Project 365: Fail!

Surprise, surprise. Although I wish I could capture memory in a photograph everyday this year, but ever since I've been on a hiatus from photography, it's just been hard to keep up with this project. Oh well...it was a nice thought but I'm completely fine with letting this goal off the hook. But never fear, I have a few BIG goals this year that I plan to share...but not right now ;-). Stay tuned...

So speaking of my hiatus from photography, I've been starting to really miss it! There isn't one reason why I took a break, it kind of just happened. One of my excuses is that I don't have a proper photo editing program on my MacBook Pro. I'm still planning to buy Photoshop CS4, but as you know and as I've mentioned in a previous blog, it's so darn expensive! As much as I love taking photos, editing is the icing on the cake for me. Graphic design is so much fun and even funner when you get to work with your own...work.

I kind of wish I realized my passion back in college. But it's never to late, I suppose. I'm still following my dream and, although it's a slow process since I work full-time, am continuing my graphic design certificate program.

Maria the Make-Up Artist

Remember Maria the make-up artist? I mentioned her in a previous entry :). I've known her for about a little over 11 years now and is one of my best friends! She was nice enough to invite me to shoot her doing her make-up thing this past weekend. We kind of joke about how we are a package deal, when you get her, you get me too (and vice versa). We're both going through the beginning stages of transforming our passion into something more. It's really exciting!

I met up with her at the hotel that Saturday morning. She was doing make-up for the whole wedding party, including the bride! Talk about pressure, right? But no no, Maria was confident and did an awesome job! As she worked on the ladies, she'd give tips about how to apply eye shadow, what to use for dark circles, and explained what she was doing and using on their faces. I never knew what pigment was until that day, now I'm itching to go get some. She's such a professional, I love it!

After doing make-up for almost 5 hours, time was winding down and everyone was in a rush to get ready. But that didn't phase Maria, she was calm and finished up the last girl, the maid-of-honor, in fact, beautifully. It was such a pleasure meeting everyone and being there watching one of my bestie's in action. I had so much fun, thanks for having me ladies, you all looked beautiful!

Here's Maria.
I love all things make-up <3<3<3... id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389349471546235506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQF__v61mPbl6MJvAegjfzEAwpOK85aMu9QJFdL4TZbuqHuJzLynvDdYkBIPsM8YwVGBXK-978jfJnSVzG_XvDkux9s59L__Svh3O0nqOr3lr_Mql4blYZwl1J6821KPSPv-FqXw-DfBnu/s576/DSC_0706.jpg" border="0">
If I could wear false eyelashes everyday, I totally would! These belong to the bride.

Here's Maria working on the blushing bride :)
I just love this shot. I actually didn't even know I got this one until I uploaded the pictures to my computer. It's my accidently on purpose shot!

I absolutely love how she added the blue liner here. It goes perfectly with the earings.

As Tyra Banks would say, this is so FIERCE!

Pure Blendz Make-Up Party

Make-up party. Need I say more?

Okay, okay, I will! Pure Blendz is a cosmetics company that I recently learned about. The people that work there are amazing! They are all very friendly and I love the one-on-one attention they give you. A couple weeks back, I went to one of their makeover events and had my make-up done by Wendy. I bought a few of their Motives products, and absolutely love it! (I'm wearing their foundation right now) Well onward with my story, I brought my friend, Maria, who is also a make-up artist and long story (not really that long....) short, they invited her to be one of the make-up artists at a Pure Blendz Make-Up Party last week! So exciting :)

Maria recently got her esthetician license and is starting to take her love for make-up more seriously. It's actually perfect timing, because we both are starting to build our portfolios (hers is make-up, and mine is photography), so she invited me to tag along with her to shoot her in action. It was a lot of fun! Pure Blendz did an awesome job, I wish I had some special occasion coming up because I want to throw a make-up party! Hey, maybe I'll do one just cuz...hmm. I mean, seriously, what's better than getting all your girls together to have a private makeover session in your very own home?

If you want to know more about Pure Blendz, you can visit their website at www.pureblendz.com.

Using Textures ... Dun Dun Duuunn...

I've been wanting to play around with textures for some time now. They can have a really nice effect, if done right. And that was the part that was delaying this experiment. I didn't want it to look like i just copy and pasted a new background. I wanted to know how to blend it into the image, how to make it look 'natural.' I've seen some really good uses of textures, so I guess I got intimidated. Tonight, I finally just dove in to the world of textures.

I'm pretty satisfied with the way they turned out. I'll probably start to incorporate textures into other projects, but promise not to over do it. Playing around with textures is pretty fun. It totally changes the vibe of the photo. And it's also a good way to 'cover-up' a busy background.

If anyone has any good suggestions (free!) on where to get textures, lemme know! =D

This is what happens when you get too busy...

You remember you entered a photo contest two days after the polls are closed! I can't blame anyone by myself on this one. FAIL!

I entered a Summer Photo Contest on Tiffiney's Photoblog a few weeks back. The rules were simple, just submit a photo of a summer day. I chose a picture I blogged about earlier in August and voting started on Tiffiney's blog on Sept. 5th. I am totally FIRED because voting ended on Sept 12!

I have to thank Tiffiney of Tiffiney's Photography for posting my picture! It such a good feeling seeing your work posted somewhere other than my blog. I'll have to be better about this next time!

Here's the photo I entered of my two neices:

Introducing my Muses

You've seen them time and time again, but I thought I'd give them a proper introduction, especially since they are the two people who are always willing to strike a pose. Anytime I want to test lighting or different settings on my camera, they are always ready and smiling. I seriously think we turned them into camera-hogs, I've caught them many of times with my digital camera taking pictures of themselves. And if I didn't catch them in the act, I'll find out later on when I upload pictures and there are mysterious pictures of their eye or forehead (they are totally into taking self portraits of themselves...just like their auntie!!! ha!).

Well, without further ado, I'd like to properly introduce my nieces, (dun da da dun!) Janelle and Caitlin!As a 'thank you' for putting up with me, I took them out for a Day-O-Fun! They're still young, so hanging out with me is still considered cool. And this Day-O-Fun would not be complete without an impromptu photo session. Of course, right? Here are some highlights from that day.

This is Janelle, the older of the two. She's a total girly-girl and I absolutely love that! On the day of this session, she had a fit about wearing an Elmo and Cookie Monster shirt out because she said it was a pajama shirt. If you know her, then you can imagine how stressed out she was! And she gave me specific instructions on how to braid her hair, including the matching green hair ties.




And this is Caitlin, aka Tates. She is probably the total opposite of Janelle. Tates is a dare-devil, tomboy, and messy. Don't get me wrong, they have their similarities, I mean, they are both goofballs, but that just runs in our blood. Her instructions for her hair that day was basically not to braid it (because it takes too long) and she just wanted one ponytail (so it's out of her face). If she ultimately had it her way, she would skip the ponytail altogether and just leave the house lookin' a mess! Haha...



We completed our day with an ice cream run to Maggie Moo's. And you better believe that Tates' nice, clean white shirt was covered in chocolate by the time we got home.

Fix It Friday: Sweet Boy

Happy Friday! I thought this week was never going to end. Oh the stresses of being a grown-up...blah! heh... One of the highlights of my week was finding this fab candy store! It's called Powell's Sweet Shoppe and the one I went to was in Burlingame, CA. OMG...when we walked in, I just couldn't help but smile. They had new and old brands of candy! And a few odd ones like gummy bacon, ick. I definatley need to hit up that store again, soon! And if I don't speak about food enough (heh...I love food), I am absolutely excited for dinner tonight (which I should be getting ready for right now...ohhh man, they're going to kill me if I'm late).

Well, onward to Fix It Fridays! Here's my take on the photo this week. I did similar edits as the Southern Belle. I just am really diggin' that look right now. I hope you all have a great weekend!

Fix It Friday: Southern Belle

Here's to another Fix it Friday! I thought this picture was pretty cool. I like the 'old-style' feel to it, so I tried to flush out a bit of the color, but still keeping it sharp. Here's my entry and the steps I took to get to it. Happy Friday!

I use Photoshop CS3 (I'm actually debating on purchasing CS4, but haven't noticed any drastic changes in the program....but let me know if you have).
1. Rotated imave 15 degrees CCW.
2. Cropped image.
3. Added Sepia Photo Filter
4. Increased the Brightness to +39
5. Applied a basic S-Curve
6. Adjusted the RGB Levels
7. Played around with the Brightness/Contrast again....changed contrast to -24 and -6 to brightness.
8. Finally, I merged all the visible layers and played around with filters. I added a slight grain, dust and scratches, and then sharpened it a bit.

Thank you iHeartFaces for this fun weekly activity!

Fix It Friday: Little Miss

I haven't done a "fix-it friday" in a while! These are really fun, well to me at least. Every Friday, the wonderful people at iHeartFaces posts a picture to edit. You can get as creative as you like. I use Photoshop CS3. I'm all about clothes and when I saw this little girl's dress, I knew I wanted to make it pop. Here's my submission.

Just Let Me Lay Here in the Sun....Until My Dream is Done....

Don't wake me up, Don't wake me up if I'm dreamin' California Dreams, Just let me lay here in the sun Until my dream is done.....

I know you all remember that show! I went to Santa Cruz a couple weeks back and while I was sitting on a bench watching my nieces on one of the Beach Boardwalk rides, I looked over to the houses on the cliff side and saw a seagull fly by and the California Dreams song popped into my head! Haha...am I corny or what?!

It was a fun-filled day full of arcade games, deep fried twinkies, ribs, and rides. In the midst of all that fun, me and Tates sneaked (random fact of the day: did you know that "snuck" is was not even a word? Due to common usage, the dictionary now lists the rather vulgar "snuck" as an option, but sneaked is the original past tense form.) off to the beach. Later we found out that was her first time touching the ocean! Here's are some pictures I took of her.

And for those of you that don't know what California Dreams is...here's their theme song. Enjoy!

Congratulations, Jenny!

My dear, dear cousin graduated from FIDM this week! And I got carried away with editing her pics. Here are three of my fave pics. ENJOY!

Messy Little Tates

I don't consider myself a photographer, but I'm hooked on the I Heart Faces blog! This is the first time I'm submitting something. When I saw the them for this week was "Messy," the first person I thought of was my neice, Tates.

Silly Girl

It's Fix-It Friday again! The wonderful people at I Heart Faces posted another image to fix. Check out the edits I did below. I used PhotoShop CS3. Cute baby, huh?

Original

After

Wonder Girl

As some of you know, I am totally into playing around with graphic design and such, that's what I went back to school for! I came across this awesome blog called I Heart Faces and found out they do this thing called Fix-It Fridays. I'm no photographer, just your typical digital camera user, but the Fix-It Fridays give me a chance to practice with Photoshop CS3. The task is to take the un-edited photo and fix it up. Check out what I did below.

Before

After

Another After