Trying to get back on track!

Man! Things have been crazy around here! I turn around and look at the blog and I haven’t posted anything since TUESDAY??? What the heck??!

Well, on Wednesday we had some friends over for most of the day and it was great! Jill (Homeschool Mama here) and her two boys came over for a picnic, only it was raining that day so the picnic was a bust but we had fun anyway. All the boys played together really nicely, and the moms did, too. LOL It was a great way to spend a rainy day!

Thursday, we all slept late. We had been up late the night before so it was a morning where we needed to catch up on some zzzzzzz’s. Then in the afternoon, Ryan had a friend over. It got off to a rough start because Ryan, for some reason, didn’t want to share his toys with his friend. This is a trend that’s been going on for a couple of weeks and I’m not sure why. Well yesterday it caused a flatout meltdown and a near psychotic episode for me. We got it all worked out but man! It was touch and go for a while.

Last night was the season finale of “lost”. Don’t know if you watch it or not but I was impressed with the finale. It answered a lot of questions while posing more for the next season. Really, it’s hard to express how much I love that show and how sad I’m going to be once it’s off the air!

My photoshop class is entering it’s last week and I have learned A LOT. The funny thing is, the tips I picked up aren’t major and some of them are things that I had read about in books on Photoshop but it took the class to put it all together for me. Now I feel much more confident about processing my RAW camera images and am able to take them from a good image to an even better one without going overboard. Here’s an example:

I took this picture last night and it’s fine. It just seemed to lack a little oomph, which is an issue with digital photography. With film, you can choose a type of film that will really pop your colors but with digital, the best way to do that is by using Photoshop, or something similar.

Here is the after, and all I did was pop the colors a little bit and brighten the kids up so they were more prevalent in the photo.

I didn’t change anything much but it just made the picture a little bit better. That’s my goal with photoshop, especially when I’m taking photos for other people. I want people to look at the photos and feel like it’s a real capture, not a digitally enhanced one. My style is natural, at least as natural as I can be. There is a photographer here who does some amazing work, but the people in her photos don’t look real. As a parent, I want to recognize the child in the photo as my own. Know what I mean? I’m not dissing that style because I do think it’s cool in some respects but for myself, I can’t do it, believe me, I’ve tried. It just doesn’t suit me well.

My business efforts are moving forward and I’ve bought a domain name, www.eviecurleyphotography.com. Right now, it only has a link directing people to my photography blog but I’m hoping to get something else up there within the month. There is a lot of paperwork to be filed as well but hopefully, after the July 4th holiday, Photography by Evie Curley will be up and running!!

We’re all looking forward to this weekend because Sean is off from school and we’ll be able to spend a lot of time together. We have no plans other than being together and that will be great by itself!

Iain has been asking for some educational instruction so I’m still trying to figure that out. Next week, we’re going to try and find some ways to help him understand some things he’s been wanting to learn about while keeping it interesting. One friend of mine suggested doing something like a unit study and I may take that idea and base whatever we do loosely on that. I’ll keep you updated!

Hope you’re all having a great week and I’m going to try and post more frequently than I have been!!