Photo Challenge: Portraits

It's that time again.  Time to post our challenge pictures so we can all enjoy and learn from each other.  Don't forget to hop over to our Challenge Blog and click on the links below the post to view everyone's contributions.

Jilly Beans sticking her tongue out at the camera,,,,,well it better be the camera!

Our lovely Jordan who's 13.

Here's our Chick (aka Alexis)

Look at Jaylen's smile! SO sweet!

My handsome son.

Here are links to some other portraits that I've taken in the past and am quite proud of.

Pretty little redheaded girl who lived next door to my sister.

"Little Gardner"  Zach when he was 11.

"Lola"  the Chick playing dress up.

Now, gonna sip my coffee and visit all the other challengers.  Happy Saturday!

Photo Challenge: Portraits

Animal portraits are fun to do.

Time to post the new photo challenge so we can get our heads around some ideas of how we'll complete it. I can't remember if we've ever done a Portraits challenge, have we? Well, have or haven't, we're gonna, and I know everyone is going to put their own spin on it so that this challenge will be as surprising and pleasing as all the challenges in the past have been. So how about August 20th for a post date? That gives us almost 3 weeks to get our thinking caps on.

Or maybe you'll do a family portrait.

Babies, friends, strangers, kids, just have fun with it!  Don't forget to always carry your camera everywhere you go cause you never know what you'll come across that needs shooting!

Photo Challenge: ABC's

Ok Photo Challenge Buds, it's time to start work on a new challenge so what do you think about an ABC challenge?  We'll be looking for letters of the alphabet,,,accidental or on purpose, planned or unintentional, searched for or stumbled upon, Shoot em!  Our main objectives are to have fun and USE our cameras so let's get cracking.

Click the blue button below to add the link to your photos (1,2,3 or more) so that all our visitors and participates can visit and enjoy your views of this challenge. Challenge photos are due to be posted by the morning of Saturday, July 30th.

Have fun!!

Photo Challenge: God Bless America

It's near 'bout that time for flashy fireworks and flag waving so that we can wish our great country another Happy Birthday so I thought "God Bless America" would be an honorable topic for our next challenge.

Just do whatever it takes to feel good about honoring the good ol, U.S. of A.  Doctor up your photo with frames or filters, add graphics to your shot to enhance or make it flashy.  Photos are due to be  posted on your blogs (or other site) on Saturday, July 2, 2011.

Click on the blue button (or whatever shows up down below) and type in your photo site location cause that's where we'll be clicking on July 2nd to see all of the great entries.

New Place for Challenges

Just an extra click or two and we're right back into the business of challenging ourselves to use our cameras and learn new things about taking pictures.  Miz Donna has done the most fantastic job at keeping us in the challenge business for such a long time now.  I sure hope I can do this even half as well as she did.  Thank you Miz Donna for the excellent adventures you've led us on with our cameras.

Now, if I could just get this darned Blogger to cooperate so I could finish tidying up my site here.,,,,anybody know what happened to the place where one could change the colors on the blog?

I think for the first challenge at our new site we're going to go with a PLAYING topic.  What do you think?  Let your imaginations run wild and don't forget to take your camera everywhere you go!  How does Saturday, June 18, 2011 sound for a post time?  Get your name in the links and let's see how much PLAYING there is going on around us. Please feel free to post several photos if you'd like cause we love to look.

SO, IF YOU THINK YOU WANT TO ENTER THIS CHALLENGE, GO AHEAD AND CLICK ON THE LINK BUTTON BELOW AND LEAVE YOUR INFORMATION! THEN....Just make SURE that you have your Blog Post up by the DUE DATE!

Photo Editing Links 2

Miz Cindra and

Miz Donna, allowed me to add their links here to their nifty tutorials for photo editing tricks.

If you click on each photo above, it will take you to their sites where you can learn a couple of fun things to do with your photos.


Click this photo of Paco and it will take you to an online photo editing program that's free called FotoFlexer that has loads of fun things to do.

Miz Cindra led us to gimp (click the name or the photo above to go there), a photo editing program that's free to download.

Paint.net is another editing program that I often use and have fun with.

I've also found some interesting tutorials at Cyperigor, and CNET Reviews that may be useful to other beginners like me.

Tripods

There are times when you’ll want to use a tripod to compensate for blurriness caused by camera shake: when taking pictures in low light, where the shutter speed will slow down enough to potentially make drag lines, and when using a long zoom, where distant objects are susceptible to blur. In each case, the tripod will settle the image and let you forget about shaking the image and focus on capturing what’s in your mind’s eye.



Photography of some weather subjects requires a tripod-mounted camera: lightning, aurora, noctilucent clouds, mesospheric clouds, sunsets and twilight colors, the sun and moon, green flash, zodiacal light, star trails, macro photography and all nighttime photography can only be done well with some sort of tripod. After the camera and lenses, the tripod is I think the most important piece of equipment to have if you want to photograph the weather (or nature in general).

Happy Shooting!