Before & After Photos: Nose Hill Park

This past Saturday was a beautiful day, and we had a little family walk at Calgary's Nose Hill Park. I had my little pocket camera (Fujifilm EXR)with me, and I snagged a few photos of these interesting dandelion-style plants (?flowers?).

I did some Photoshop processing this morning... & just for fun I added some textures & gave the photos a bit of a grunge look.

If you look closely, you can see the wind blowing through the "flower."

Chad & Christine and Baby Isabelle

I had the opportunity to photograph the beautiful little Isabelle & her parents this past weekend. It seems only yesterday she was a small infant, and now she's already 5 1/2 months old! How time flies. It has been so much fun watching this little gal grow up, and I'm looking forward to watching Isabelle grow even more!!

I just LOVE her smile!

Isn't she just absolutely adorable??!!

Rub-a-dub-dub, Isabelle is in the tub...

Thanks, Chad & Christine, for coming by for this photo session!! It was fun!!

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

I did not much to this photo, as I found it difficult to work with: the photo I downloaded was a small JPEG file. Oh, how I wish they would put the RAW files on IHF for us to download & edit!

The original:

My edits:

I lightened the skin & eyes then made the background B&W.

Check out some other photo edits here.

I Heart Faces: "All About Babies" Photo Challenge

This photo of my son was taken when he was only 6 days old.

Check out other great IHF photo entries here.

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

It's Fix-It Friday #58 here at i heart faces and this week's photo was submitted by our IHF Contributor, Susan Keller from Short on Words.

The original:

My edit: vintage, B&W, vingnette

Check out other IHF FIF here.

Remembering Baby Sean

The world may never notice

If a Snowdrop doesn't bloom,

Or even pause to wonder

If the petals fall too soon.

But every life that ever forms,

Or ever comes to be,

Touches the world in some small way

For all eternity.

~ Author unknown ~

Little Sean arrived in this world 13 days ago, but last week he suddenly became ill and required hospitalization, including life support. Yesterday, he was taken off mechanical life support. I had the opportunity to give this family some photo memories of their precious son. What a beautiful baby!

I am so honoured to be a volunteer photographer for the non-profit organization "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep."

I Heart Faces: Play

I Heart Faces' theme for the week is "Play" - oh, what fun!

I have so many photos, but this photo jumped out at me when I was considering a photo for this entry. In April when we were at a family reunion, I snagged this photo of my husband's cousin's daughter playing the piano. I simply vintaged the photo & added a border.

Play on, Miss K!

Check out more "Play" entries here.

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

For some reason, Fridays seem to be busy days for me, but yet I find time for IHF's FIF photos. It's so fun to edit a photo then check out how other photographers edit the same photo.

Here is a photo that was originally taken by Andrea Riley:

My edit #1 (Sepia tones):

My Edit #2 (B&W + Vintage tones)

Check out other IHF's FIF photo edits here.

I Heart Faces: "Barefoot Week" Photo Challenge

This week, the photo challenge at IHF is bringing attention to a charitable organization called Soles 4 Souls.

Soles4Souls is a Nashville-based charity that collects shoes from the warehouses of footwear companies and the closets of people like you. The charity distributes these shoes free of charge to people in need, regardless of race, religion, class, or any other criteria. Since 2005, Soles4Souls has given away over 7 million pairs of new and gently worn shoes (currently donating one pair every 9 seconds.) The shoes have been distributed to people in over 125 countries, including Kenya, Thailand, Nepal and the United States. Anyone can join our cause, and we need your help.

In May I took this photo of my son playing in the grass for the first time (yes, it has been a very, very long Calgary winter!!)

However, I wanted to do something unusual with this photo... I antiqued it then added the polaroid border.

Check out more "Barefoot" photo challenges at I Heart Faces.

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

Every Fix-It Friday at IHF, I am always wondering if the photo this week will be a boy or a girl. Oh, I was so excited it was one of each... & Twins, too!! (I am still wanting to find some twins for my photo sessions, folks!!)

I am just looooooving this picture of these precious little 6 week-old twins, children to JaimeLee Candidly Grateful.

The original:

My edit:

I added some gaussian blur to the skin, converted the pic to CS's B&W (70%), adjusted some levels, added a 70% High Key, cropped, then added a frame. Very simple.

Check out other great photo edits here.

I Heart Faces: "Yellow" Photo Challenge

This week's photo challenge theme at I Heart Faces is "Yellow."

What to do when you don't have a yellow house, yellow wall, yellow clothing, or big field of yellow flowers????!! Oh, and I have a boy... and boys don't generally wear yellow!

So, I looked around the house... and found this pale yellow laundry bag... placed my 8-month-old son in the yellow bag... and this is the result.

Check out more great "yellow" photos here.

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

It's that time of the week again... our turn to learn new editing trick from other contributors to I Heart Faces and to play along as well.

This week's photo was submitted by Shelle from Mommy Can't Sing.

Here's the original:

My Fix-It #1... I adjusted levels, curves, colour balance, then added gaussian blur to soften the face. I then did some adjustments to lighten skin & eyes and give the skin some glow.

My Fix-It #2: I converted the pic to B&W but did some colourizing. Not to crazy about this one as there is so much noise on the pic that I wasn't able to remove.

Fix-It #3: I darkened the background, added a gradient and a texture (just for something different) then brought in some colour.

Fix-It #4: I like this one the best. It's basically the same as Fix-It #3 but I removed the texture then added some vignette & borders.

Check out other great photo edits at I Heart Faces.

I Heart Faces: Faces & Flowers

This week's photo challenge at I Heart Faces is "Faces & Flowers."

Last month was my husband's grandmother's 90th birthday. Her 8 children had a song sung while they presented their mother with roses. Grandma was very touched by this gesture.

I just love this photo of Grandma on her 90th birthday. I added 2 textures & a frame to give the photo an aged look.

Check out other great photo challenge entries here.

"Pick a Pic"

If you had to choose one of these photos as a 11"x14" photo + matting + 16"x20" frame, to match a large long hallway of nature-inspired colours, which one would you choose?????

Old United church by Cochrane, Alberta

East of Kananaskis country, Alberta

Haybales, west of Calgary, Alberta

Kananaskis country, Alberta (Aspen trees with bark "matting" then without a photoshop mat)

Waterton National Park, Alberta

I Won!

Well, it turns out that a photo I submitted for a photo display/contest at work over a year ago has won me some accolades! No big monetary prizes, but just a name to a photo. I did not even know there was a new"contest" at work for these submitted photos! From what my boss has told me is that the submissions were narrowed down to 8 photos & my church photo (below) came out on top. Yay!!

The church is an old United Church near Cochrane, Alberta. Photo taken in 2007 or 2008.

The photo below is copied from the email I received from work informing me that my entry will be used as an e-card.

I'll have to find the original church file as I just cleared thousands of photos off my computer recently.

In Memory of Baby Landyn

Sunday, May 2, I was called to take photographs of Baby Landyn. He arrived in this world 6 weeks early and for 3 days he was a little fighter. What a precious, beautiful little baby he was! My heart goes out to his parents & big brother during this difficult time.

It is such an honour to be a part of the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

If you would like more information, or if you would like to make donations, please contact Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

I Heart Faces: Fix-It Friday

It's Fix-It Friday at I Heart Faces, and it's time to have fun again!

Here's the BEFORE photo of Angie's daughter:

My "AFTER" edit:

Here's what I did:

- cloned out the signs

- changed the background to B&W

- added 3 texture layers

- added a vignette

- added a black frame

Check out more "fix-it" photos here.

I Heart Faces: Smiles

Boy + First Swing Ride = All Smiles!

Check out other "Smiles at I Heart Faces.