Welcome to Week 16 of Selfie Saturday.

If you’re new here, read what this is all about.
If you missed last 15 weeks of challenges and tutorials, here is what we learned:

Week 2: Basic Full Body Shot
Week 3: Couple’s Selfies
Week 4: Arm’s Length Selfie
Week 5: Conceptual Selfies
Week 6: Me Myself and I: Multiplicity
Week 7: Portrait Selfie + Squinty Model Eyes
Week 8: Self-Love
Week 9: Focus
Week 10: My friend, the FAN
Week 11: Magic Tricks
Week 12: Jump Shots
Week 13: Family Portrait
Week 14: Collaborations
Week 14: Stop Motion Photography
Week 15: Anonymous

So this week we were supposed to shoot parts of our bodies, possibly favorite parts. And what’s better time to shoot my newly pregnant belly? That’s right,peeps! In case you don’t read my personal blog, hubby and I are expecting our first baby. You can read/see the announcement here. So I thought it was very fitting for this week to take a picture of my growing (or mostly bloated) preggo belly. If you’re into baby/pregnancy blogs, feel free to subscribe to The Art of Making a Baby, since I will be posting regular updates with pictures and stats (that is, as soon as this nausea will let me feel a little more human and not as handicapped).

Also this new week’s theme is PERFECTION and it also happens to be the last week of tutorials for Selfie Saturdays. I will give myself more time to write that post, if you don’t mind, so you should be seeing it some time this week or weekend. After we are finished with the tutorials, I’ll continue hosting weekly themed self-portrait challenges that will be more lax and open to interpretation.

LINK UP HERE:

Sometimes I get inspired to take selfies for no apparent reason.

I noticed the beautiful combination of soft blue and yellow and that was my trigger.
Last time I attempted to take a selfie on a hammock, I was missing a remote due to my awesome (read: awful) habit of misplacing them. And while I think it was pretty, it would be much better if it actually had focused right on it.
This time it was different!

Hoorray to sharp focus and bright colors!

I have a FACEBOOK page, people! So please LIKE it, so that I, at least, knew who you are! Let’s call it DELURKING! I want to know you ALL!

I shot random videos of the neighborhood, now I need time to put it together and post it here. It should be soooo PURRRRTY!

Oh and I cannot wait to shoot for the STOP MOTION VIDEO challenge. This will be the first time I actually go out to shoot 600 images with the idea of putting them into a stop motion video. I think the result will be different- cooler, funner and more inspiring than before.

And tomorrow is my favorite person’s birthday! YAY TO THAT!

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Linking up

I have been busy busy busy! Lots of drama in the past two days with some of the friends. None concerning me, but still: single people can be funny I took the day off today to go boating, but that got cancelled for reasons I won’t disclose. So no pretty pictures of beaches or mansion or people boo

But I do have my good to wow edit:

I do all of my edits in Lightroom. I only use photoshop when I need to use layers or major skin smoothing. To be honest, I cannot imagine using such bulky uncomfortable program full time. Lightroom not only stores and catalogs your photos but it makes it so fast and easy to edit multiple photos at once. I think anyone who tries Lightroom just doesn’t go back. It’s definitely the software of choice for professional fashion photographers as evidenced by me many times.

Speaking of Lightroom, if you guys are interested, there’s a promotion going on, where you can save up to $100 on Lightroom. So feel free to use the link below, to get the discount or try out the software.

Also, if you happen to have a functional .edu account from when you were a student, these two links will give you a massive discount off of Adobe software.
Something like 80% OFF Photoshop’s normal price.

Also, if you are new to the whole world of editing, you can always start with Adobe Elements like most people do.
This link will give you $20 off.

HOPE THIS HELPS ALL OF YOU THAT ARE MISSING EDITING SOFTWARE

Now onto my edit.

All I did here was correct the exposure level, used my favorite fill light and recovery at the same time to lighten up and bring the details back. Plus some contrast, shadows and saturation on certain colors and voila. Very simple. Cropped some people out of course.

Also, as I was going through my old photos for a 5 year monthly Blurb Book, I found this picture. Aren’t we so young and cute. It was 7 years ago – we were still newlyweds – and now we’re finally trying for a baby. How crazy is life?

Before I go right into this week’s challenges, I’d like to share a piece of sunshine that is my backyard. It’s my happy place. It’s always blooming, regardless of what season it is. The colors of the hammocks bought in Key West make even the gloomiest day awesome! When I had to study for exams, I’d would come down there and spend hours reading the material and enjoying the birds chirping, the fire burning, and the smell of the fresh cut grass.

What is YOUR happy place?

This shot is for Mellow Yellow Monday

Also, this is my first time participating in Ashley’s and Jill’s challenge “GOOD TO WOW”

I wanted to pick something family oriented and recent. This photo is of an adorable couple who just had their second baby, Alex. They are some of the greatest people I know. We were relaxing at the beach and, of course, Anna wanted photos (who doesn’t?), I snapped a few as they were walking ( I was limited by my 50mm).

This is the shot I will be editing this week:

This is going to be a very different week. Today I cannot give you many tips because this particular topic is very new to me.
I have taken what could be considered “family self-portraits”, but our family consists of 2 people: me and my husband. And I’ve already covered the COUPLES SELFIES.

Recently as I was thinking about our family that will be hopefully expanding in the future, I realized that before i even realize it, there will be three of us. So I wanted to make sure that I cherish the times that we have now. And what occurred to me is that while I have a million photos of me and hubby, I do not have a single photo with our WHOLE family together, which would include our 3 cats.
I mean, really, with all my self-portraiture, I have NEVER taken a picture with me, hubby and cats.

I don’t want to look back and not see our life without our kitties, before it becomes the three of us.

So that brought me to this week’s theme: FAMILY PORTRAIT

I am sure that just like me, you have few to none photos of your whole family together taken by you. And why not, it’s so easy! Now that you’re all a few weeks into the selfie challenges, you should have the skills to pull this off.

So the challenge this week is to take a FULL family photo. I am talking hubbies, kitties, doggies, fishies and all. I know it’s going to be a challenge to make sure pets are in the picture, but I think we owe it to ourselves to make this happen at least once, at least for this challenge.

So since I am just as new to this, as you are, I encourage you to share any tips you might accumulate during your family selfie shoot when you link up next Saturday. I will then put all the tips together for a tutorial ( and of course give credit to those who shared the tips). So this will be our little collaboration. We all will be learning as we go and I’m very excited about putting together all of our experience.

A few general tips:

• make sure all your settings are done, your camera and tripod are set up, your remote (or timer) is working before you drag your kids/pets into this.
• use a simple location that you have good access to.
• hubby should serve as a point of focus for you ( if you’re using a remote). Once you’re focused properly, have him gather up the kids, help him get the pets.
• MAKE IT QUICK {hubbies are impatient, kids are even more difficult, and pets are impossible- you have 3 shots if you’re lucky).
• use treats to get cats and dogs to sit still.
• make sure your light is abundant and your shutter speed is fast.
• read my tips on taking couples selfies.

I’ve been really excited about taking a REAL FAMILY PHOTO  for a while now and have been waiting for this week’s theme.

So let’s do this for ourselves and for our families { even though they don’t really appreciate our picture taking }

{photo taken by Leeka}

LINK UP