We spent hours last night putting these stars up in David’s room. He’s
been unhappy when the room is pitch black and often asks us to leave
the bathroom light on all night. I thought this would be a cheaper and
cooler alternative. So far, it’s a huge hit.
I wanted this to be our photo of the day because I noticed this table as
soon as I walked into the classroom and it looked so inviting. I only
wish when I was David’s age, my classrooms had looked like this. See the
before photo:
Doesn’t it look so inviting? It made me want to sit down and do some
art. But I must say the first thing David noticed were these gymnastics
pieces and he wanted to play immediately.
while that one made me smile, this one made me realize our skateboarding
days are not too far:
which scares me quite a bit.
Today we were late to school and normally David always complains about
washing his hands when we walk in but not today. He went right to the
bathroom and washed them so he could join in on the fun. Made me wonder
if we should be late everyday…
Still way too tired.
Last night we launched a product we’ve been working on for a while so it
was a big moment for me and my team and I wanted to commemorate it. Love
this product and the team working on it.
Here’s a shot of the little one cause I am trying to make sure I have
many of those:
The tree is finally down. I guess I really was ready cause I don’t feel
so sad about it anymore. David was ok with it, too, though he was a bit
bummed. Still more tired than I’d like but things are improving a bit.
So far so good in 2009 and I am managing to stay peaceful which makes me
feel happy.
Another shot of David at school. No I never get sick of these. I
especially want to remember the band-aid on his finger cause he’s been
obsessed with band-aids lately and will not let me take them off. Not
sure how we will ever get him off it but we’re indulging him for now.
Busy day at work today, maybe I’ll post it as my photo of the day
tomorrow. Otherwise, feeling good about the bunch I accomplished over
the weekend though I have a lot more to do. Will finally take the
Christmas ornaments down today (I think I might be ready at last) and
Jake will have to chop up the tree this week. Still really exhausted but
I’m starting to make my peace with it I think.
I wanted to put some time into my Photoshop project this weekend, too.
So here’s what I’ve done so far:
Read all the David tutorials for this month as well as the prep ones: Digital Workflow:
all four parts, Creative
Workflow, Portraits: part
1, Masking: part
1, and Lanscapes:
creating dramatic skies
I will need to reread them again of course, but it was some good reading
for now. Here are a few lessons I learned in general (they’re all over
the place, mostly for me to remember):
- Always shoot RAW if you can. This gives you a lot more flexibility
in post-processing. This is something I knew but didn’t do often enough,
I’ll be playing with RAW this month, all month.
- Don’t overexpose, you can’t get that information back. Don’t create
a right gap, you can’t get that detail back either.
- When processing a RAW image, process conservatively so it gives you
the most flexibility when adjusting in Photoshop.
- If you process RAW and then open as smart-object (shift-click the
Open Image button), you can go back and redo RAW processing if need.
(like to reduce noise)
- Remember that the edges of an image can be a distraction. This of
where you’d like the viewers eye to focus and how you’d like it to
travel (this applies to layouts too.)
- If you want to combine layers, selecting the entire image (Select ->
All), using the Copy Merged command (Edit -> Copy Merged), then the
Paste command. This is functionally equivalent to flattening the image.
- If you want change the highlights but not saturation – try changing
the layer to “luminosity” for the curve adjustment.
So I wanted to put a little example of what magic masks can be. Be
forewarned that this is a quickie so it’s far far from ideal and the
original wasn’t RAW so that hurts the process, too. Not to mention I
over-saturated for effect. So with all that….
Here’s a photo I took last year in Pismo Beach:
As you can see it’s really flat so if I were to do some basic curves to
try to mess with the white point and some highlights and lowlights,
here’s what I get:
It makes the image a bit more full of contrast but now my sky is
completely blown out and you can see no detail at all. If I were to use
masks and do my saturation/curves using masks, here’s what I can accomplish:
Yes, it’s over-saturated, but look at the detail in the sky and the
detail in the sea. You can have your cake and eat it, too. More on masks
next week.
Emily’s question from last week is: “what do i wish for this year to
bring?” and as I’ve already spoken about many many times, mine is for peace.
The technique I used for this week is the Mini Misters and I took my
inspiration from this
tag by Tim Holtz. I’ve been playing more and more with his products
and loving every moment of it.
Catalyst
Forty-four is up: What’s something about the way you live your life
that doesn’t align with who you are (or wish you were)?
Here are my words:
Ever since I can remember, I’ve made career and life decisions such that
I could stay at home when I had children. Even back when I was 10, I
wanted to study computers because I knew it was a career I could pursue
from home. And yet, here I am, working at a large company, spending a
lot of time in meetings, and not at home with my wonderful boy. With
another little one on the way, this is the largest way that my life is
out of sync with how I wish it were, so I know I need to find some
solutions.
I started this project last night and had so much fun. The technique for
this card was water-soluble crayons.
David and Jake are spending most of the day watching football. David
also loves watching movies on Jake’s G1 Android phone. I just love
watching them. See his beard? He’s been growing it for day and I love
seeing it but it is not fun to touch or kiss.
Quiet day for me. I worked on the tags last night (photos coming next)
and four catalysts today. I also got my CK kit finally so I put all the
cards in for all the days and decided on a routine:
– daily photos taken and posted on the blog here with notes
– weekly updates of the journaling cards, written in pen
– monthly ordering of prints to put in the album (not sure where yet.)
Things are starting to get organized a bit. Off to do some Photoshop
reading. Happy Sunday.
I captured this little gem as David and Jake were playing outside. We
had just come out of ThemeFest where we hope to have David’s Fourth
birthday in a few weeks. Before that we drove up to San Fran airport to
meet our friend Dave and his wife Christine as they had a layover on
their way back from the Philippines to Cincinnati. I hadn’t seen Dave in
a long long time so it was nice to catch up.
The rest of the day has so far been quiet. I came home and fell into a
long nap and have just woken up to my relatively long to-do list. It’s
looking at me and I’m looking at it and not sure where to start. On we go.
It’s been a few rough days for me. Two days ago, my watch stopped
working, which is a major major problem for me. Then there’s the
exhaustion I mentioned yesterday which got worse and worse throughout
the day. I then came home to notice that my diamond bracelet wasn’t on
my arm anymore and that was just the last bad thing I needed for the week.
Just when I thought I wanted to crawl into bed and have this week be
over, I noticed my diamond bracelet sparkling in the bed. And then I
went to visit Big Picture Scrapbooking and saw that my Projects Now!
class Change in
Plans was finally up and my day just did a 180! Teaching at BPS is
my biggest scrapbooking dream. I am very passionate about teaching and
BPS is exactly where I wanted to teach the minute I heard about it two
years ago. This truly is a huge huge dream come true so I am really
excited and had to make it my photo of the day. If you download it, I
hope you send me an email and let me know how you liked it.
And I will leave you with a photo of David from this morning at school.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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