Practice Helps so does Experimenting

I discovered something today that I had never tried before and I think I never tried it because of some of the remnants of my past film shooting days. I have always used single shooting mode when trying to do pan shots. Today I went into continuous mode and as I took the nine exposures it was much more natural to follow the action as I was panning. These first three images were some of the results and I think I will shoot this way from now on. Of course in the film days eating up that many frames just wasn't a good idea but with digital the only reason not do it that way was if you were stuck on processing everyone of them. I am slowly learning how to be picky in the Raw files that I convert and that has been a major time saver.




Of course I had to get mom and dad in a couple of the shots that I was doing while they were here on vacation. I have taken a lot of the girls.



And this one is just fun because I happened on to a new place to frame a picture. The swing set worked pretty good, however I'll you be the judge since I am a bit biased.

A date with Grandparents

So far Christmas we gave mom and dad a night out and we went on a date with their girls that started out by building a large snowman and swinging in the swings and sliding on the slide. We had a lot of fun and then went out for a round of sliding at Jumping Jacks and then stopping by for a 5 buck pizza and finally watching Hoodwinked. It has been a fun night.

And of course with action like this I had to try a little panning while taking pictures. I might conquer this thing yet.



The girls thought Snowman was a giant and he did turn out even bigger than I thought he might but it is nothing compared to the one built that was 122 feet high, made in Bethel , Maine this year, but then again they cleared a runway for enough snow and used a crane to boot. (If you want to try and find it check here "World's Tallest Snowman Made In Maine
By David Sharp, Associated Press
BETHEL, Maine (AP) - The world's tallest snowman is no man."

Holiday Family Fun

So we were blessed to have all of our children and their families home for Christmas.  Families are such a blessing and Grandchildren top the list for making it a lot of fun again opening presents.

An eventful Christmas.

I now know for who will be the final spouse of all of my children. My youngest daughter was engaged Christmas eve and I am pretty happy about it. The last two of my children, both daughter are scheduled to be married in 2009. That means we had 3 in 2001, one in 2007 and now the last two in 2009. And for those of you wondering Yes I take my own children's wedding pictures especially since I have a daughter that can shoot photos when I need in them and a daughter-in-law that can do it just as well also.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.
Due to technical difficulties with my home internet I will not be blogging (and have not been blogging as you may have noticed) for the next few days until I can get repairmen out to fix it. It was taken down during our big snow storm apparently. Anyway I am posting from work today but will not be back here for several days as well. So I will be back as soon as I can and with some new material. I hope that you have enjoyed these postings and if you have something that you would like to see that I might have or to learn in photoshop that I might be able to share here please  send a note to kjpmbp@gmail.com and I will fill your request if at all possible.

Kent Poulson

WAKING ROUTINE

I happened upon a goose one morning and was able to observe a little of it's life and morning wake-up procedure. 

So I figured this must be the routine. 1st you sleep standing on one foot so that one is warm and the other frostbitten. 

2nd you start to wake up and stand a little taller but of course you must remain on the one foot.

3rd, well you gotta start getting that other foot use to the cold. 

So 4th you stretch it way out behind you in the cold air.

5th get ready to set it on the ground but shake it a little while doing so because then the shock of the cold hard earth won't seem quite so bad.

6th (And this is where it really gets shocking) you jump into the cold water to go for a swim.

I really don't understand this animal world but if swimming in a cold lake early in the morning is their thing then just go right ahead and do it cause I won't be following in it's padded steps.

A visit to Grandpa's and Grandma's home

Just a quick update. Brooklyn (and her parents) came for a visit tonight so of course Grandpa had to take some pictures. She is now over a month old and very pretty.

OK Enough Already

Sometimes when I get a few hours to play, well a few minutes to play, I like to take an image and just see what I can come up with. 

Today I attended the funeral of our neighbor whom we have lived by for 30 years or so and since we knew all of the family quite well I went to the cemetery after the services at the church and arrived just as the flowers were being taken to the grave side. I quickly photographed them and then photographed family and friend as they arrived.
So tonight after color correcting the images and preparing a cd for the family I decided to play with one of the flower images that I had taken and was including with the cd. The only problem was that I couldn't stop myself after getting started. Below you will see what I mean, or most likely have already seen what I mean.

This is the original image.

I then duplicated the layer, added a layer in between, filled it with black, then added a mask to the top layer and masked out all but the rose. I also had to use the band-aid tool and remove a few of the pine needles that were in front of the rose petals.

After flattening the layers and saving the second version I went back into the history pallet and got all of the layers back so I could make a few more changes. This is actually the process I would follow after saving each version, that way the original mask that I had made for the second image was used in each of the following versions. Quite a time saver (when you remember to do it.) I then duplicated the bottom layer again, removed the black layer and did a radial blur on the new duplicate layer.

For this version I simply did a black to white gradient on the new layer. Left the poor rose just floating above it.

I decided to change to a color gradient and got this effect.

I then went to yet another gradient style and came up with this one and after several tries was able to locate it at the base of the rose. Gradients has not been in my used and totally learned section of my toolbox so that was part of the reason for playing with it here.

I duplicated the last gradient layer and did a radical radiant blur to it.

That was followed by adding a circular marquee with a refined edge effect, (not very well done, but I was just playing anyway) and filled it with a white layer.

Finally I figured I had played enough and added a black border with my logo and called it quits. It was a fun evening though and I learned how to use the gradient tool a little better. 

First Winter Storm

For those of you who regularly follow this blog I am sorry that I have been absent the last several days. Time passes so quickly and becomes so short that every now and again I just can't get it all done as I had hoped.

I stepped outside of work the other day and saw an interesting site before my eyes. Snow covered tumbling weeds caught by the picnic tables on the company lawn next to a tree that had not lost it's leaves. You might try to make a dumb joke and say that they were caught in the act of tumbling and stopped dead in their tracks by the picnic table police before the tree could leaf. OK so yes it was dumb but sometimes my mind just does that to me to keep me thinking somewhat straight.

Anyway I thought that it was really quite pretty in it's own right so I took a few photos and then at the end finished off the session with one of my favorite subjects "The American Flag".

Multiples in TPTTP Set #4

The final challenge. I haven't even mastered this one as you can tell since there is only one picture. Flip the hair, smile and have it look like you could be upside down since the hair is straight up. Yep I still have a long way to go. She did a pretty good job with the smile though so it is clearly her fault that this one turned out.