I've Been Dreaming...

Well, I always dream but I have been trying to learn new ways of working with Photoshop, how to create fine art quality photos with the skill and finesse of someone like Florabella and it has been a fun lesson. I have to say there is so much information and knowledge available to you if you simply look for it. I wanted to find free overlays and textures, I searched for free overlays a textures. I wanted to learn how to create a fine art print from a photo, I search for "How to create a fine art print from a photo". Sure you have to read through, weed through some stuff. Some of it junk, but you do eventually come across the gem that teaches it in the way you need to learn it.

I stumbled upon florabella and while her overlays and textures are not free, she does offer quite a bit of support on her flickr site, and a community of people that are willing to help with information, advice, ideas. But her photos are just so darn gorgeous! I just have to go there about once a day and look at what she had created.

Here is my first practice photo. This photo was taken as an actual photograph of a butterfly. Then layered with various textures and overlays to achieve the dreamlike effect. I wouldn't say its easy to do, because it takes time to figure out what each overlay and texture does, how it changes the photo and different combinations do different things. But the applications are easy. I would recommend learning how to use masks, layers in Photoshop. To get the softer affect I created a duplicate layer of the photo itself, then adjusted the hue and saturation to give it a softer color. Once I applied the layers of color, texture, I went back over the butterfly with an eraser to bring the colors back out a little more. Pretty darn easy, although learning how to create the second layer and the erasing part took a little time learn. The beauty of all of this? You can always start over, take one layer off, put another one on. Let me know what you think.

Frustrating Photos

Okay, I went out this past Friday (I had the day off) and headed over to a reserve at 8:00am to capture some shots of the Eagles they just let loose from rehabilitation. The day was perfect, it was very early in the morning, and not a soul was in site. The lake was calm and everything was coming to life. Butterflies, geese, birds, dragonflys, eagles, osprey, blue heron. I was in wildlife heaven, shooting photo after photo, after photo. Two hours later I headed home with some beautiful shots. You could see birds preparing to descent to catch fish, an osprey grabbing a fish from the water, a blue heron skimming the lake inches about the water. It was amazing and I was so proud that I had captured it all on film.

Coming home I was so excited, and tired. But I immediately began to download my shots. Photo after photo was blurry, out of focus. I was so upset and so frustrated. I just couldn't believe it. So I began to research the problem. And in a nut shell, here is what I learned.

1) Taking good shots is going to take time, patience and study. You can't rely soley on Automatic Focus. There are too many variables when it comes to capturing movement. In fact, there are three things that come in to play: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. I could go into detail about it, but I recommend that you head over to this site: digital photography school read up! They are a wealth of information. They give good tips on all sorts of subjects. Photography at night, photographing kids, photography for children...and more.

2) Blurry photos can be fixed. I found this plug in FOCUS MAGIC that works as a plug in with Photoshop elements and while it looks easy, my first day of practicing its use was a little daunting. I will post more on it as I practice. It costs $45 so seemed reasonable enough. They let you have 8 free edits to try before you buy, but since I didn't read the instructions prior to trying, I didn't have much success. I broke down and registered for it, so I now have alot of practice time. I will keep you posted.

The great thing about Digital photography is that you can keep going back and taking more pictures and trying again. Its frustrating when you think you got the perfect shot, and you want to see it, frame it, send it out to all your friends!

As you can see, they are quite blurry, but they are very clear in my mind. Here's the thing, no matter how many times I go back and take that picture it will never come out right if I don't take the time to slow down, learn something new, and take a few risks.

And with digital, I can do it again, and again and again! Wish me luck! If I master the blurry corrections on these photos, I will post them to show you the differences. Are you learning something new? If so, please share it with us. This is what its all about!

It's Fun, Challenging, Frustrating all at once...

I continue to learn in my digital photo shop class. Today's lesson involved adding layers or scratches, frames, text, color. It was so much fun and I am excited about the outcome of this photo. It was challenging because the computer sometimes locks up on me, and freezes, or I have to go back and watch the video to see what step I missed. I am learning about adding fonts to my libray, finding new sites for free layers, masks and grunge looking styles. It is so much fun. I am so proud of this creation and hope you will venture into PhotoShop and try your hand at making your photos stand out.

It can be frustrating as you learn to use the tools in PhotoShop, but patience pays off and before you know it you are moving through the program quickly and everything is coming out the way you planned. It does take practice.

I am thinking though that if I am going to take this seriously I will need a faster computer that can hold, handle, store all of my images, new images and templates. What do you think? If you use Photoshop how do you keep all your images organized? Any ideas? Suggestsions? I look forward to hearing from you.

I have posted the after and the before pictures. What do you think?

Sharing what you Know..

Well, I said I would be taking a class on Photoshop soon, and I was so excited about it that I went a week early! The class is this Wednesday so once I have the lesson, I will be sure to let you know how it went and some of the cool things I learned. I am having trouble learning how to load pictures onto the Photoshop, I think I get confused when I am uploading from my camera. Another program called JASC keeps opening and I just get confused. Jessica Sprague is offering some free Photoshop lessons on her site at and I plan to take those classes too! The more I learn, the more practice I get right?

Which leads me to this weekend. My husband and I headed out to a National Park in our area to see what we could take photos of this week. It had rained quite heavily and so we headed to the Falls. It was a beautiful day and although kind of a long ride, we went out and spotted red tail hawks, the falls, dragon flies, birds. All kinds of fun photographs! On our way out of the park there was a crowd of people with cameras taking pictures of something on the ground. I wasn't wearing my glasses so asked a photographer what everyone was looking at. He looked at me and said "Oh its just a really interesting tree" and he walked away. I believed him. So I kept looking and looking trying to see what was so special about it, and then it moved.

There up against the trunk was the most beautiful fawn. Its mother was on the other side of the tree eating grasses and she obediently sat there waiting for her mom to return. I sat there for about 30 minutes taking shots, waiting for her to raise her head. It was such a special site. Kids walked by and I shared my binoculars so everyone could enjoy that special moment.

That to me is the point of art, nature, life. To be able to share it with others. Shame on that man for not wanting to share it with me. Perhaps he thought we would endanger the young fawn, but I suspect he was just being selfish.

This site is about sharing what you learn. About anything. Photography just happens to be my art right now, but I am learning scrapbooking, card making, jewelry design and more. I learn from books that I read, people that I meet, and places that I go. I do hope you will come on in and share a little or alot. Don't be like the man who was simply looking at a "very interesting tree". Delight in your knowledge and share it with others. There is a little kid out there who may never see a fawn in the wild who is just happening by, and you could be his entrance into understanding that the world is much bigger than the space we take up. The photos above, are of the fawn and its mother. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Selling Photography and other good things...

There is something fulfilling about determining your own destiny, believing in yourself and your abilities and being confident enough to think that somewhere out there, someone wants what you have to sell. There is something awfully humbling about listing your items for sale, seeing people visit, but not having any purchases. This is the time that those less confident give up. This is the time when I begin to do some research and take a few risks. The marketing person in me, says that in order to reach the masses you have to be more visible. Yes, we can post our offering on ETSY, and they do a fantastic job of promoting crafters, but ultimately we are responsible for our own successes. I have been reading, reading, reading how people became successful and here are a few things I have learned:

1) You have to keep listing items. Shoot for a minimum of 100 listings. Work hard at developing your key words, tagging your items, and your photos. Photos of your product have to be crisp and clean. Mine, not always so good, but I decided to work at the 100 listings first then put in better pictures. About 80% of my photos are crisp, some a little blurry, but the blurry ones are not as important to me as the photos of my photo cards and photographs.

2) Get out more. Blog, meet fellow bloggers, go to craft fairs, use your items to promote yourself. I just began sending some sample cards out to unique card shops to gauge their interest.

3) Give your buyers more. I was selling just photos and then I started to look at other shops. They sell a variety of sizes, frames, etc. Many sell photos as art at 8 x 8 and larger art prints. These can be ordered on line and I have found the price to be about $12.50 per print. I haven't done it yet, because I haven't determined which photos are these that I want to focus on. I think if I start that I would create some that could be framed as a set.

4) Find out how others are getting their products printed. I just read a huge article about VISTA Print and how they are ripping off their customers with hidden credit card fees. You can find the article on the ETSY site. I will try to link it here later. I have now switched to Overnight Printers at www.overnightprints.com. I will let you know how they do.

Check out my ETSY site and see the new photo cards I am offering. By Friday, I plan to have over 100 items listed.

5) I was told that listing on Friday seems to be the time when you get the most people viewing your products. I don't agree with this completely. What you get on Friday is all the people who have nothing to do on Friday nights, and spend their time shopping. Which is a good thing, but do you really think that there isn't an opportunity 7 days a week? I am trying to list at least three times a week. It keeps me consistent, develops discipline, and keeps me looking for the best shot.

What are you learning as you build your business? Please come in a talk!

Picniking is so much fun!

I have to tell you, I have just been playing around on the Picnik site that I mentioned earlier and have been having so much fun! You can too at www.picnik.com. It is so worth $25.00 a year for the advanced program but even if you aren't interested in paying for it, they offer many free programs you can try. You just load up your photos and start playing. This is a photo collage option that I just had to do. Isn't it fun? Not only that I cropped these photos, adjusted the color for better saturation, sharpened the image and edited a little bug right off the photo. Some of the petals were browning a bit, so I just put some blemish repair on them. Wait until you see the photos I am going to post tomorrow. A before and after of a sweaty speaker with lots of shine and glistening. I used Picnik, and voila! All gone. Check it out tomorrow.

This weekend I went into town to see the Cherry Blossoms around the Washington DC area. I simply love them as you can see. I am sure I will be posting more photos soon, but these pictures are gorgeous! Its my favorite time during the spring season. When the wind blows, its like little pink petal tears are floating all around the city. They almost smell like cotton candy! Okay, maybe some of that is my imagination but I have to tell you its magical. Enjoy my photos, let me know your thoughts. I will be posting them on my ETSY site as photos as well as cards if you are interested.

Fun with Photos and Nephews! You too can be an author!

I have five nephews and every time I spend time with them I just want to capture every moment, every cute word they say. This year I decided to try and write some personal stories for each of them and publish a book. My first book was written for my three Moseley nephews. I wrote a cute simple little story about them becoming super heros and listening to their parents, keeping their rooms clean, etc. I then went on ETSY and listed a request for a an illustrator to draw the pictures for a book. That was a lesson in and of it self, and while the outcome was awesome, contact me if you want to go this route as I learned alot and can offer you some tips on making it a success. My challenge was the time frame, payment terms, artist ego, etc. I also learned that I had my own image of the illustrations in mind, and if you hire an artist, they also have their own image. If you want to see the end result, you can view it here at http://www.lulu.com/. Just search for a book called the "Amazing Wonder Kids". You can view a number of the pages. I think you will find its a personal story, its rustic, but it was so much fun to do, and the end result was a book that will be treasured forever by three nephews who have their names and stories captured in the book. I printed three books and that plus the illustrator cost me about $200. Not bad for a Christmas present.

My second book was for my nephew Dylan who is fascinated by wild animals. One day he was talking to me about wild animals and wanted me to tell him stories about each one. We sat and I made up stories about each animal and Dylan. Silly stories, nothing mind shattering or difficult to write, just simple short stories. I then put another request on the ETSY alchemy site www.etsy.com/alchemy looking for someone to help me layer photos of Dylan with photos of wild animals. You can see from the pictures how much fun they are! Just imagine the stories you can create! The result was so much fun. I wrote one page short stories, and made a photo book that I printed in Snapfish. The cost for all of this? I think all in all I spent $72 for the photos, I wrote the story, and to print the book I ordered a hardcover copy for $24.99. Can it be done cheaper? Well, I suspect layering photos is a skill that can be learned, but I hired someone who already knew how to do it. The book, if you have book binding skills could probably also be made for less. That just wasn't the route I chose to take. But I have to tell you, with technology the way it is today, I think there is no better book than one that is written about you, for you! To get in touch with my photography layering guru, check out http://www.lilybeandesigns.etsy.com/ Tell her I sent you. Dana was fun to work with, she listened to my ideas, oh, and by the way, she created my banner ad for this blog!

Learning with ETSY

Recently I opened a shop on ETSY. I wanted to try my hand at selling crafts, photographs, etc. so decided to give it a try. Its actually very easy but where I got stuck was in the loading of photos. I immediately went over to the ETSY chat rooms and sent a question out to the group. I was having trouble with blurry photos in the listing. I asked if anyone had any recommendations for how to correct this. I learned that photos have to be saved at a certain size. When you take pictures with a digital camera they aren't always taken at a level satisfactory for posting and in addition when you use a higher resolution camera sometimes the photos can be too large. To fix the problem you need to utilize software that allows you to enlarge or reduce the photo. This of course was all new to me. I have PhotoShop Software but didn't really know how to use it. I asked for recommendations and was immediately directed to this fantastic site! I highly recommend you check out http://www.picnik.com/. Its so easy to use and so much fun. I have played around with my pictures with this new site as well. Just look at the little spring geese I have made for cards and photos. I also recommend you upgrade for the cost of $24.95 a year so you can take advantage of all the features. If you are new to photography and want to have some fun creating and improving in the process, then this is the place to go. You simply upload the photo you want to correct, adjust or fit, and you are on your way. You can't harm the photo, as you keep the original on your desk top. Just make sure to change the title when you save it. I tried all the special effects, all the cropping, all the text (this can be used to add text (watermark) to protect your photo rights). If you sign up for the program please tell them you heard about it on the Born Barefoot Blog!