A whole new world

I'll let you in on a little secret. I don't really know what I'm doing. I know that I LOVE photography. I know that I LOVE people. Put them together and what have you got? bippity-bobbity-boo (ah, cinderella- I bet you thought with a post title like this one I was going to write about aladdin- fooled ya!). Anywho, as I was saying, I don't know all the technical aspects of photography or the fancy photoshop edits, but I really enjoy learning. Bluejay keeps teasing me for how much time I spend "google-ing" all things photography related. Without google, I don't think I would have a website/blog let alone a decently exposed photo straight out of camera. Well, that might be an overstatement (Is that a word? I'm looking for something that means the opposite of understatement... we'll pretend yes). But google certainly has helped. For instance, I've been really interested in HDR photography. The first time saw it, I wasn't even sure what I was looking at. I think I even typed "photo that looks like a drawing" in my search engine and SOMEHOW I discovered that it was called HDR. So today I requested google to teach me how to create an HDR edit in photoshop cs4. Like I said, I love learning new things and this was no exception. This was my first and only attempt at HDR so far and I must say, it's not perfect, but I'm pretty pleased. This is a whole new world to me. I'm still not sure what this means for me in regards to portrait photography, but it's still fun to play around. The photo is from our trip to Big Bear, Ca this summer when we visited my parents.

Autumn love

My husband, Bluejay, took me on a lovely autumn date last weekend. We've had an unusually cold fall here in the tundra and it's even snowed a few times! It was a lovely treat to go to the apple orchard. The fall colors were amazing... scarlet, burnt orange, goldenrod. The cold air nipped at my nose while I warmed my hands with the heat from my travel mug filled with french press coffee and honey. Absolute heaven. And what made it better was walking through the rows of apple trees hand in hand with my love. It was one of those dates where you forget the stress of the week and you float on a cloud.

Here are some photos from our autumn date:

Then Bluejay and I went to the town of Stillwater, Mn to walk around a bit. Bluejay must have got bitten my the photography bug because he took some photos of me. I guess it was pay back for all the times I've made him "pose" for me!