{Project 26 - 'Bus Stop'}

It's that time again.  It's Friday's Project 26!    This weeks theme is 'Bus Stop'.  I wasn't feeling it for 'bus stop' so I took a few steps outside of the box and used a 'stopped bus' as the inspiration for this weeks theme.  My kids don't take the bus to school (I like to drive them) so they aren't on buses regularly.  I didn't know how I was going to find a bus, let alone one I could go into.  Then I thought.  I searched.  And I found.  I can't reveal too much more than that since I didn't exactly have explicit permission.  All I can say is - I did it!  Yay.  Here's a little peak into my 'bus' theme for this weeks photo. {and yes, I can't seem to ever just post one picture, I have to have a few.}

 Check out  Valeria Zaiat |The Red Balloon Photography  Our group has been busy with work and other life happenings so participants are posting when they can. So this week has a teeny-tiny number of participants.

{'Shop Talk' - Correcting Blue Hues in the Whites of Eyes}

As I was looking through my photos thinking about the things that catch my eye when I look at a photo and begin to edit.  One of the things I always notice are the whites of the eyes.  I NEVER EVER lighten them since that will make eyes look unrealistic, ghostly, zombie-ish, not good.  But I do however look at the hue of the whites.  Sometimes the resulting photographs appear with a very prominent blue hue.  When my photo is warm but the whites are blue - that bugs me {personal opinion}.  So here's what I do to fix this.

Here's the before photo (all editing complete except for the whites of the eyes being too cool for this image) :

Final Image:  Small very subtle change but a more color cohesive photo.

{Re-emerging Retro Styles -FaithWorks4U & Florabella}

I feel like I've been absent for a while...and I don't like that feeling.  I've been wanting to blog these Retro Dresses by FaithWorks4U - I am in love with everything Faith makes (you've heard me say that before).  I've probably mentioned this before, but I think I was meant to live in the 70's - I'm so drawn to this look/era.  Whenever I get clothing to work on for Faith I literally gasp when I open her packages.  My mind goes into la-la land and I envision what I want to do with the dresses and the shoot.  This one was one of my favorites to photograph and Brielle loved her hair in a loose, ballerina bun. On a different note: I get asked a lot about the what I do to get certain looks in my images.  I edit my photos to my liking with my own actions and for these I applied about 10%- 15% opacity using several of Florabella's Lux II Actions. A little goes a long way.  I also love her newest set Retouch & Make-over.  She really put some critical thought about these actions when she made them.  Just thought I'd mention that. ;-)

This first dress is the '1970's Style Square Neckline dress'.

The Simply Sweet Summer Dress.  Love both of these dresses so much!

{Shop Talk - Lens Distortion & Fun Accessories for your camera}

Let's talk Lens Distortion.  Lens distortion can be an artistic blessing or an annoying curse, right?  Lens distortion happens a lot with cameras that have zoom capabilities. It's most apparent when there's a straight edge in the image near the edge of the frame. This distorts the image.  But there is an easy fix in Photoshop!!  If you go to 'Filter' - 'Distort' - 'Lens Correction' you can alter the annoying warping that takes place in some of your images.  It's most apparent in architectural images and in the lines of buildings and doorways.   More detailed steps are shown below.  Easy, right?

Now let's chat about camera accessories - specifically, camera straps!  Who doesn't love a fashionable and fun camera strap that's comfortable too?  There are so many cute ones out there.  I have one I love that's no longer sold :(  Here's some of my favorites currently available on Etsy:

I love this and want this to be my next camera strap.  I think it would be a great conversation piece too! It's made by Rosebud Lips.  I LOVE IT!!

These are unique, fun ones that I really like too. Love the crime scene strap - how creative!  And below that is a wrist strap with a masculine style that works for men and woman.  The sculls are so cute too!  These 3 are made by PhatStraps

Chevron patterns are so in right now.  Aren't these cute?  They're made by  A Diva and 3 Dudes Design:

I love fun photography accessories so I'm going to be incorporating these into my Shop Talk Series.   Thanks for all your e-mails. I'm sifting through them and getting the most common asked questions addressed first.  Keep the e-mails coming:  Kara@karamayphotography.com  Thanks!!

{Blanket Fun! - Mesa, Arizona Family Photographer}

I wanted to share this session I did over the Fall.  I know, over the Fall?  What's that all about?  Well I haven't blogged most of my fall sessions.  Things get so busy and I'm on such a time crunch to get galleries up and orders delivered, so blogging the session images gets pushed aside, BAD I know.  But I really wanted to post this session - it's with one of my favorite and most dear friends and her family.  My friend Haleigh is also a talent photographer in my area!  She and her husband are also the owners of 'Fanciful Frames'.  Have you heard of them?  If not, you've got to!  And a little secret:  if you're a fan of Fanciful frames on Facebook, she often posts super discounted prices on their frames.  I just bought an 11x14 frame, 'tart' shaped in the fanicful color since she was doing a 48 hour sale only on Facebook on that color and several others so I snagged it just before the sale ended!  Yay!  I can't wait to get it.  I have 2 other frames of hers a 20x30 huge beautiful black frame and an 8x10 'Apple Tart' colored frame.  Super cute!  Anyway, I could go on but I'll stop  ;-)  Check her page out!

This fall I was lucky to photograph her beautiful family!  Aren't they beautiful.  Kinda unfair hu?  Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  They were so wonderful and easy to work with, not surprising since their momma is a photographer.  Here's a peek at our session.

{Project Twenty-Six on Friday's - 'can you guess my favorite childhood book?'}

I'm excited about this weeks Project 26 - Can you guess my favorite childhood book? How fun!!  I love things like this since I can take it in so many different directions. I didn't know quite what this entailed and what angle to take so I just ran with what I was thinking - it's a 'modern twist' on a classic.  So with these little clues I have shown in pictures I was only able to incorporate 2 characters since I didn't have more peeps or the time to really delve into getting a cast together lol.  So there are MAJOR pieces left out of this story but I think you'll be able to get it - a few of the images will give it away. Tell me your guesses and I'll post the answer later today at the bottom of this post.  After guessing click on Val's link continue the circle -  Val | The red balloon photography.  The circle is smaller this week, but that's just temporary.

So, do you think you know my 'favorite childhood book'?  You have to have it with the clues - right?  Some of you may have forgotten the boy with the bone in his hand....hmmmm.  I wanna hear your guesses.  Thanks for playing :)

Note:  the house photo {second picture from the bottom} - was taken by Katie Marshall who kindly allowed me to use her image.  Thanks so much Katie!!

UPDATE:  Yes!!  Many of you were right!  It's Hansel & Gretel.  Here' my silly book cover for the story :)   Thanks for playing!

{National Association of Professional Children's Photographers - Featured Photographer}

I was completely flattered when the National Association of Professional Children's Photographers (NAPCP) contacted me last month to be their featured member.  They mentioned that Barb Uil of Jinky Art Photography was the prior months featured member and if I wasn't sure and wanted to be featured I should check out her interview.  What?  Um, really?  Me, after Barb?  I felt a little intimidated but was honored and of course excitedly said, 'yes'.  I'm proud to be a part of this organization - here's a link to their site.  To see this newsletter click here.  They have a new layout with 2 page, full bleed spreads - I love it!  Thanks for checking it out :)

Here's just a couple pages from the feature.

And Monthly Tips - you may have seen the first one from my 'Shop Talk' series.

{'Shop Talk' - Chromatic Aberration}

It's that time again!  Shop Talk!  I love doing this series and covering topics that I focus on in my images.  Today is all about 'Chromatic Aberration' and how to avoid/correct this annoying occurrence in Photoshop.  So what is Chromatic Aberration?   Chromatic Aberration is a distortion in color also called 'color fringing'.   It's a common problem that occurs when the lens can't bring together all the  color wavelengths into the same focal plane.  It's very common in high-contrast situations.   Most of us have seen this and it's a pain since it doesn't represent the true look of the photo.  But there's a way to correct it!   I'll explain it using the images below.  So the first image it's hard to see so I've blown up a portion of Brielle's 'high contrast' shirt so you can see where I have to correct the color dispersion.

In the blown up area, you can see more of the color aberration that I need to correct.

To correct this in photoshop go to 'Filter'- 'Distort' - 'Lens Correction'.   You'll find the sliders used to correct the distortion to the right.

Depending on the image you are correcting the sliders will need to be altered accordingly.  Make sure you blow your image up (200%+) to see the aberration problems so you can move the sliders according to the colors that need to be corrected on your image.

below:  correction made

Final Image with 'Chromatic Aberration' corrected.  It's a small change but makes the image look a little cleaner, minimizing color disruption.

I hope this was helpful.  I've been getting some topic suggestions from blog viewers.  Feel free to e-mail me at kara@karamayphotography.com with any suggestions you might want me to cover.  I'll try to get to them as I can. Thanks for viewing my Shop Talk post!

{Project 26 - 'Once Upon A Time'}

I love this week's theme!  The possibilities are endless, but I had to stick to only one...that was hard.  In my closet I've been storing my old ballerina dress that I wore when I was little.  My mother made it so it has even more meaning.  I didn't think it would fit Brielle yet, but with a little pinning it was perfect!  It was surreal seeing my baby girl in MY ballerina dress.  I never imagined having a little girl that might someday wear it.  It easily became the inspiration for this project. Once upon a time....

Thanks for reading to my silly little fairy tale :) We could've done a cinemagraph like last week again but I opted to just focus on the theme so you may see a few more cinemagraphs in the circle.  Click Val | The red balloon photography to see what Val did for this weeks project.  And don't forget to click through all of the links to complete the circle.

{Happy Valentine's Day!}

Happy Valentine's Day!!  Are you doing anything special today?  My kids came home from school so excited and on a fun little sugar high (yay!).  I spent part of the day at school living vicariously through them, remembering Valentine's Day and the excitement I felt passing out my Valentine's to my classmates when I was young.  I love that this school embraces holidays and celebrations - it's part of childhood memories that I think are so important.  Both kids class had a little celebration and it was so fun to be a part of it.

I've had several e-mail and friends at school asked me how I made these cards.   The mustache is an overlay (from Oh Snap Boutique)  that I added to the image and I made the chevron background paper in photoshop.  Added text and printed then off a little smaller than the size of a business card.   I used my home printer an Epson Artisan 810.  And the trick I finally found was in the printer settings (not in the normal place you'd think it would be... in a later box that is easily dismissed.  You need to choose the specific type of paper and the image quality via the drop-down menus.   With this printers set up it's not intuitive and I was ready to toss it since it printed images so badly.  But then I discovered this part.  You have to do it each time you print pictures though, a bit of a pain but worth it.

Here's the little tags we made for our Valentine's day treats.  :)  We had fun making them.

Tonight we're celebrating by just being together.  Jeff and I typically don't do anything for each other but we still enjoy the holiday and make it fun for the kids.  Sometimes a card and an extra smooch and we're happy.  Hope you have a great Valentine's Day!