Travel Town

Some time lapse fun courtesy of Wes:

Travel Town from Wes Johnson on Vimeo.

Feel free to share this! He has some other really fun viedos on his Vimeo site. Powerline Flyers (HERE) has had some great world-wide exposure.

Yee Haw!

This is totally ridiculous, but I had to post it. :) I crack up when I see it because Finn was SO excited to ride, and then stared his catatonic stare, and refused to wave his limp-fish arm the entire ride (which was longer than the cute clip).

A late-night conversation with Finn

Last night before bed, this is how it went:

Finn: Mama, did a crocodile bite your face?

Me: No, that's a pimple. (oh great)

Finn: A nipple?

Me: NO. A pimple. (double great)

Finn: Oh. Did a crocodile bite your face?

Me: Nope.

Finn: Did a baby crocodile bite your face?

Me: {Sigh}

Finn: Mama...

Me: Yes, Finn?

Finn: Did the SPIDER bite your face?

Me: ....Yes, Finn. The spider bit my face.

Finn: Oh! Did the spider GET you? Did the spiders crawl up your legs and BITE your FACE? Did you open the gate and the spiders all came in, and there were flying spiders, and they all flew in and climbed up your legs and they BIT you on the FACE? And you opened up the big ol' scary gate, and the flying spiders came in like this (swooshing flying spider motions), and they crawled up your legs (crawling spider motions on my legs), and then they BIT YOU ON THE FACE?!?!?!

Me: That sounds about right.

Finn: Oooooh, Mama. You got an owie!

Final Highlights from Texas

And finally, this is what I call "An Email Forward Waiting To Happen"
(yes that is a rat on top of a cat on top of a dog):

Little Footies

I took this photo of Maya with my iPhone while she was sleeping in Texas. I can't look at it without getting that tingly fuzzy feeling in my chest. It makes me think of teeny baby Maya. Just look at her ultrasound at 5 months. She still has the same feet! And now those feet are learning to walk. My sweet baby girl.

And while we're at it...

When we were in Texas I spent about an hour each night laying with Finn helping him to fall asleep. If it meant I would buy myself 2 hours to spend with family downstairs, then so be it! And while a headstrong Finn fought the effects of sleep, I read and read and read over at Pioneer Woman. If you don't know her, visit her site HERE. She has lots of great things to say about photography, and even though I have a photographer for a husband, sometimes you've got to hear it from someone else. I was able to make sense of a few things that were still pinballing around in my head, even after photo classes in college and 7 years with a photographer at my beck and call. And to top things off, she has a whole set of Photoshop Actions for your photographs! With one click of a button, it does the work for you. The first time I tried it, I literally felt guilty that I hadn't had anything to do with the final effect. I was cheating. I think I gasped out loud when my photo turned FROM THIS:


TO THIS:
in a matter of seconds. Scandalous! Photoshop whizzed through the steps one at a time at breakneck speed, and I ended up with an beautiful antique photo of my great-grandmother's beautiful antique writing desk. And while I know how to create this look, it would have taken me far longer to do it on my own. And if someone else offers it to me fast and free, I'm a taker! ;)

So run over to her site and check out her tips. HERE is the link to the Photoshop Action Sets. (I had to Google how to install them on my Mac, but it was simple once I found a few tutorials to choose from.)

Now go and be inspired!

Made a few changes...

I had a few questions about my tutorial yesterday. So I made some edits to the post. Check it out and scroll down to the second half of the post for a few more tips. E-mail me with any more tutorials you would like to see! I keep a running list, and will add more as I have time. Thanks!

How To: Grouping/collaging photos to be posted: REVISED!

I've been getting quite a few inquiries on how I collage/group my photos before posting, like this:

(click on this photo to get the recipe for these amazing cookies)

So I created a How-To video. Bear with me on this one. I literally just got home from Texas, and sat down and filmed this video. I am pretty delirious. I've been up since 5:30. So I say some odd things, and there are some really good "Uuuuummmmm" moments. But in the end, it all works out. ;)

For those of you that would like to know how I group, or collage, my photos before posting, view the video HERE. If anyone knows of another way to do this not using Photoshop, let me know, and I will post if for my non-Photoshop-using readers.

Then to find out how I post LARGE photos in my layout, view THIS How-To.

And if you need to widen your layout to post larger photos, see THIS video.

Glad to be home. Still more photos to come from The Lone Star State. But for tonight, I'm signing off.

***********

I had a few questions in my inbox last night and this morning, so I thought I would revise this post a bit. Here is another way to group/collage your photos. I started with the largest photo of the group in the example below.

Another very effective way I sometimes achieve this same result, is to start with a blank layout altogether. Just open a new file, with a blank white background. Then drag and scale all of your photos in the blank canvas. You will be able to move the layers around, and change the order of your photos, as well. You can alway change your canvas size to be larger if you need more space. It won't effect the resolution/quality of your photos to enlarge your canvas size.

Click on photos below to enlarge.

Step 1: Open the WIDEST of the photos in the group/collage:

Step 2: Resize it if you would like. I resized this one to 10" wide at 300dpi.

Step 3: Resize your canvas size from the bottom up.
I allowed for 15 inches in height, a little more than double the height of the original photo:

Step 4: Drag your other photos into the blank space that is now in the canvas above the original photo:

Step 4: Crop the image down to the edges of the photos. Flatten the layers, and save the photo.

NOTE: You might have to fudge things and make the smaller photos you bring into the canvas a little larger or smaller by scaling them. It should not make that much of a difference on screen in terms of resolution if you scale them UP a tiny bit. But if you are concerned about printed resolution, it's best to start with all the images rather large, and scaling them DOWN by hand once you drag them into the canvas.

Don't fully understand what I mean by web and print resolution? Don't quite get why you can't scale UP? Read more HERE.

Finn + Mater

When we got to Granbury, my parents told Finn that Mater from Cars lives in town. Finn flipped! Such an awesome truck:

"Mater" is now heading off to California to be a surf truck, destined to tote surf boards for the rest of his days. If I had to choose being put out to pasture or out to beach, I'd choose beach, too!

Mater, we'll have to come visit soon!

Face It

Lots of fun faces around here! Let's see what they have to say...

"Hmmmm. There's a lizard living under that bush. Can I shoot it with my fishing pole?"

"I want to do that neoooooow."

"I need my nana!" (Translation: that blasted pacifier I recently introduced...)
-OR-
"I hit my head 10 minutes ago and I'm dragging it out as long as possible."
-OR-
"If my mom leaves my sight for 2 seconds, I'm gonna do this again! I'm warning you!"

"The wheels on the bus go round and round." "Are you sure, Grandad?"

"OK, Maya. Craziest face you can muster. And....GO!"

Sunday Faces: Finn wants to go to church in Granbury!!

Meet White Legs and Funny Face. This is us on Sunday, in Granbury, TX. Finn REALLY wanted to go to church today—just Finn and Mama. And we're all ready. See?

But the time that the internet told me church was starting was an hour later than the actual time that church started. So Finn was REALLY unhappy when we got there and had to leave again, seeing as we missed all the action. So that was that. We took a drive through the back roads of Granbury, to look at the ranches and white fences, horses and wildflowers. I adore the secluded areas of this part of Texas. The Oak trees. The hint of hill country just beginning to take shape. Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes in saturated green fields, accentuated by cloudy gray skies. Pale limestone houses with tin roofs, maybe a windmill in their field. The quiet history. It's charming and powerful at the same time. Always fun to visit, always a little hard to leave. But we're missing Wes. We'll be heading West to Cali on Wednesday. Manifest Destiny, right? ;)

Honoring Our Gifts

I saw this quote on a friend's blog. It really made me think. I have many gifts that I should be honoring: my marriage, my talents, my children, my family, my body, my faith, my way of life in general. I know women have special gifts. A little something "extra" about us. And too often we don't honor ourselves. While I am truly happy in life, I have off days, too—of course. This quote reminds me what a gift I am, and all the gifts that I have. I should endeavor to honor this more often.

Fun with Filters

I thought it would be interesting to take a few photos from our recent trip to Mesa and embellish them a bit. I added some textures and layers to enhance them. I did an online search for textures, then added them as layers in Photoshop. I erased bits, and layered a few textures at a time on some. I tried different color adjustments, and added French text to Tiffany's shot. A good site to visit for free, hi-res images to use as filters and layers, is Stock Exchange. Try it out! I'd love to see what you come up with.

A very happy birthday to this gorgeous girl, Tiffany:

Happy girls:

Two of my favorite people:

The Superstitions (aka "Wes's Ladies"):