Kamehameha

No, that’s not a foreign language and no, I haven’t been to Hawaii lately, much to my chagrin. “kamehameha” is the battle cry that rings through my house countless times every day. It’s the battle cry of Goku, a character in the boys’ current favorite Anime series, “DragonBallZ”. The boys have become so interested in fact that they began collecting the cards that are offered at our favorite haunt, Target. Many times I joke that it’s my vacation home because as much as we spend there, we could have a second home, but I digress. While we were on “vacation” yesterday, the boys picked up some cards and then Iain noticed something interesting next to the display. It was a packet of sheet protector looking things with pockets for holding collectible cards. Iain was very excited by the prospect of having somewhere safe to store his cards and when we got home, he immediately began the process of organizing them.

I have to tell you that I was completely mesmerized watching him do this. A kid who constantly leaves things lying around EVERYWHERE, wants to get organized. He broke the pages out by character and then established “random” pages for ones that didn’t feature anyone in particular. Ryan was also fascinated and decided he wanted his own book so Iain very generously gave Ryan some pages and a few extra cards so they’d be even. They are very sweet to one another.

Once they had their books all set up, they wanted to create covers for them. They were using notebooks that had the clear pocket on the front. Off they went on an internet journey to Deviant Art.com and they searched for their favorite characters images. Once they located them, we downloaded them and then I went into Photoshop and created these covers at their behest:

The whole process was really fascinating and beautiful to watch. Not only are they collectible cards but Iain has created his own “battle” game with them, sort of like Yu-gi-o cards. I really loved being able to witness their creativity.

Later today, I begged Ryan to come out with me and let me take some photos and, the sweet boy that he is, he obliged. We went to one of our favorite local parks plus we went to one that we had not gone to before. We had such a good time! I used some different treatments on each of these photos:

Here’s a b&w:

On this one I went with a 70’s style look:

I swear I can hear KC and the Sunshine Band when I look at that photo…

Then I went for a really old look:

Then, a straight process, nothing fancy:

His skin looks a little weird for some reason so I’m going to go back and re-edit that one.

My posting here has been rather sporadic lately and will probably continue to be that way as I try and get my photography business off the ground. I had a shoot this week with a friend and her girls and have a couple to share with you. I have permission to put these on the web:

Aren’t they sweet and adorable?? We had so much fun playing and blowing bubbles! It was such a blast!

Hope you are well!!