A Lazy Day of Summer

Well, it wasn't all that lazy of a summer day for us. This shot just reminds me of one. :D We were quite busy, as a matter of fact. I decided to take our son to Tempe Town Lake for lunch to do more photography practice. :) After several minutes of chasing after birds, our son needed to rest. So, here he is....resting and enjoying the shade. Aaahh! More photos from today to come.

PP: My basic pp work has now become defogging and adjusting the levels layer as needed. I also increased color saturation slightly and added a vignette.

Scottsdale Train Park

These are photos I took today at our visit to Scottsdale Train Park. What a beautiful park! But it would have been a more pleasant trip if the weather wasn't so hot. The price you pay for living in the desert, I guess. :)

• PP for top photo: texture layer, curves layer, sepia photo filter, sharpened
• PP for middle photo: monochrome channel mixer, sharpened, vignette
• PP for last photo: sharpened, vignette

CPF Assignment: Motion

I almost missed entering this week's CPF (Christian Photographers Forum) assignment! We went to Canyon Lake today with one of our church family friends, the Conklin's. Totally FUN! They have a boat and all the fun water toys -- wakeboard, water ski's, "hot dog", tube, inflatable trampoline. This is our friend's husband. Both him and his wife are pros at water skiing and wakeboarding. This shot was taken from the boat (obviously), about 50 feet away!

But more about our trip later. We just got back this evening around 9:45 and I am exhausted. I wasn't going to submit anything until tomorrow, but Gabe was so gracious to remind me via email that the deadline is today! Thanks Gabe! :)

A Stroll with Lola

I love shots like this! There is something about photos taken from this perspective that stirs up the heart. At least, for me it does. :) This is such a sweet photo of my mom with our son during our recent trip to CA. It is one last stroll with Lola ("grandma" for you non-filipinos, heh heh!) before heading back to AZ. This is multi-generational vision in action!

I couldn't decide which photo I liked best, so I uploaded both! The only difference is the first photo has a texture layer.

A Princess at Rest

Our friend's youngest daughter getting a little rest by a fountain before we all made the drive back to Arizona from CA. Even tired, this precious little princess looks so cute! Why can't I look that cute when I'm tired?? :)

I played around with the brush tool for the border effect, as well as slightly angling the photo. I also did my typical post processing in converting the color image to b&w, with a sepia photo filter.

Trip to Legoland!

We just got back from our trip to LEGOLAND in Carlsbad, CA! It was "homeschool day" and all homeschoolers received a significant discount on admission tickets. What a fun trip this was. We went with my sister and her precious family......

...as well as with our good friends the Ward's and Eaton's. The only downside to it all was the cloudy and very cool weather (high in the mid-60's!). But nonetheless, our time with family and friends was worth it all.



I took over 400 pictures on our 3 days trip. As you can imagine, I had a hard time choosing which photos to include in this post. I think I'll just have to do a "Part II" post!