Wednesday 7 October 2009

Holiday Photo Editing is Underway...


It sure has been a reality check coming home to a mountain of washing & ironing & a maid who is not 100% well. By the end of the day I am too exhausted to scrap so I sat here last night & attacked my next lot of holiday snaps. I made some of my favourites...Collages! And left the best photos full-size so that I can scrap the photo & collages together. Will probably have to be double pages but I see they are coming back into fashion you know!

I will print the collages 20 x 25cm so they will be bigger & clearer than you can see here. I will probably print the "main" photos 10 x 15 or perhaps 13 x 18 if I have the space.

I am trying not to crop my photos as much as I used to (taking a leaf out of Ali's book...) & I have to say I think they look better {more balanced} as a result. More natural & less contrived too...

These shots were taken in the evening. It wasn't this dark but I increased the shadows & the highlights to make the images "pop". Had it actually been this dark I could never have got such clear images. Even with my flash repaired the night shutter-speed on my Nikon DSLR is so slow the image almost always blurs as people don't hold still long enough.

I got this unposed shot of Jack {above} which I think is great - really shows off his sporty physique.

Nice teen pics above...by using 2 photos within a Picasa collage I can print them both on a jumbo print & save space & money (yes, I've been reading my Creating Keepsakes you can tell!)

For some strange reason these two {above} are actually getting along! You can see that one is naturally cool & one isn't, but I can't wait to scrap this as a "Brothers" layout to add to our family album!

This 9 year old is clearly spending too much time with Chelsea, aged 16!!! As the background here was a shop changing room {gotta grab any opportunity I can get ya know...} it was white & therefore the collage border was unclear so I changed it to black...pretty cool huh?! And I saturated the photos for funky effect ;-D

On our way out I took a few shots of the kids, so glad I did 'cos nothing beats good light!

Aaah, wish these two were as angelic as they look above & below! They are getting along well again after a bit of an indifferent patch so I am happy I could record this shift in relationship as you can see from these photos that they genuinely like each other ;-D I'm told Chelsea had a bit of a nostalgic moment on this trip & told her siblings they "really are her best friends!" Aaaaw...she has been a bit detached lately as she is very much "in love" so I am glad that she has seen that family will always be there for her.

She hates pictures of herself looking natural but this is the real Chelsea below...and just the way her mother likes her, ie: minimal make-up & no cleavage on display!

I know it's not Fall {Autumn as we call it} here, but I couldn't resist taking this impromptu shot as she was walking back from the river, as I have been looking at so many nyummy Fall layouts online.

I have deleted about 50% of the photos I took, so that I am left with a workable amount of decent quality shots to scrap. Hope you enjoyed the look!


12 comments:

Stefanie said...

I need to learn to save my edited pics, I edit and re-size for the blog and then have to re-do them before I print any out! Seriously doff?

Shayne said...

Great pics Helen. Love the way you've made them pop etc - i so need to learn how to do that!

Chelsea is gorgeous. no makeup necessary.

Bernadine said...

Lovely pic's and gorgeous children to Helen. I think I need to start editing my photos a bit more. :)

tania said...

They are a cute bunch Helen, Chelsea gorgeous and the little one takes the look of Nicole Richie with those sunglasses. Great shots!!

Vicki said...

Minimal makeup and no cleavage - we all wish for that for our teenage daughters! LOL. Your boys could almost pass for twins and I guess they would hate me to say that. LOL

Sandra said...

Some fabulous shots here, Helen.

Your daughter mightn't like me saying this - IMO she is even more attractive with natural hair and no makeup.

Something young girls never want to hear, but it is the truth, is that the majority of boys (& men) find the natural look the most appealing.

Michelle Ramsay said...

Stunning pictures Helen.

Carol B said...

great pics! Are the swimming shots recent? our pool still a bit too nippy.
I agree with your daughter looking beautiful natural!
I'm sitting with cat-pee-scent dilemma....can't find the actual spot, and its giving me a headache.
hope your maid better soon

Ella Swan said...

Thanks everyone! I am still using Picasa because Photoshop is not yet loaded on my pc. There is plenty on here that I am slowly removing - pc games etc, and transferring to the other pc (Shane's LOL!) so that I have space for it. What I do now is edit in Picasa then export back into My Pictures. That is working swell ;-D Stefanie - the whole editing process is fun but time-consuming so I certainly don't want to be doing it twice! I e mail my photos from Picasa to my blog so I always send them to myself aswell and save in an Outlook Express file called Photos. I know it's on the hard-drive but then at least I have my photos in a couple of places before I save to dvd. I can't not edit now that I have seen the difference, it really takes the photos up a notch. Shayne - if you download Picasa you will be able to work it all out if you just import one file into there & start playing. I always copy the file first so there are 2 in My Pictures - then if I stuff it up I have the originals LOL! As you get more & more experienced you try more of the advanced editing options. It's like anything really, practise makes perfect. LOL Tania - yup - definitely a Nicole Richie lookalike - and most of the time she is like that - messy hair 'n all! The boys have a similar look Vicki but Reilly is a dufus & Jack is pretty buff so it would b a compliment to Reilly but Jack would be most insulted LOL! Yes I agree about Chelsea girls - but try telling that to a 16 year old - I was just the same! My mother used to call me "Michael Jackson" because of the amount of slap I put on ;-D

brigitte said...

stunning photos

Lynette Jacobs said...

Gorgeous photos of gorgeous children:)

topkatnz said...

Great photos Helen - sounds like you have a great plan to get them all sorted - and then scrapped!