I am pulling some photos together for a particular kind of portfolio, and what I started doing is just taking all of the photos with questionable skin tones out. It is easier to take a photo of a flower than a person, at least as far as there being a relatively "right" answer. Sometimes, rather than put them out into the world, I will just not fix them. Because I don't know how, or just don't have that skill. I did not take the easy way out with my photos this week. They are almost all full of color casts, and difficult highlights, and lots of skin tones to correct. In all of the cases, I had to pick that photo for the day, because not choosing it would be sad. All three of my children together on the porch swing? My family together on the grass trying to get into position for a Mother's Day photo? It would be wrong to pick another photo instead. And speaking of photography with a 'right" answer, I did a real estate shoot last weekend. I enjoy the concreteness of that kind of photography. I was able to use ambient light, and blend exposures in Lightroom. It was pretty impressive and fun to be able to see the magic result of blending the photos together. I am probably not going to do HDR photography under any other circumstances. I need to learn sky replacement in Photoshop. Part of that is going outside and taking various sky photos over time, and then saving them up for use in those situations. It is kind of a strange thing to pay for stock sky photos, as it is an accessible subject to shoot. It had never occurred to me, until I needed a photo of the sky.
On my way to that real estate shoot, which was a little bit of a drive, I listened to the TWIP Family podcast with Franccesca Russell. And freaked out that I wasn't taking more video of my kids, and immediately purchased Xanthe Berkley's Time Capsule course that had started two days before. Like I pulled the website up in the parking lot when I arrived at my destination. My reservation is that I would not have time to focus on it, and I have not yet had time to focus on it. I will though. Because I value videos of my kids more than photos. They contain movement, and mispronounced words. It is the best personal project to invest in. And that is a really good podcast, by the way.
I have a new logo, which I think is very beautiful and perfect. It was created by a designer named Alethia Rains. I created my business Facebook page. I deleted the Facebook app from my phone, because wow, too much Facebooking for me. When I posted about my exasperation with myself regarding this behavior, I said, "Too much consumption does not facilitate creation." This seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Reading about doing the things is so much easier than doing the things. If you look at all of the options for picking something to do, that little blue icon with the blaring red notification thing on it is always the easiest thing to pick. We will see if that impacts my productivity and if I can dig around and find my attention span somewhere.
And the photos here- Lensbaby Twist daisies. I got the lens for Mother's Day. Fun. And the tooth she is wiggling in the mirror was lost within a few hours of that photo. The eggs. I have been trying to get the perfect egg photo for a few years now. I was really happy with this one, although it isn't necessarily perfect. My oldest daughter said, cringing when she looking at it, "It is pretty good, mom... but the eggs are kind of blurry." Remember the perspective of non-photographers, my photography friends...
