I ♥ Faces - Week 45 - Autumn Beauty

It's been tough to make a choice this week. I have taken SO MANY autumn shots (as any of you who visit my blogs regularly might have noticed!), but I settled on this one in the end.


My children had taken off into the adjacent field to us, which right now is full of colourful dying ferns. They made a football pitch, but also a hide-out/den/house right down amongst the shoots. This is of Bugs burying himself in :D I love the way he is framed by autumnal ferns.

Don't forget to go and check out all the other beautiful autumnal faces over at I ♥ Faces this week. C U There!!

FIX-IT-FRIDAY - NO.36 - "SPARKLE BOY"

This weeks little man is so cute and the picture really not in need of a great deal of 'fixing' - that makes life more fun :D

Original.

The first thing I notice is the line on the left and the slight crust under his nose. Then the shadows under his eyes. It's a little dark and flat (lacking in contrast) too. So these are the things I set to work on first :D

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Edit One.

In Picnik I cropped out the line and took the picture into 5x7 proportions. Then I increased the contrast (local contrast +20, exposure +6, Contrast + 6) and unsharped the whole image (radius 1.5, strength about 30%). I also brightened the eyes (whites and irises at different levels). This was a pretty good edit in itself (see edit 4) :D

I then added the 'faded daguerreotype' curve and faded it out a bit - loved it!!

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Edit Two

Same as #2, only I wanted to try a rotation on it - liked this a LOT!

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Edit Three

Took #2 into Gimp, 'healed' out the crusty nose (definitely a better tool in gimp than in Picnik), dodged under his eyes, added a screen layer, a text layer and a frame :D

I think this is my favourite.

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Edit Four

Tweeked the saturation (down a little) and increased the warmth a little.

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Edit Five

I 'gimped' #4 - dodged under his eyes, 'healed' his nose, whitened his teeth (dodge tool again), lightly 'burned' his arms back and coloured his T shirt as it was getting a bit lost (not sure I like that bit though)

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Edit Six

Added a colour vibrance layer to #5 (and reduced the opacity)

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Edit Seven

Added a duo-tone (brown) effect to #6 (oooh - like this!)

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Edit Eight

Back to #7 and fiddled with the layers - changed one of them to 'grain extract' to get a sort of dulled effect.

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So there you go - what do you think of my edits this week. When the starter image is so good there is just so much you can do - I love it - it's such fun!!

And Just because I can (and I forgot I always try to) here is Edit Nine - the B&W.

Taken straight from #3 with some bending of the curves and extra unsharping of his eyes :D

Best Shot - Panning in Gold!

These last two days my children have had a wonderful time exploring the field adjacent to us which they are allowed to play in :D Today I discovered some settings on my camera that I didn't know were there - YEAH!! So I upped my contrast AND my sharpness and went out to play...

I had a go at some panning shots while I was there too - just for fun and to try something new for Loli's Best Shot!

These are all SOOC - I tried running noiseware, but I just don't like that 'smoothed out' look that it gives. Anyone know how to use it to remove the noise but not the quality of the shot? So in the end I left them grainy - but this time there have been no contrast or colour adjustments at all. What you see is what I got!! :D

Time to go see what others have shot now ... :D

FIX-IT-FRIDAY - NO.35

Original.

Fixes - 1 (screen layer + unsharp eyes)

2 (edit 1 + curves & sharpen)

3 ( + beige colour overlay)

4 (2 + faded B&W)

5 (2 + B&W)

6 (2 + old photo)

7 - sepia (achieved by 5 + faded dark-brown overlay layer)

7 - vintage

8 - cropped & rotated (sepia)

9 - vintage + shappy Princess overlay :D

I had fun - to see the fun others had head on over to Iheartfaces.com :D

You Capture - Free For All!!

It's getting colder here - it's November, but today my kiddos decided to brave the crisp end-of-autumn air and play out for half the afternoon in 'the field' - which they have now trodden down to a carpet of dying ferns and erected a make-shift football goal at one side of (cross-bar pending). The colours were lovely and the light was soft, so I took my cue! And for once they were all willing to be photographed. I like what I got, but I continue to be frustrated by my camera's dislike of low light and slow focusing speed. So many of those I took today were missed by an 'nth and it is frustrating! They were just that touch out of focus instead of crisp & sharp how I like them to be, and how they were coming out in the summer. I'm sure it's not me - least I hope it's not - it just seems so much harder to get that perfect shot now the light is so much dimmer :(

Anyway, here's today's best;

I am impressed with how my 21C children, who so much of the time are obsessed with their techno' lifestyle, can go out into a field full of ferns and instantly create houses, a dance/music studio (complete with 'stick' microphones!), a football pitch and and enough game-play to last an entire afternoon - until the rain came :D








...And my attempt at some sporty shots!!

Now over to see what everyone else has captured this week over on Beth's Blog :D