Family Camp 2008

We attended our church's annual Family Camp in Prescott, AZ over the weekend. Fun, fun! It was held at Friendly Pines Camp and as usual, it was a great time. Below are some photos I took from the weekend. I took close to 400 photos! Legacy & Heritage families, I plan to eventually put all my photos in an online (password protected) gallery. I'll keep you posted once it's up.

85% of my shots during this trip were taken with my telephoto lens (55mm-200mm). I am soooo loving this lens! I just love the bokeh it gives! The first 2 shots below are actually taken with my 18mm-55mm lens to get a wide angle shot. :)

The main "Legacy campsite" :)

Our cabin (the one on the right - bottom level)

Getting ready for tug-of-war (families against families)

Our guest speakers - Pastor & Mrs. Ovid Need
(What a precious Titus 2 couple!)

How cute -- sack races!

My favorite shot of the whole trip!
Pastor Young's baby boy - isn't he so adorable??

Showing Work: Gallery Print

There are a wide variety of ways to show your work, be it clients, friends, family, etc. One fun way is creating gallery prints of some of your favorite photos. As you would imagine, this can be done using Photoshop and is very easy to do.

Creating a gallery print involves changing the canvas size and using the marquee tool around the image and changing the stroke width using a white or light grey color. The final touch is to add your logo or text to name your gallery print. Voila!

The above photo is another photos taken during the LaRose Tea Party. It is a shot of the table we sat at. So cute! Click photo to view larger size.

Ladies Summer Tea - part 2

More photos from the Summer Tea Party! Enjoy! :) Oh, I can't forget to mention that the top photo is a shot of a "Cupcake Chandelier". Doesn't it look soooo scrumptious? She had a ton of cupcake flavors! Yum-o! And the beautiful young maiden here is the youngest daughter of a dear friend of mine. She was dressed so adorably!

Ladies Summer Tea

Yesterday, I and 6 other lady friends, had the opportunity to attend a very sweet and beautiful formal summer tea held at The Castle @ Ashley Manor in Chandler. Wow, talk about a gorgeous location! It was a photographer's paradise for picture taking. Oh, how I wish I knew more about how to take better shots at a formal gathering! But it all comes with practice, right?

The tea was hosted by LaRose Parties and she did an amazing job with food, decorations and the program. We all had a wonderful time. Here is one of my favorite shots from this event. More photos to be posted shortly.

PP: sharpened, adjusted the colors to tone down the yellows, added a bit of contrast.

Shower: For King & Kingdom! (part 2)

Here are a few more shots from the baby shower for our pastor and his wife. Remember the theme -- "For King & Kingdom!". Many came dressed in royal attire. Aren't these two beautiful young maidens just so....well....beautiful?? :D As I've mentioned before, our church is so blessed to have in our midst great examples of virtuous maidens who are pressing on towards biblical womanhood.

What a joyful time of fellowship!

Shower: For King & Kingdom! (part 1)

"He hath shewed thee, O man, what [is] good;

and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly,

and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

(Micah 6:8)

Here are some photos from yesterday's baby shower for our pastor and his wife. They are expecting a boy (woo-hoo!) and are naming him "Micah". We cannot wait to meet this precious gift from God in person!

In keeping with the theme, many came dressed in royal attire and also acted accordingly with old english/scottish accents and using proper etiquette in addressing one another. Totally fun! More photos to come shortly in part 2. :D

Assignment: X-tych

"Knights of the King"

This is my submission for this week's DPS assignment ~"X-tych" (diptych, triptych or anything up to 7 pictures formed into a single image with multiple panels -- think about the individual images and the overall story created by how they relate together).

This is another assignment I really enjoyed working on. It was a first for me to do! I am calling this "Knights of the King". :)

These photos were taken today at a baby shower we attended for our pastor and his wife, who are expecting their 6th child. The theme of the shower was "For King and Kingdom" -- totally fun. Lord willing, I'll be uploading several more photos from the shower tomorrow!

Tea Party Archive

I've been so busy since Wednesday, I haven't had time to take new photos. Back to the archives I go! This photo was taken during the "Taking Dominion Tea Party" I blogged about earlier this month. I actually uploaded this photo to my Flickr account several weeks ago, but not here on my blog. I really like the perspective and vintage action I used on this shot.

Vintage action: I used Aly's vintage action set. You can download it free for use on Photoshop [here].

Homeschool Convention

Friday, we attended our state's annual Homeschool Convention & Curriculum Fair at the Phoenix Convention Center. AFHE celebrated its 25th anniversary! As always, we had an amazing time and came away greatly encouraged and ready for the upcoming school year.

All of these photos, with the exception of the b&w have been minimally post processed. My focus right now is pushing myself on consistently getting proper exposure in camera -- without a lot of manipulating with a photo editor. So you may notice that some of these shots do not have the best composition. My focus was on exposure. :)

These shots were actually a challenge to take because of the various indoor light sources that would affect exposure. If you read my last post on light metering, I was (still am) having a hard time trying to fully grasp this concept. Indoor lighting is one of the toughest environments to shoot if you're not familiar with how artificial light affects light metering. Many of my shots were actually underexposed and I had to constantly adjust the shutter speed and aperture values. This was a great learning experience for me!

Baby Blue Eyes

I LOVE this shot - especially since it's my first baby photo with my D40. Isn't she just absolutely adorable?? And how about those amazing blue eyes?? This shot was taken at yesterday's baby shower. I had taken several cute shots of this beauty, but this one is my favorite.

Post processing: I did my typical basic pp work (defog, adjust various layers). I also learned how to make eyes "pop" through a tutorial by Amy-Rose King Photography.

Baby Shower

I attended a baby shower today for one of my good friends from our homeschool group. She is expecting her third child/daughter in August. It was a great shower!

Post processing: All shots were "defogged" and I adjusted the hue/saturation. I also added a vignette (top photo) and used the burn tool to add a soft dark frame around the photo (rest of photos). Top photo, I converted the image to b&w using Stacy's b&w conversion tutorial. Third photo, I also added a "memory lane vintage" action.

More Tea Party Photos

Here are a couple of more photos from the Tea Party....

Top photo: My first official "portrait" shot with my D40 and I love the way it came out! This beautiful young maiden is the eldest daughter of one of our church families (and also dear friends). She is such the sweetheart, isn't she? I did my typical post processing with (my new favorite technique!) "defog" with unsharp mask, adjusting contrast/curves, and adding a vignette. Lastly, I cropped the image for better composition.

Bottom photo: Same post processing as above but without any cropping. I really like the angle and perspective of this shot.

Btw, have I mentioned yet how much I'm enjoying my dslr camera? LOL. DSLR's are a totally different breed of cameras. They're just amazing -- the richer colors, levels of sharpness and depth of field!

Taking Dominion Tea Party

Photos from a "Taking Dominion Tea Party" I attended yesterday with several friends and their daughters from church and our homeschool group. More details about the tea party can be found on my main blog. [ click here ]

Post processing: defog via unsharp mask (learned "defog" from Stacy's blog at The Land of K.A.) and also adjusted the curves and contrast a bit.

Happy Independence Day!

Taken last week with my Lumix DMC FZ-18 camera
A Phoenix church does its fireworks the Sunday before the 4th

We enjoyed a wonderful Independence Day celebration with several families from our church ~ a BBQ potluck at our Pastor's family's home. Below are some pictures from our fellowship time together:

Our pastor grilling hot dogs, kabobs, and burgers

2 layer (red/blue) Jell-O Stars! Mmmm....
Couldn't resist taking a shot of this!

Terry Productions: An Independence Day Puppet Show

Homeschool PE

Our son had P.E. class today with our homeschool group. The theme for the last two classes of the year is "wacky water games". Yes, it is already warm enough here to do water activities!

In trying to find a photo for the converging lines assignment, I decided to take some pictures during the class. I got a lot of great shots! The above photos captured best the overall feel of the class.

Baby Shower

We attended a family baby shower today for one of our church families. It was such a joyful time in fellowship! Our friends are expecting their first boy in about 3 weeks and this is their fifth child. Children are a heritage from the LORD. Amen and amen!

I will try to post a couple more pictures from the shower when I have more time.