IHF Photo Challenge- Hearts

This week's theme for the weekly photo challenge over at IHF is "Hearts."  I almost didn't enter b/c I thought I didn't have any photos that matched this week's theme.  And I thought "How can I forget the heart on the belly from Tracy's Maternity shoot?"  I should really start keywording my photos as I upload them in Lightroom!

This is one of those "poses" that I saw that I just had to re-create.  The original photo that I saw was so different from this, and I must admit, I love mine more.  How perfect is Daddy's face?  How peaceful and content does Mom look?
What a fantastic couple and a fantastic family!

Fix It Friday (#84)

This week's fix it friday picture was a litle tricker to edit.  I guess many people requested this, so the founders over at IHF granted their wish and uploaded a picture with lighting problems.  I'm kind of short on time today so I didn't do much to fix the lighting except on baby's face.

I intend to do several edits every week.  A contemporary color edit, a vintage edit and a black and white edit. 
Without further ado.. the original, SOOC image:


My contemporary color edit:

I did a lot on this image, included several selective color layers, a popping action, and a high pass filter on baby's eyes.  I kind of lost track to all the things I did to tweak it.

The vintage edit:

Added some softened red and yellow layers, along with a very very tweaked vintage action.
(kinda wishing I had added a vignette here.)

Finally, the black and white edit:

This was simply a gradient fill, along with a slight yellow color layer set to soft light.

Go on over to IHF and check out the other entries.
And leave me some blog love, will you---.... what's YOUR favorite edit?

Fix It Friday (#81)

The I Heart Faces community is hands down one of the biggest influences in my Photography Life.  The BEST influence.  I have made cyber friends there that I know will be friends for a long long time.  With a passion like photography how could they not. Every week I look at the contests and Fix It Friday and think why aren't I doing this?  The only way I'm going to grow as a photographer is by practicing.  My photoshop skills, while considerably better than they used to be, are lacking.  One thing I plan on doing during my January Hiatus is to take lots of workshops and training sessions in Photoshop.  To me, 80% of what makes a photograph art is the post processing that is done to that picture.  Which means only 20% is taking a good picture.  That leaves me LOTS of room for growth. Anyway, when I saw that the subject for this weeks' fix it Friday was Arden Prucha of Arden Prucha Photography I knew I had to take the plunge and participate.  Her work is probably my biggest influence.  She is amazing at what she does and she's so modest about her amazing skills and talents.
Anyway, without further ado the image SOOC:

My Edit:

What I did:
I loved this shot!  I thought all it needed was some warmth and some pop.  I did just that in Photoshop CS5.
I added a few warming actions (warm up that baby and Yellow Jacket from Pure Photoshop Actions - Set 1)
Then I added a warming Hazy, called "Autumn."  It was a free Action called "Pretty Haze" but I don't recall where I got it.
I think it would be neat, around this time next year to pull the same photo and re-edit and see where my skills, taste, style have taken me.