Once, my husband Josh, showed Emma the little Reese’s Pieces trick that Elliott did to E.T.  But, we’ve never shown it to Brooke.  However, as Brooke is always marching to the beat of her own drummer, she seemed to come up with the idea on her own.  Instead she was Elliott, dog food was the Reese’s, and Ruby was E.T.

Ruby is our 8-month old PomChi puppy (that means she’s Pomeranian + Chihuahua).  She gets ignored from time to time, but when the girls pay attention to her she usually eats it up!  Sometimes she gets a little over excited & causes them to run away.  It was the reverse today.  Brooke decided she needed to eat more (isn’t 4 pounds big enough?!?!?) and began placing her dog food in a little line all around the kitchen & dining room.  Emma soon joined in.  I made them contain their genius idea to the kitchen & was able to catch them all in the act.  It’s rare that I have a photo of Ruby, though, because she is always under my feet.  She literally follows me EVERYWHERE I go – no joke.  It gets annoying at times, especially when I trip on her, but it’s nice to have someone look up to you that much.  Ahhh, such responsibilities in raising my dog the right way!

Photos I’ve been looking at: The Pioneer Woman.  Besides being overwhelmingly hilarious, talented, a great mother, a super duper wife, Ree is an awesome self-taught photographer.  I love her work (she also lives in my home state of Oklahoma).  I love her stories.  I like to think we are best friends who’ve never met.  I live in her world when I read her blogs.  I laugh with her, I cry with her, I get frustrated with her.  She’s just so personable & transparent.  It’s no wonder she gets a gazillion comments ALL THE TIME on her blog.  She’s someone I look up to like my little doggie Ruby looks up to me.  *sigh*  Thanks for all you share, Ree.

This will be a more technical post, so please bear with me if I bore you.  I’ll try to be humorous to balance out the nerdiness.

The title is “faux sunflare” because the sunflare I was going for just didn’t happen like I envisioned.  It could have  been because I’m not technically skilled enough to do this yet, or because my child won’t stay still long enough for me to practice, or simply just because I can’t stare into the sun for that long.  However, there were a few things in Photoshop that helped me out.

When I shoot towards the sun like this my subject tends to be “soft” or not a crisp as normal.  So, I took this photo (on a gloriously wonderfully sunny warm day, BTW) & did the following (all in Photoshop CS4):

1.  Slice Like a Ninja (Sharpen) from Totally Rad Actions

2.  Warm from Pioneer Woman

3.  Boutwell Magic Glasses from TRA, again

4.  Sunshine from Pioneer Woman again.

Then, I had stumbled upon a filter in Photoshop under Filter > Render > Lensflare.  Ohhh…what’s this little gem?  It seems to add the sunny spot & the flare for you.  For this particular photo I positioned my “faux” sun in the upper left corner (where the real one was) and chose 100% brightness & a 35mm Prime lens.  I don’t really have any idea what all that means, but the above photo is what I came up with.

Now, for the story behind the photo:  Since it was so amazingly gorgeous out today, I made myself take the kiddos out & ride scooters.  They, on their own, decided to get their sand shovels out & shovel the remaining snow & fling it all around the ground.  I got hit a few times.  This photo is of Emma, my oldest, all decked out.  If you check out my scooter video on Facebook you can see the entirety of her ensemble – glasses, 2 bracelets, necklace, fur trimmed gloves, etc.  She loooooooves dressing up.  She once told me that the more jewelry you have on, the more beautiful you are!

Photos I’ve been looking at:  Joey L.  Apparently this talented dude is almost 10 years younger than me, shoots famous people & travels the world.  I really love looking at his photos of foreign lands that are virtually untouched by civilization.  In particular, his time in Ethiopia.  They are amazing.  (*there is some nudity, so viewer be ware)

The End.

I shot this one photo of Sam during her maternity session last weekend and really, really liked it!  I mean the lighting was off, the angle is waaaay past 11 & 1 (I’ll explain that later, if you like), and the cropping could be better.  But I just loved her expression.  So I decided to see what I could do to it in Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom 2.  Here are some of the results.  Let me know which one is your favorite!

The above photo is done in Photoshop with The Pioneer Woman’s “Seventies” action.

This photo was also done in Photoshop with The Pioneer Woman’s “Dim the Lights” and “Boutwell’s Magic Glasses” from the Totally Rad Actions group.

This is a Lightroom 2 creation called “Aged Photo.”

This is “Antique Grayscale” from Lightroom 2.

Here we have “Black & White Low Contrast” from Lightroom 2.

This one’s different for me.  It’s called “Cold Tone” from LR2.

And lastly from Lightroom 2 is “Sepia.”

So, take a look, think hard, and go with your gut.  Which is your favorite?

Okay, so if you know me, I have a morning ritual of looking a some favorite blogs:  Heather, Stacy, Bev, Pioneer Woman, Jasmine Star, Jessica Claire, How About Orange, Thimbly Things, & Want What You Have.  These are blogs that belong to friends, people I admire, or just strangers who I like to read about.  Well, as I was reading Jasmine Star’s blog, I noticed she was giving a FREE video chat on PhotographyMentor.com and basically having a Q&A with her readers.  I hoped on (after much time & difficulty) and sat there in awe!  Here she was, in person (sort of), Jasmine Star, photographer extrodinaire, on my home computer, kinda, sorta talking to ME (and the other 300+ people watching).  I got up the guts to ask a little question, and she answered it!  It’s not much, nothing to speak of, but I felt very special having someone so talented at what she does take the time out of her schedule to talk to us blog readers and answer our many questions.  So, thanks Jasmine.  I really enjoyed listening to you share.  Here’s my little clip, with my name, in case you wanted to see!  Hopefully I’m not breaking any copyright laws!  Ask forgiveness, not permission, right? [vimeo http://vimeo.com/3122528]

She said my name! from joshsroka on Vimeo.

And speaking of videos, I thought you might enjoy this one of my littlest girl trying to put her shoes on. Be sure and watch the whole thing because the expressions at the end are worth it!