Some from The Aquarium

We visited the New England Aquarium again today (hooray for memberships!) This time I took with me, my 50mm 1.8 lens to see if I could get the aperture wide enough so that I wouldn't have to use my flash and it worked about half the time which was pretty impressive given the lighting situation in there! Here are my 5 favorites from the day:

Not Technically Correct, But I Still Love It!

Yesterday we had my grandmother's annual Christmas party. She bought Eliot the cutest little outfit for the occasion! Eliot was SO excited to wear his "chooch" vest. Although there are other photos that do a better job of showcasing said "chooch," I really love this photo of Eliot. He looks so innocent and so grown up. It's not technically correct (mostly because of the hand chop, the dead center subject, and the colors being slightly off), but I love it anyway... and isn't art subjective after all?


I know I have mentioned this before, but I *HATE* what blogspot does to the image quality!

Tis The Season!

I've always felt that Christmas really is one of the best times of the year, (but really, who wouldn't prefer Summer time?). I haven't been feeling much in the Christmas spirit this year, unfortunately, although I am still trying to enjoy the season and am especially looking forward to sharing Christmas with Eliot this year.

I just wanted to post a few of my Christmas-y photos that I've taken over the last few days.

I absolutely love our Christmas Tree this year!

My Folk's Tree

My folk's tree- bokeh lights!

This is actually the same photo from above, but with a texture added to it. A lot of pro photographers use textures as a way to enhance their photos. I've just started learning about this and will probably use this technique much more in '10!
...and my favorite holiday cookie (with some brownies for good measure).

Testing

Just testing out my newest photoshop pursuit... making templates :) I've seen many photographers use these sort of templates on their blogs (see my lame attempt in my previous post below) and I wanted to know where they got them. As it turns out, the set I was eying cost $65! So, I began the quest of learning how to do it on my own and I think I rocked it!

Eliot's First Time Playing in The Snow!

It started snowing here on Saturday afternoon. We didn't get very much; maybe a couple of inches. I was down at the lake in Wakefield helping out a fellow photography student and I told Ted that he should bring Eliot down and meet us there for some fun in the snow! Eliot had a BALL! He loved the snow! He just had so much fun running around in it... and he looked absolutely adorable!

Daddy teaching Eliot how to make a snowball

The only way Ted could get Eliot in from the snow was to let him sit in the front seat of his car and have a candy cane :)

My New Macro Lens!

My photography wish list seems to be ever-growing and with my first wedding coming up after Christmas, I wanted to purchase something that I thought would help me out a little with that. Some of the best wedding photos are the detail shots; the rings, the flowers, candles, buttons on the dress, etc. and what better way to capture all that good stuff, but with a macro lens!? I found a refurbished lens at a VERY reputable website for $70 less than a brand new one so I just had to go for it. I've been playing for a few days now and though I still have a lot to learn about it (the lens came with it's own THICK book manual), I am loving it so far! The other major reason I can justify purchasing this lens right now is that macro lenses make great portrait lenses as well and since the majority of my business is portrait-based, it just made sense 0:)


And now for the portraits! (You may have noticed an influx of Eliot-in-hat photos lately and there is a reason for that. For my latest photography class project, I was sort of elected to do a series of kids in hats. Though I do have some photos of other kids, needless to say, Eliot is my primary model)

And I couldn't resist putting this one up! Ted actually took this photo with my camera of Eliot licking the chocolate off of my spatula after baking my holiday rice krispy treats :)

Horn Pond in the Fall

Sometime late last week, we had an hour or so to kill so we decided to head down to Horn Pond and just let Eliot run around a little bit. He loved it! He saw trucks and dogs and for those of you who know Eliot well, that's all he needs!



Just a bit of an Eliot update, he now repeats a lot of words; no, go, and ho ho ho are all great examples. He will also try to repeat words like "coat," but he usually leaves off the "t" at the end. He also says "yeah," which is a great word for him to know and makes communication a lot easier! He calls the train a "chooch," which I think is just adorable. He knows what the duck says, what the bunny does (mouth noises), what the fish does, what the cow says, turkey says, and sometimes he knows the dog. He understands pretty much whatever we tell him, though. If we ask him to do something simple, i.e. "bring Mama your shoes," he will do so right away! He still only has 6 teeth as far as we can tell, but he drools with the best of 'em. He and Milo are great friends, he loves it when Mama gives him a cloth and tells him to clean, and he pretends that all of his toy trucks are ride on, even though none of them are, technically. He's so much fun and we are so blessed to have him in our lives!

To the Zoo with Papa!

My Dad is on vacation from work for two weeks; he says it's his birthday gift to himself. Eliot and I headed over there for our weekly laundry day yesterday and decided that we should do something fun! I suggested that we go to the zoo. Eliot hadn't been in a couple of months and I was sure that he would enjoy it even more now that he was two months older. Off to the zoo we went! Eliot had a BLAST! It was the most fun that I had ever had at the zoo because it was the most fun he had ever had. I knew that he understood so much more this time too which made it even more awesome.

I think that Eliot's favorite thing to look at was the black bears. They were being really cooperative and social. They came right up to the fence in front of Eliot and he was LOVING it! We also saw llamas, cougars, a jaguar, some owls, otters, a bald eagle, flamingos, a couple of gibbons, some coati, and even a reindeer :) It was really a great day and since it was mid-November, in the middle of the week, and on the cooler side, we were practically the only ones there!

The Cutest Hat Ever!

It all started with a quest for mittens; mittens that would actually stay on Eliot's hands. My mother volunteered to sew some up. With the extra fabric she had, she decided to also make Eliot both a scarf and hat. Today was the first day that we tried all three components of the set on at the same time. I couldn't possibly miss the opportunity for good blogging material :)

Fall Fun

This past Sunday, I took Eliot over to my folk's house for some leaf-raking, pile-jumping fun! I have some new props that I have purchased for my "pro" shoots and thought Eliot would look pretty cute sitting in a bucket in some leaves :)

Eliot's not the only one who can have fun in a bucket :)

Where's Eliot?


Eliot and Auntie Emily over visiting Jack, the dog.

Halloween (& an appology)

First, I want to say, that No, I haven't forgotten about my blog! This isn't going to be one of those forgotten things that someone starts and never finishes. I love this blog! I love all of the comments and compliments that I get about it! I love knowing that I have people following it, and watching Eliot grow!

Things have been kind of crazy lately. I have decided to take my photography to a professional level. I am working on getting my website up and running and I have started a new "professional" blog as well. Please check it out (and follow me) at: http://karabakerphotography.blogspot.com/

So, I am sorry that this blog got put on the back burner for a couple of weeks, but I'm back and ready to post!

On Friday, the city of Melrose closed down down town Main Street for all the kiddos to go trick-or-treating at all the down town businesses. I found out about this very last minute, but my mom and I agreed that Eliot would love to go down and see all the kids and costumes, so I suited Eliot up, and away we went! Despite being exhausted from lack of naps lately, he did quite enjoy himself. He didn't seem to mind being in his costume either for the most part, which made us happy! Although, he HATED the hat, but I expected that anyway since he never seems to like anything on his head.

Here are a few photos from after our trick-or-treating adventures:

And some Halloween feet :)

RAW

I finally did it! I shot in RAW and edited RAW! If you are a serious photographer, you are shooting in RAW. RAW files are much larger (about 4x the size of a jpeg) and are basically designed to make your editing better. Ted and I couldn't figure out for the longest time why my photoshop refused to open RAW files. After a lot of research and a lot of asked questions on the photography message boards that I visit, we found out that my camera is too new for the old Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) plug-in in my version of Photoshop (CS3). So we downloaded the latest version of ACR from the Adobe website and it STILL wouldn't work in CS3. I THEN found out, that I would need a DNG converter to allow those files to open in CS3, but they would open just fine in CS4. Ted had gotten me CS4 a while back, but I didn't want to use it just yet because I like the familiar. CS3 is my comfy place. Anyway, I finally broke down and had Ted install the CS4 on my computer and I switched my in-camera settings to RAW & Jpeg (which takes the same photo simultaneously in both formats) (JUST IN CASE RAW didn't want to work again). I opened the first RAW file and IT WORKED!! Woohoo! Success! I then proceeded to follow a beautifully written RAW tutorial online with my two RAW photos that I opened in ACR and I was so pleased with the results! I am only just beginning, but I KNOW I am going to LOVE RAW!


So now for the story behind the photos. We have been on a mission to find Eliot some slippers. The first ones we bought him were just adorable! They were "paws" with 4 claws coming out of each slipper, but they were too big and fell right off his feet whenever he would try to walk. A few days later, I headed to Target where they had a cute blue pair, the ONLY pair. I knew they would be on the small side, but figured that they would last until Christmas and then we could ask someone to buy Eliot a new pair at that point in a bigger size (the paws probably won't fit for another 5-6 months maybe). After two days of wearing the blue slippers, I realized that, in fact, they really were too small. Today, we tried Walmart (no luck) and finally Marshalls where they had lots of options for girls slippers, but only one option for boys. They were an adorable pair of Stride Right dinosaur slippers. I thought that they might be a little big, but decided to put them on Eliot's feet right there in the store to see. I put them on and then told him to go for a walk. I put him down and then walked away (a few aisles away). They didn't fall off! They seemed to fit just fine! Score!

Just then, a lady probably in her 60's saw Eliot walking in his new slippers and she said "OH, aren't you just the cutest thing I have ever seen?!" She then looked to Ted and I and continued "...and I have 7 grandkids and he is still the cutest I have ever seen!" So there you have it, Eliot actually IS the cutest ;)

Trying to Get out of My Editing Funk!

I took some photos of Eliot today while at my folk's house (and at the park down the street). I knew that I needed to get some decent ones to bring into photoshop (PS) and practice some of my editing. I've been feeling lately that a lot of my editing has become "stale." I constantly am comparing my photos and my edits to other photographers and sometimes feel a little disappointed. I have even posted some of my edited photos on photography message boards asking for constructive criticism (how else am I gonna learn?!) and the things on which these professionals pick up are amazing! I would never even think twice about some of the minor imperfections of a photo that just seem to scream out to the seasoned and trained eye. It's all part of the learning process. After this week, though, I do feel one step closer to "getting it!" I've tried a few new things with these edits today and am super excited to FINALLY be able to REALLY identify (and half of the time even remove) color casts!

I also want to say that these photos look way lighter on the web than they do in my PS. I am guessing that the way that they look in PS is in fact the way that they actually look, but will not know that for certain until I get some prints done.

In other news, my website has been purchased and I will be building it in the coming weeks!
Yay!