A Good Friend, A Good Project

Last weekend, my good friend, A and I were downtown celebrating a friend's birthday at a cake shop, of course it just so happened to be at the same time of the running of the reindeer. I gotta tell ya, it was quite the site to see! You would have thought it was Halloween time with all the many costumes people were wearing. Definitely entertaining!
Well, after the get together we split our ways, A and I were riding home together so we decided to walk the streets downtown and I thought it would be fun to try and find interesting backgrounds to take pictures. And, downtown is, well, interesting to say the least! People never cease to amaze me! With all that said, we found a few places and took some pics. Now, A does not like to have her picture taken, so, when I showed her the final photos, and when she said she loved them, I was very pleased.
Here are a few of her favorites :)

Isn't she pretty?!?!


It's always fun to try something new. I am not too familiar with the downtown area, and I wasn't 100% sure how they would turn out, but it's great to be thrown into a situation and see how you do, especially with a friend, that way the pressure isn't too great; I mean if it didn't turn out, I knew she'd forgive me, right, A?!? ;)

Next up is my son's 5th birthday pictures!

~Susan

Let's Talk About...

Presets!

It's snowing and overcast today, so perfect time to relax at home and look through old photos that would be fun to edit. There are a gazillion presets (a lot of them are free:) out there for whatever editing software you use. I just got Lightroom 3 a few weeks ago and it's become my new obsession to search for the *perfect* preset! Presets will change your life! They are a fun, easy and quick way to completely change the mood of your photo. Of course there are times where manually editing a photo is the best choice, but when editing a slew of photos from a shoot, it's nice to choose a particular preset that matches what you were trying to capture, and then use them with each photo; this way the look and feel of your pictures are consistent.  Here are some photos I took a while ago that I thought would be fun to edit using presets. Now you can see what a difference a click of a button can do to a photo!


Original SOOC:

Preset: Color Creative: Direct Positive

These tulips were taken in Dover, DE when we lived there. Every spring the most beautiful flowers could be seen downtown. Really bright reds, yellows, oranges, white, purples...it was fun to take a stroll to see these gorgeous flowers (or even take a different route home so we could drive by them:) Anyways, this preset is called Color Creative-Direct Positive. This one already comes in the Lightroom library. I love how the reflection in the water has more definition!

Original SOOC:

Preset: PH Fashion Shoot III v

When my husband's family came to town for my brother in law's wedding, we took a quick one day trip to NYC. I was trying to get them to do that "walking toward the camera and looking like hot stuff", you know what I'm talking about, right?! Anyway, apparently they weren't catching on! But, I like the way the photo turned out anyway! I love how Em is like "Woah, look how tall that building is!" Yes, Em, we are in New York! I love the coloring of this preset, I did bump up the exposure just a little bit to brighten the photo, but doesn't the coloring make this photo so much more interesting?

Original SOOC:

Preset: Famous Hobo

Like I said above, my brother in law was getting married. His wife's grandpa owns this store in the very beautiful farm country of Pennsylvania. We went to check it out and see how they produce feed for horses all over the U.S., pretty neat! It was hard to decide which preset to use for this one. I went back and forth between black and white and vintage with a little color...in the end I chose this one; Famous Hobo. I like the browns and that old feeling it gives to the building. If you didn't know when this was taken and had only seen the edited version, how far back do you think you could date this? Neat, huh? (You might notice I cropped out the car, too.)

I hope you've enjoyed seeing the differences between an SOOC (straight out of the camera) photo and an edited one. Post processing is just as important as the shoot itself. An edit can make or break a photo, ruin it or make it gorgeous! 

For now,

Susan

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Last night my daughter had her "best friend" over for a sleepover. They are like two peas in a pod and really get along great! I'm so happy to see her have a close friend so soon after moving here. Being an Air Force family and moving every 3 or so years makes it hard to make good friends. Thankfully these two met in class and hit it off quick! It's crazy to see my little girl growing up so fast!
So, the fun night started off when I picked them up from school and we got steamers (warm milk with a shot of flavor and whipped cream) on the way home. They quickly discovered the goodie bags I made up for them with lots of fun girly stuff inside (lip gloss, color changing nail polish, candy, glow sticks, notebooks, pens, fizzy bath hearts, stickers etc...). I had written down a list of ideas on the white board to help avoid that saying "we're bored!", and it worked! They made a fort, painted each other's nails (so cute), played upstairs, ate chocolate chip cookie dough (I mean, made cookies:), had a tea party, ate pizza,  played the wii. Unfortunately, her friend didn't last all night over here, but irregardless they had a blast together. C was understanding and is already talking about next time:)

Did You Know?

Did you know you can move around the focus point on your camera?

This is a neat little thing I just learned from reading Pioneer Woman's (photography) page (LOVE her by the way!). She's got lots of great info and tidbits to help you learn more about your camera which results in better shots. So, instead of moving your camera to focus on your subject or cropping out parts of the picture later, you can adjust the focus point in your camera before you actually take the picture. This way you don't have to miss out on those really cool backgrounds, but still keep your main subject in focus. Every camera is different, so you might have to check your manual for how to change your focus point while in manual mode. Here are some shots I took just playing around with the focus point to show you as an example.


This first one the focal point was in the middle where it automatically is. See how his feet are in focus?

Here I was in the same spot but moved the focal point up two places so now his face and the bear are in focus, not his feet :)

Pretty cool huh? Ok, so you might have already known this, but I did not. So, chances are there might be others out there that didn't know this neat trick too (hopefully, right?!) Now, go grab your camera and your manual and try it out! Good luck getting your little ones to participate, I had to let this one play games on the wii if he would sit still for me for a few minutes :)

~Susan

Mini Man Tie

It was in the  -20's here today, so there was no plan to step foot outside! I knew it was going to be a lazy Saturday, so I decided instead of sitting around on my laptop all day I needed a new sewing project. I saw a "pin" on Pinterest of a super cute photo of a newborn wearing a little tie. I knew I needed to have one (or two or three) for my newborn shoots! So, why not make one? If you have basic sewing skills then you can totally make this! It's pretty easy and the tutorial I found has very well put step by step instructions. The one I made is a newborn size, and this was the only "boyish" fabric I had that would work. When I was done I snapped a few photos so I could show you them on here. I wanted to see how it looked on my little man (he is by no means a newborn!) but of course he had just woken up from a nap and was in NO mood to have this foreign object around his neck, be half naked AND have pictures taken of him, but I couldn't resist! :) He was not happy with me, but some of the pictures are cute anyway. Like I said, I made the newborn size, and he is 1.5 years old, so it's probably a bit too small on him. Also, just a suggestion, next time I will make the strap a bit longer if I am making it for an older child, this one barely fit around his neck (even though it's adjustable) Here's an idea...if making this as a gift, you could iron on the letter of the child's first name on the front of the tie! That would be super cute! Also, I might be making more and adding them to my my Etsy shop, so keep an eye out!

Blessings!

~Susan

Butte

It was a clear and sunny day on my mom's second to last day of her visit to The Last Frontier. We decided we needed to do some scenic driving but were limited on time due to my son's preschool schedule. So, we headed to Butte, which is located between the Matanuska River and the Knik River, about five miles southeast of Palmer. Within a short 15-20 minute drive there was a good 10 degree difference and quite a few more inches of snow on the ground- which makes for prettier pictures :) There was a really neat lot of old cars on the side of the road piled high in snow. Not really sure what they were doing there and how long they had been there, but definitely worthy of a "Oh, let's pull over and take pictures in negative degree weather"! We also swung by the Reindeer Farm, is was so desolate compared to when my family went on Christmas Eve, Eve. But, my mom got to see the Reindeer, I mean Caribou, right Mom? And of course we snapped a few photos. We were't out of the car for more then a few minutes when neither of us could feel our fingers anymore. Kinda hard to push the shutter button, or let alone feel it when your hands are numb. We saw some pretty scenery (well, when/where do you not here in Alaska?), shot some great pics, got up and close to an animal you'd never see in Florida, and had a few laughs along the way...I'd say that makes for a good day!

Here are some photos of our short adventure to Butte. If you click on the photo, it will play as a slide show for better viewing! Enjoy God's mighty work!

Baby C.E.'s newborn shoot

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot of a sweet little newborn. Since he was born at 33 weeks, he was only 6 lbs at 4 weeks old! When I first got there he seemed SO tiny! I guess it's been a while since I've held a newborn, plus, all my babies were born at 9 lbs, so to me, 6 lbs is so small!!
I think the shoot went well! It took some time calming him and getting him comfortable in the positions, but he was a trooper! We had fun playing around with props, and luckily my friend's house has some awesome colored walls and a really cool backsplash in her kitchen we could utilize, what a big help that was! These were shot with all natural light and I used my 50mm 1.8/f lens. This is a new lens to me, and since it doesn't zoom, there is a lot of moving around you have to do with it, I guess it just takes time and practice. Anyways, it was a fun time and I definitely learned some things for the next newborn shoot! Can't wait! I just LOVE LOVE LOVE babies!!! Want to book a shoot? You can find my email address on my website at www.susanwetlesenphotography.zenfolio.com under contact.

Hope you enjoy some of my favorites from the shoot (If you click on the photo, it will display as a slideshow ;)