I Heart Faces - Silly, Crazy Faces

I really enjoy boys. But, we don't have any. We have all girls. We do, however, have friends that have boys. It's great fun to watch them play. Here is one playing Eagle. I am submitting it for I Heart Faces.

Me

We were invited by "I Should Be Folding Laundry" to capture pictures of ourselves this week. Here is my collage of me. A few of these were taken by my children actually, but most by me of me. I love the opportunity to add a little creativity to my picture taking, and the inspiration that others give is always helpful. Checkout this photography blog for more inspiration.

Long Beach Sandcastle Contest

I cannot believe how many great pictures I got from the sandcastle contest at Long Beach this last weekend. My husband and I just happened to be at Long Beach for the weekend. We had no idea about the Sand Castle contest. It was also a lovely weekend. Here is a selection of pictures from the contest. I really didn't have time to process any more pictures. These were from my three favorite sculptures:

The first set of pictures here is Some Maintenance Required. These guys were fantastic to watch.

This was my favorite of all pictures. This guy was a maniac. That is sand flying as he is stomping down the sand.

This second set of pictures is Two Scoops. This sculpture was originally supposed to have a vertical ice cream cone, but after it collapsed they made due and changed it to a two horizontal cones.

This third set is from a sculpture called Parrots Of The Carribean.

Here is the original mold. Fascinating how these teams made these sculptures.

Above you see the ship and parrot emerge out of the mold.

This was a fun thing to spend the day watching. I have a lot more pictures. The Long Beach Sand Sculpture contest had a lot of different categories, including Novice, Intermediate, and Family. Even beginning sculpters had some terrific results. More to come later.

Dogs At Sand Castle Contest

My dear husband and I went had a lovely, romantic little weekend at the beach. Surpise to us, there was a Sand Castle Building contest that weekend. I have some neat pictures to show you from that. But they will have to wait. I have never seen so many different dogs at one place, with the exception of a dog show. I really should have taken more pictures. But, I wanted to share the pictures I did take. It is amazing to me the variety of dogs that exist. Enjoy.

An Australian Shepherd. We own an Australian Shepherd. Unfortunately, I am never able to take her to a public event like this. She would bark like crazy. I saw several Aussies at the beach, however. They come in a wide varieties of looks. I saw one that looked just like ours, but didn't get a picture of him. This one happened to have three legs. An amazingly sweet dog.

I'm not sure on the breed of this dog. I'm thinking some kind of terrier. Really cute though.

This is a very sweet Rat Terrier. She was a little nervous to be among so many people and dogs. She was about twice as big as the dog in the previous picture.

Is this some sort of Pomeranian? She belonged to one of the sand castle builders and just hung out all afternoon.

I loved this little bull dog. She's about five months, her owner told me. Isn't she just adorable? She seemed pretty calm too.

3/4 Pyranese. I love the mellowness of these dogs. When I was looking for a dog several years ago, I shyed away from this breed because the literature said they could be defensive of their family (aggressive). They seem so mellow though.

Weimeraners are such a beautiful color. They remind me of my parent's dogs, which are Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but just a little calmer. I think this breed tends to be quite energetic like the Ridgebacks, however. But, seemingly, a little more easily trainable.

I Heart Faces - Sports Action & Pet

Here is my Iheartfaces photo for the Sports Actions theme this week. This shot was taken a couple of years ago at my daughter's soccer practice. The girl in front is my daughter's teammate. My daughter is behind her moving much less enthusiastically.

This week's pet photo competition mentioned the "pet" didn't have to be a pet per say. Well, here is one of my favorite animals. I think she is just beautiful. And, although, she won't let me pet her, she makes a great Momma and is a friendly, calm animal. Her name is Ruby.

I Heart Faces Sepia Toned

Here is my I Heart Faces entry for kids this week. This week's theme is Sepia Toned.

This is my little toddler. She is a joy to take pictures of - always bright and cheery and as cute as can be. This photo was taken during her bath and I had fun tinting it and applying some Vignette in Photoshop. I hope you enjoyed my picture as much as I enjoyed taking it.

And this week, I actually have an entry for the adults category as well. A special mommy and baby moment in the rain at soccer. My five year old actualy took that picture. She told me to make a silly face.

Flash Photography At Dusk

Here is my favorite picture from today. I was experimenting with my flash some more. Specifically, I was experimenting with High Speed Sync (H Flash on my Canon Speedlite). To my understanding, what High Speed Sync does is allows you to use a higher shutter speed than you otherwise would be able to and the Speedlite automatically adjust the strength and speed of the flash to match your setting. That's the best explanation I can offer for High Speed Sync right now. You can use this with night photography. Of course, your flash won't illuminate or freeze objects that are far away - they have to be in flash range. The downside to flash, especially when it's the only source of light, is that it's very one dimensional unless you are using multiple multi-directional off-camera flashes. I'd love to do that one day. Here is a neat blog dedicated to the purpose of educating photographers about off-camera flashes - Strobist. I think it's fun just to read about - even if I don't have the ability to delve into this area yet.

Here is my picture, taken at dusk.

30D, ISO 640, f14, 1/80th of a second, 70mm of 70-200L, at dusk with high-speed sync setting on 430EX Speedlite

Night Photography - Roses

My favorite picture from today is a picture of a rose taken at night.

To tell the truth, the reason this is my favorite picture is that I neglected to use my camera until dusk fell and wasn't happy with my pictures. So, I went outside and played with my camera and my flash in the dark.

Night photography is such a challenge. For one, the flash has to be pointing straight at the subject and since I'm not using a flash diffuser or bouncing a flash off the ceiling like I would during the day, my straight on flash produces flat light. Secondly, it's hard to see if your subject is in focus.

Use a good lens, give your eyes time to adjust, check your images, and take lots of shots - that's my advice (not that I am an expert on this subject). Also, when taking a picture at night make sure there isn't anything in flash range behind your subject and you'll be doing good. Anyhow...this is a subject I want to learn more about, but tonight I gave it a shot.

30D, ISO 1250, f4.0, 1/60th of a second, 70mm of 70-200L, 430EX Speedlight set to H (high-speed sync), some editing in Photoshop

My Girls And I

I made a polka dot collage of my girls and I. How much fun is that? Here is the tutorial on how to do it:

Special Dots Tutorial

I Heart Faces - Birthdays

Here is my pic for I Heart Faces. This week's theme is birthdays. I decided to have a little fun with my pictures. I just discovered a website where you can get free brushes for Photoshop and I thought I would play around with them.

This is the website I got the brush from:

Graphic-Illustrations.com

Here is my kid's entry: