Vacation On the Brain!

So now after my Day 27 Post, vacation is on my brain, which just makes 29 degrees soooo much colder!  In memory of wonderful warm weather, sunshine, great times, I'm going to shower you with photos of our two most recent getaways. 


Swimming the dolphins at Grand Cayman - July 10





Swimming with the stingrays - Grand Cayman, July 10





Cave tubing in Belize! - July 10
 



Belize!  I thought this bus was so cool up against the trees.  I couldn't get a clear shot without people in the way though.  I really wanted to ask this girl to move, but hubby wouldn't let me!  Another shot that I wish I could've done in manual!  If only I had started learning a few months earlier!


Isla Roatan, Honduras - July 10


Honduras again, I SO wish I had been able to shoot in Manual at the time of this pic!!




Riviera Maya, Mexico - December 09



Riviera Maya, Mexico - Dec 09



Chichen Itza - Mexico Dec 09 (Another great manual photo missed!!)

Day 27 - Photo books!

Today already feels like it has been a long day and it is just 12:30!  I was supposed to go to a meeting at work this morning at 7:00, but didn’t make it.  I woke up about 4:30 to Michael yelling for me to come.  When I got into the living room he was carrying poor Noah inside.  Noah got into yet another fight last night and was very injured this time.  We called the vet this morning at soon as they opened, and we took him in.  He will be there until Monday or Tuesday, hopefully having surgery on Monday.  He may be there longer if he doesn’t respond well to antibiotics.  Poor Noah, hopefully after this he will be on the road to recovery!

We then came home and had brunch which was nice.  It had been so long since I cooked breakfast, or really cooked much in general.  So I decided that on my next two days off of work (Monday & Tuesday) I will cook something good both days.  No go to quickies (like Lemon Pepper Chicken & Rice, we have that a minimum of once a week!).  I haven’t quite planned out what we are going to have, but I’ll be thinking about it.

Now to my photo of the day…  I’m a huge photobook fan!  From our last two vacations, when we came home I made a book out of the photos.  

If only I had the slightest clue about how to take a decent photograph when we went on these trips...  I CAN'T WAIT to take another trip now that I've learned more about my camera!  I'm ashamed to say, in these books I completely "autoed" it up.   I also didn't have any editing programs or a clue how to edit anything then.

Mpix has always been my go to for making these.  I like the freedom that Mpix gives me with it.  Although their photobook quality is nowhere near their prints quality, I’m happy with the outcome.  Snapfish seems to be ALWAYS having some kind of huge sale or discount on their prints/photobooks, and although I’ve never printed there, I have friends who have made photobooks there.  I’d definitely use Mpix over Snapfish for my photobooks!  (My email today from Snapfish said that they have 50% off Valentine’s Day cards and 40% off of other items.  Like I said, I’ve never printed with them, so I can’t vouch for their print quality).

I came across this link:  The Great Photo Book Round-Up Review: Who Makes the Best Photo Books? This experiment was amazing to me, and I give serious props to the guy who did it!  That is a lot of time & effort!  He compares several different companies who offer photobooks. I think that for my next book, I will check out Adorama and see how I think it compares to Mpix.  If you’ve never read his article, definitely do.  It is kind of lengthy, but totally worth it!

I work the next 3-4 nights...  I don't want to go!!

Remembering Important Items! - Day 26

This is my Grandmother's ring that she gave to me to keep a few years ago.  I got it out to take a few photos.  The white pillow in the background is a ring-bearer pillow that I ended up not using in my wedding.

This first photo is what I consider to be "Day 26's Photo."  I really like it.  It makes me all sentimental.

Days 24 & 25!

Day 24:

Bad day -- I was so sick!  I spent the majority of the day in the bed.  Luckily I have a fabulous husband, who made me chicken noodle soup, and listened to me whine.  At one point when I woke up, I looked down, and this little rascal was in bed with me.  (Please excuse the crappy phone photos).

I think she likes it when we are sick.   Staying in bed all day, nobody putting up the effort to make her get off the bed.  If you aren't careful, she will lay right at your head and try to share your pillow with you!

Day 25:

I tried something new for breakfast.  McDonald’s new oatmeal rocks and I normally don’t even like oatmeal!  Its warm gooeyness (my computer is trying to get me to correct that...I guess that gooeyness isn't a word, but it totally should be!)  felt great on my very sore throat.  (That sounded kind of gross).  If you haven’t tried it, you should.  I may be hooked.  Once again please excuse the crappy phone photo, I was sitting in the med room at the hospital eating this waiting on a meeting.

We bought a new couch!  I have to admit at first I really didn’t like it as much as the old one.  But it has grown on me and its tons more comfortable.  It isn’t as girly, yet.  There will be frilly, bright cushions on it in the near future.  It is quite a bit bigger, so it’ll take some getting used to, but I’m fond of having more seating, and a place to actually sit again!  Please excuse our lunch mess behind it!

 

Love is in the Air! - Day 22

Here are a few photos from this weekend.  We went to a friend's wedding, and they were just beautiful together.  We evidently were not allowed to take photos during the ceremony even without flash (I was not aware), so I was quickly told to quit.  The majority of these photos aren't too good, there was very little light in the church, so I had to open my aperture up all the way & max out my ISO.  In the reception, there was no hope but to use my on board flash.  & Obviously I didn't take all of these reception photos myself, since I'm in some of them.

Me & my friend Tiffany!

Days 19-21 of 365!

Day 19:



Another lovely rainy/snowy, nasty day outside.





Dear Spring,


Please get here, stat.

Thanks,
Megan K.


PS. Make it super stat.


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Day 20:

No photo for this day. I spent my little bit of time before work editing that pic of the husband from the other day. I’m still not happy with the edit. I really need to work on my editing skills.

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Day 21:

Focus test! See Super Piper Callie Docious!'s post on Focus Test for the full how-to.  Her blog is awesome, and very educational.  I highly recommend it!

I tested my nifty fifty lens.  I had to do this test twice.  The first time I did it & uploaded pics, I was afraid it was front focusing.  So I did another set, which made me more comfortable.  I'll probably do this again in the next few days, just to make sure.  But right now I'm pretty confident the first set was user-error.

A Coupon + Learning More About Editing Using Day 18's Photo

I used the Smugmug free trial and I liked it a lot.  It definitely dominates flickr.  However, flickr is semi-free (but I’m always over my limit before the month is half over!).  As much as I’m uploading photos, I can’t wait for flickr to decide to give me more room.  Plus, smugmug just looks so much better.  It is so much better in my opinion.  So…I found a coupon for 20% off the first year!

For 20% off your first year at Smugmug use the coupon code: SmugSavings20

This made the basic package seem more manageable to me!

Now on to the point of this post!  Tonight I am working on my editing skills.  I am quite often guilty of over editing, or under editing.  So I am trying to find my median, and learn more about LR3 in the process.

This was my photo SOOC:

I know what you are thinking…”Yuck, look at that awful Orange cast.”  (Making a CWB for every single time I get my camera out is way too time consuming and unrealistic, I’m fine with fixing it in PPing)

So I started editing…  A little crop, Fix the WB, get some of that nasty orangey yellow out of the skim, dispose of Smokie so nicely putting in her cat tail, get rid of some of the noise…you get the idea.  Oh but then I discovered Iris Enhance…  And this was the result:

Looks way too fake, but before I could undo it, I discovered the Soften Skin tool.   Leading me to…this:

Now while I had fun doing that, it looks absolutely ridiculous.  So ridiculous that I just hit the reset button and started all over.  I did all same beginning steps, fixing WB and all of that jazz.  I still used the Iris Enhance and Soften Skin tools, just in a much milder way.  I’m pretty happy with the end result.  However I hope that in a few months I look back and think “Wow, I can’t believe I used to think that was pretty good!”

Histograms - Day 18 of 365!

I try to keep up with everyone's 365 photo projects every few days (which is a lot of work, there are a ton of people doing this now!).  On Marissa's blog, *Tired with Joy* -- she had learned pay more attention to her histogram.  I have always looked at my histogram with my highlight alert on to make sure I'm not clipping/blowing anything.  (If you have this feature on your camera and aren't using it, I really recommend it!)  Today I took it a step further. 

With setting my meter to my typical 1/3 stop to the right, this was my SOOC shot:  (Only PPing was fixing the WB and typical +50 Brightness & +25 contrast for RAW to JPG conversion)



I looked at my histogram, it was way over to the Left, with only a slight clipping of the blacks (which I was okay with for just a quick photo of my cat).  But I thought hmm...let's play with this!  So I changed my settings to where if just looking at my meter, I would have thought I was WAY overexposed.  But from my very small understanding of histograms, the image looked better. This was the SOOC for the better histogram shot (same PPing):



& here is my edit:





Over the next couple of weeks I hope to be able to learn more about histograms and how to read them.  I really want to start "getting it right" SOOC to cut down on my PPing time and have less noise in my photos by fixing exposure issues!


& we all know I can't have just one photo.  So here are a couple more!




My wonderful hubby.  Please excuse the vacuum cleaner, it is just proof that occasionally I really do clean.

 

Days 14, 15, 16, & 17!

It's been a busy few days!  I've barely had time to take a daily photo!  But tonight I am off of work, so I am uploading and processing all of the pictures from the past few days!

Day 14:

I had a major chocolate craving.  I wanted homemade brownies!  I had zero time to make homemade brownies, so when I went out to the store, this is what I made it home with.





Day 15:

Noah has been in countless fights over the past couple of weeks.  We are no longer trying to stop him.  Really, you'd think he'd learn his lesson!  Every single time he goes outside, he comes home limping, bleeding and bruised.  He will spend all day inside resting, and then as soon as its dusk, he's off to battle.


He has to get stretched out first though:






Callie watching from the safety of the couch.  After all, outside is a scary place for a little calico.





Day 16:

Work night #3, preparing with my drug of choice -- Mountain dew.  Yes it's true, I'm a Mountain Dew Junkie...  When you are a night shift RN, its basically a requirement.




Day 17:

I wanted to photograph Smokie, but she was having nothing to do with it.  Callie however is always up for a little extra attention.