Yellow happens to be one of my favorite colors.
As soon as I saw Yellow as a challenge, I instantly thought of this image from Ecuador. This is for you, Angel!

Are you people ready for tomorrow’s challenge? I better see you there. There will tips on how to shoot self portraits on this blog, as well as heathy eating and fitness tips on Sonya’s and my personal blog.

Also Linking up with:

FlashBack Friday

This Life is Sweet

And the She snapped

Give me a Shot and Photo Story Friday

Introducing Selfie Saturdays in Conjunction with GET FIT Challenge!

I have been thinking about hosting a weekly self-portrait challenge for a quite a while now and finally the time has come. Too many talented photographer are seemingly inept at taking pictures of themselves. They either have no idea how to do it and where to start, or do not like pictures of themselves ( see GET FIT Challenge if that’s you), or never find time for the set up required to take self portraits.

Time has come to develop that skill!

We are all beautiful and we all deserve to be featured and shown. The key is to feel confident and know how to take pictures of yourself.
You won’t need anything fancy in the beginning but it would hurt to buy  a tripod and a camera remote if you don’t have one.
To be honest it wouldn’t hurt to buy two or three remotes, since I seem to be loosing them all the time. This is my favorite remote to use and it will save you a LOT of time running back and forth from the camera to your “spot”. However, if you can’t/don’t want to buy it, don’t sweat it. There are plenty of ways of capturing oneself without all the fancy gadgets ( it’s just the gadgets make it so damn easy).

So every Saturday i will be writing about taking self portraits and setting a theme for the next week. You’re welcome to use the suggested theme or use your own, but the photograph has to be taken by you and have You in it ( a finger doesn’t count, we’re trying to get out of our comfort zones,remember?)

This coming up Saturday, the theme is “OUR DREAM SELF” and is a part of a bigger GET FIT challenge, {shutter}mama and The Art of Making a Baby (me) is championing. All you need to do is to post a Self-Portrait you’ve taken before that represents what you want to look/feel like. It’s about our body image and our bodies.  You’re not required to join the GET FIT challenge to participate in self-portraits challenge and visa versa.

The post and the linky will go up on Saturday, so I better see you there “shaking that ass…shaking that ass” ( oh wait… that’s a song..never mind)

DON’T FORGET TO GRAB A BUTTON (code on the sidebar) 

Hello, world!

This week ( read: yesterday) I finally got enough time between everything that I am doing to participate in one of Ashley’s weekly challenges.
The prompts were: Texture, Fog, Button, Beverage, Seventeens. Really ordinary subjects and really challenging at the same time unless you’re content with simply taking a picture of the named items. Of course I am not. There is nothing more boring to me than shooting an item. Just an item without a cool angle, or interesting framing, or great outside-the-box idea.

So this week I decided to do a self-portrait twist on all of the prompts. Seeing as I am currently working on a challenge of my own that is going to be centered on taking self-portraits and will be hosting it on  a new photography focused blog ( coming soon). That means that soon I will have two blogs,  a personal one where I journal all my thoughts, events and our baby journey, and a photo blog where I will host challenges, participate in photo linkys and post anything and everything photography related.

So without further edo, i present to you the self-portrait version of this week’s Scavenger Hunt items ( all photos taken by me and have me in them)

1. TEXTURE

This was probably the most difficult to come up with, since texture is not something that you can turn into a creative selfie, unless you simply want to use texture in the post processing which seemed too easy.
Our driveway has the most amazing (sometimes mildew covered ) texture, worked perfectly.
Linking up with Shadow Shot Sunday

2. FOG

When I saw this item , I thought how on earth are we expected to take a picture of fog. First, I don’t get up nearly early enough; secondly, I live in Florida ( i don’t think I’ve seen much fog over the years, but that could be due to me being a late sleeper). So as I was standing in the shower contemplating this week’s items and how to take them, I saw fog enveloping me ( SCORE!). I ran out naked, cold and dripping, grabbed my camera and jumped back in. The sun shining through the window across from me and the steam rising from the hot shower were PERFECT. I did have to wipe the lens after every shot, but eventually I got enough to pick a winner.

3. BUTTON

Again, a seemingly boring subject. I had to spice it up. I remembered my favorite magnet was stashed away somewhere in the guest room ( our fridge is stainless steel and doesn’t hold magnets)- the PANIC BUTTON! I wish the picture could produce the sound that button makes when pressed.

4. BEVERAGE

I refused to take a picture of a beverage on its own. No! When I was over at my neighbor’s house I saw a pack of Kool-Aid sitting there and remembered reading somewhere that you can clean toilets with Kool-Aid. I don’t drink anything that is not natural ( my drink of choice is water, or tea), so I thought I’d be funny to document the horrible contents of Kool-Aid drink. You can see our tongues really show how “organic and natural” it is. NOT! What won’t I sacrifice for photography? Even my health. LOL

5. SEVENTIES

This was easy! I dug into my archive! About a year ago i did a shot that I named Flower Power. It doesn’t get more 70s than this.

And that’s it for today! Looking forward to the next one, where I will hopefully see you on my new photography oriented blog.

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Please don’t forget to VOTE daily!

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I absolutely adore light! I love flare! I love 5 pm on any given day because of the golden light it produces. I was taking a picture of my new drumset when the sun was just STREAMING through the window. Sun is LOVE and BEAUTY!

Also for the Touch Up Tuesday and Shutter Love, my last year’s Bubbles Photo. Do you know how FREAKING hard it is to shoot bubble self portraits??? It was probably one of the most challenging self-portraits I have ever done and that’s considering I’ve done blowing fans ( that’s tough too), Avatar/Na’vi, jump and clone self portraits. And I still have to say bubbles is a bitch when you’re shooting yourself, because of all the multitasking you have to do with the remote and blowing bubbles at the same time. This was the only accpetable shot out of hundreds. I didn’t help that I look like a moron blowing bubbles. haha!

SOOC
What I did was some split toning in Lightroom ( yellow on highlights and blue on shadows), brightened it up, upped saturation, added some clarity, and touched up the background to look slightly darker with the brush tool.

AFTER

I also loved this shot below so much that I combined the two, and I think it really improves both the photos.

The Final Product. I hate how when I post bigger photos, they go way outside of the area where they have to be. So I am forced to post small ones. I will be redesigning the template even more to fit larger photos, since this is turning into more of a photography blog than I thought.

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Please don’t forget to VOTE daily!

For I heart Faces Contest

Happy Birthday, America!

This photo was taken for the July 4th celebration of our country’s birthday in 2010. Self portrait, done as all other photos: with tripod and remote.

It probably doesn’t really stand a chance with all those cute kids’ faces (OMG, are all bloggers mother? lol), but I just really want to share this photo with you guys.