When I married my husband, I inherited four children of varying ages. The oldest was 22 and the youngest was 13. Step-parenting is an interesting journey, and it definitely has its ups and downs, but I love my kids, which now also includes two sons-in-law, a permanent partner, and two grandsons. They are wild and wacky and very, very different from each other, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
During her last summer at Southern Utah University, our daughter had the opportunity to do an internship with the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah. She was in two of the stage shows and also part of the Greenshow troupe that performed each night before the evening shows. These three photos are from the Greenshow (photography not being allowed in the stage shows). The first two include some of her fellow troups mates, and the third one is just her, but it made a nice trio of photos.
For more from this challenge, visit Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: 3 items or the number three.
Life is full of beginnings and endings. Each experience has high points and low points. This month, we experienced quite the milestone. Our youngest child graduated from college. We are now truly empty-nesters. We are so excited to see what the future holds for our young man, but it will be strange to no longer have a reason to travel to Cedar City frequently or field calls about long-distance car repairs. As he moves on to the next chapter in his life, we will be looking about in a new way, too. No matter what the future brings, this one thing remains true: time moves more quickly than I like.
(This picture has all of our kids but one. Our oldest was wrangling our two adorable grandkids.)
IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR MORE) THAT SHOW ENDINGS OF ANY KIND.
Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.
Here’s how it works:
We usually think of texture as a tangible, touchable thing, but it is so important when creating images. When shooting babies, I like to include textured blankets and wraps to enhanced the look of the that baby-smooth skin. The face of an oder person with lots of wrinkles gives character and backstory to a simple portrait. The textures found in nature provide light and shadow contrast, as in my closeup of the red rock in southern Utah.
You can also add texture to an image in post production by increasing clarity or sharpness. Many programs have ready-made texturing settings to add canvass or film textures to your image. So whether you are going for a native texture (the image just came that way) or enhanced texture (added post-production), let’s see what you’ve got!
IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE ONE OR TWO OR MORE PHOTOS WITH NATIVE OR ADDED TEXTURE.
Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.
Here’s how it works:
I was asked by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing to provide an image for the March 2016 One Photo Focus challenge. The image I picked is this one of the north stairs of the Adams Memorial Theatre at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.
The theatre sits on the Southern Utah University campus in Cedar City, Utah, and opened in 1977. It is one of the most accurate replicas of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the world (at least the back and main stage areas). This last summer (2015) was the last year that plays will be staged at this theatre. The festival is building a new theater to replace this one, so this last summer was a bit nostalgic for festival goers.
For my edit, I first opened the RAW image in Photoshop’s RAW converter and used the following settings:
With these settings, I got this image:
Next, I added the following two duplicate background layers, each with a layer mask:
On the Multiply layer, I added a Gaussian Blur at 15.0%. All of this created this image:
Next, I used a soft brush set at 100% opacity and in the layer mask of the Multiply layer mask, erased the theatre sign. I then set the Opacity of the SoftLight layer to 55%.
Here is what I had so far:
A quick crop to tighten up the image gave me my final image:
For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: March.
Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!
Most photographers work hard to make sure that every shot is perfectly in focus. We love seeing every little detail pop from an image. For some shots, a softer, almost blurry feeling works better. It all depends on what ambiance you are trying to create. For this image, I didn’t do anything to the sharpness (or lack thereof) in the post-processing. I thought, given the intimate moment, that a softer feeling worked just great.
IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR THREE…) THAT HAVE A SOFTER FOCUS, WHETHER ACCOMPLISHED NATURALLY OR THROUGH POST-PROCESSING.
Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography. Here’s how it works:
Living in Utah, which has been classified as a desert, you’d think that we’d have a lack of trees and wooded areas. However, the Rocky and Uinta Mountains in northern Utah and the various Plateaus in southern Utah give Utahans a plethora of pine and leafy foliage of the tall variety to gaze upon. The first image was taken on the grounds of Southern Utah University outside the world famous (and soon to be demolished) Adams Theatre at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The other images are from previous posts (most taken in Utah).
IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR THREE OR…) OF WOOD.
Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography. Here’s how it works:
nancy merrill photography 