{my most beautiful sight in the world}

{childhood}

{all growed up, damn him}

{my baby boy}

{shelling: down and dirty}

{annoyed}

{looking cute, despite the glaring sun}

{water logged}

{dinner! Yes, he was really THAT happy about CRAWFISH!}

{I know this photo is all blown out and oversaturated to boot but I just love it anyway. I love these kids!}

I spent Mother’s Day on the beach in full sun so had lots of opportunities to play around with the sun. There wasn’t a beautiful sunset to work with but I had fun experimenting with silhouettes:

Other than the vignette, they are both SOOC so I probably could have enhanced the silhouette effect better with Photoshop.

See more creative uses for sunshine at the Land of KA : Theme Thursday

Do you remember that 60’s horror flick “The Birds”? That was the first scary movie I saw (ahem, many years after it was made, I might add) and it took me YEARS to get up the guts to watch the entire thing beginning to end. Freak-y.

These are Laughing Gulls, not crows. Way cooler.

BONUS:

{brown pelican}

{this would have been a lot cooler if both the pelican AND the dolphin were in focus}

{turns out they weren’t playing, they were “playing”}

{one shy hermit crab}

{many shy hermit crabs}

{not so shy}

{cute baby crab}

{curious about this cute baby crab}

{about 3 seconds before she dropped and ran}

BONUS:

{nature, but not}

Excuse the excess pictures. I got to shoot away for Mother’s Day! You’ll be seeing them all week!

Addy hung out with me all day so she got to be my victim model. So this will be an All-Addy post.

Last night I was playing around with Photoshop and tried a new technique for taking an otherwise dull photo and making the eyes pop.

1) use the mask tool to highlight just the eyes. I always choose everything inside the dark circle around the iris. I don’t include the dark circle itself.

2) demask to everything but the eyes are selected and then adjust saturation downward so that the picture is slightly desaturated.

3) select the inverse so that now the eyes are the only thing selected. Increase the brightness and contrast appropriately so the eyes really pop. The contrast between the desaturated picture and the brightly contrasted eyes will do amazing things to your photo!

I’m still trying to play around with this technique, I think this photo makes him look a little pale. But it’s a fun technique anyway.

Addison does this very serious stoic prayer-like routine when its time to make a wish and blow out the candles. She is very VERY serious about her wishes. Even though it was my birthday, not her’s!

I don’t know about you but by the time my kids get to be about 10 or 11, they don’t necessarily stop letting me take pictures but all their photos take on a tone of complete silliness.

And then we have THIS kind of fun:

Bonus Shot:

More Theme Thursday pictures here

I love this picture in color and B&W but the B&W sort of pierces the soul:

Four pictures I love, four completely different moods.

It isn’t a reflection of their beauty, some kids are just naturally more photogenic than others. I was thinking about this the other day and realized that these are my photography odds (good photos to total photos taken) these days:

Addison: 1 in 100

Noah 1 in 10

Dalton 1 in 10

Teegan 9 in 10

Interestingly this does tend to ebb and flow with the age of the child. Dalton, for instance, has gotten MUCH easier to photograph in the last six months. Addison used to be really easy, now she’s nearly impossible. Teegan spent his first 3 years drooling and running from the nose so he’s making up for it now! ha.

It’s Best Shot Monday - check it out!