLY DADDY!

I may not be the worlds best photographer, but I think I might be in with a fighting chance this week! 

This shot is of our lovely Daddy oiking the small ones down from the monument at Trafalgar Square - I just love it :D You can see the all the laughter that came with this silly moment!

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful faces at www.iheartfaces.com!"

I Fell in Love...

A long time ago I fell in love with the smile in these eyes :)

Somewhere in there you can see the cheeky boy, the loving brother & husband and the thoughtful man. He has a depth to his eyes that I simply adore!

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful faces at www.iheartfaces.com!"

Difficult Choices - JOY

"A First Smile & A Friend's Love."

This is my entry for this weeks "JOY" category.

I found it hard to find pictures of joy without children in - so often in my family our joy is wrapped up in our children :)

This is a picture of a young lady who came to live with us one summer just after my son was born. C is just about 5 weeks old in this picture and this was for sure one of his first deliberately responsive smiles - and it was for her :)

You can see the joy and the bond between them - I love the shot! It captures a moment I'll probably never see again.

I found it so hard to chose between two photos though this week so I put the other one HERE in case you were interested to see it!!

"Be sure to go check out all the beautiful faces at www.iheartfaces.com!"

Two Sillies

My Sister and Brother-in-law having a silly moment. I love the fun in their faces :)