Tonight, David asked me to come to the fridge for a minute and I thought
he was going to ask me to help with the letters but when I went there,
this is what I found. Isn’t he the sweetest?
I mistakenly thought it must be a good idea to try to get off the
medication again two days ago and it turns out I was wrong again. I have
severe allergies and was unable to function all day today. Yuk. Back on
the medicine, sadly. And a fully wasted day.
Last night, I had such a surge of love for David that I almost woke him
up just to give him a hug and tell him I loved him. It took all my
strength not to wake him up. It’s really amazing how very much I love him.
Here’s a shot I took while we went out for ice cream this afternoon.
Big day tomorrow. See you then.
This week’s question was “Am I afraid of change?”
With a new baby on the way, I decided change is inevitable for us and I
might as well embrace it. Hence the heart and the clasp over it.
I used UTEE to stamp “laugh” and grunge board for the heart and the
clasp. I put a little glossy accent on the heart swirls just to have
them stick out a bit.
Catalyst forty-five is up at creative therapy: If
you got to write a book/movie/song what would it be about?
Here are my words:
I actually wrote books for a while and this is a poster I made in a
design class I took. This poster is for the first book I wrote. It’s
about a girl who goes back home to take care of her mother with whom she
has some deep issues and reconnects with her highschool love. In the
book, the mom has lupus which is called the butterfly disease, hence the
butterfly on the cover.
I love reading mainstream fiction and about strong characters and their
connections to each other and those are the kind of books I’d like to
write. I don’t dream of many many things in my life but writing a book
and getting published is a lifelong dream. I yearn to write and to write
well. Maybe one day…
Today we needed to get the cars serviced since we’re going to CHA next
week. So we all went to the dealership and I, once again, realized how
wonderful our little boy is. He immediately started playing with the
legos and told himself stories, created worlds and even found the other
kids at the place to encourage them to play with him. He’s a true joy. I
am deeply thankful.
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.
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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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