One of the nice things about living in the “country” is that you have a lot of privacy for your family. In our neck of the woods, there is a 10-acre minimum for a person to build a new home. Most of our neighbors have much more property than the minimum though (especially the ones who are farmers or Amish), which has made for a nice spread-out neighborhood with just about as much privacy as you could hope for. While most of our neighbors seem like very nice folks, we rarely (if ever) have one of them talk to us…heck, to tell you the truth, we rarely ever even see any of them.
Except for the neighbors who live on the property right next to ours whom we have come to know quite well over the years and are incredibly blessed that we get along so well and that many of our children are the same ages. The kiddos were thrilled to be invited over on Saturday evening to swim in their pool and I was definitely looking forward to shooting the breeze with my neighbor friend. We see each other quite a bit during the school year (we share car-pooling duties for getting the kids to school), but the summer gets so busy that we really haven’t seen each other much at all for the past several months.
So the kiddos splashed and squealed and checked out the lambies and the new calf that they are taking to the fair this week for 4-H and jumped on the trampoline…while we ladies just sat and enjoyed the beautiful weather and adult conversation.
And then this little guy woke up from his nap and my camera very quickly decided to remain pointed in the direction of his oh-so-sweet, wakey-uppy, kind of grumpy face…
That said, I really do enjoy the Photoshop part of photography though as well. I tend to lean more towards brightening my photos in color…boosting the color a bit, making the eye pop more, making the photo as sharp as possible.
Sometimes I get it right and then other times I feel like the photos are off…but, that’s all part of the fun of learning, right?
One of the main things I love about Photoshop is that I can play with different finishes…just to see what they will turn out like. I love these B&W’s of “Baby O” (same exact photos as the ones above, just turned into B&W):
And sometimes I enjoy playing with the vintage look as well:




I get a kick out of finding out how different the same photo can turn out just by using a different finish on it. I usually end up wandering back to the brighter color photos though.