Day 77-79

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to the Bay Area. I opted for a few low quality phone pictures because even though the pictures are terrible they represent our days.

The only pictures I actually took here were the beach photos. :)

Day 73-76

Here's another set. We made a last minute trip to the Bay Area for spring break. It has been hard but I'm trying to limit my pictures to one photo per event. The first picture was supposed to go in my last post and I had the wrong date on the photo of Alison's boot. oops

I need to give credit where it's due. My sil Michelle took the cousins photo, and the family photo. Martin took the photo of Leda and I. Do they still count? I wanted to include them! And the "make new friends" photo used a Kelsey Smith Lightroom preset.

ETA That aquarium photo is a big fake. I had a picture with and without fish and I merged them. I really love the fish picture by itself but I so wanted a great picture from the day with all the cousins. The pictures I had with the four kids and the good fish had other people in it. I didn't mean to be deceiving. But, now I came clean so alls good, right? :)

Day 68-72

Trying to catch up again! Here are my pictures for last week. The picture of Maya with the sepia tone uses a Lightroom preset by Kelsey Smith. Regarding the photo of the medical bracelet, I have a photo of the other side with her name and info but that is too personal for the blog.

Day 60-67

We had gorgeous weather last week in the 60s and up to the mids 70s. So we had a lot of great playtime outside.

The photography issue I had this week was trying to get sharp photos of very close up items. I'm not really interested in learning much about macro photography but I would like to figure out why sometimes I have good luck and other times not at all.

The font I started using for the photo labels is Pea Luv Holly Wood. :)

Day 52-59

Remember me? I've been busy taking pictures just not posting. I'm skipping a few days so I can finish Maya's favorites project.

I haven't been putting a ton of effort into my photography, but I do have one photography question. I always hear about the golden hour, but whenever I try to take pictures when the sun is lower in the sky, I either end up with shadows if the girls' faces aren't facing the sun and if they are facing the sun, they end up squinty. Is this time a day not really meant for portraits?

OK on to the photos . . .







I even used my phone's camera for the first time. Useless for printing but I did get photos! :)

Day 48 and 49

I'm posting out of order today. This week I'm taking pictures of Maya's favorites and I want to post those all together. Here are some goofy pictures to fill in the days we didn't do favorites. I took these photos today inside without my flash. My flash is upstairs in my bedroom and both times I wanted to take the picture before I lost the moment. This shows you how much I hate my built in flash. I'd rather have a grainy photo than a super bright built in flash photo. I did try to take a few of Serena with the flash but they were awful! Did you see my previous post? That one actually turned out ok!! :)

Day 49



Here's a silly photo of Alison. She was sitting at dinner all bunched up like this. It really made me laugh how rectangular she was with her head scrunched in. Then I realized with that black shirt the reason it looked so funny to me is that she looks just like the Jolly Roger!!! ha ha

Day 48



I love these pictures of Serena! She was recounting her tales of visiting the queen. She can go on and on with her stories and they vary between being quite imaginative and completely random. This story even included a missed trip to space because they didn't have a the right space clothes. I love how much she gets into it - you can see from her expressions she is in full blown drama mode.

And here is my photo tip for the day, maybe. I have a terrible time with Serena's skin tone with indoor photos when my white balance is off. With Alison and Maya's pale skin I have less trouble removing the yellowish cast but when I do the same thing for Serena her skin ends up too gray, but if I warm it back up it's too yellow again. Today I was adjusting these photos while she sat next to me. I finally added a sepia photo filter to these pictures and her skin tone looks so much better. I'm anxious to see if this works for all my photos. Really I should just learn to use a card and get my white balance right in the first place and/or shoot in RAW. Both of these photos were so yellow to start with there is only so much I know how to do to fix them.

Day 45

Love this picture of Maya - straight out of the camera. :) I have the rest of the week almost ready. I just need to process some of them. I have a feeling pretty soon here I'm going to posting my pictures once a week. I just don't have time every day to upload and process them.