Beautiful Eyes

Participating today in the photography challenge at iheartfaces. The prompt is "Beautiful Eyes." Everywhere I go with my children, people comment on their eyes. They are beautiful -- blue, clear, vibrant. I can be a little bias, however.

I, also, have blue eyes. Growing up this was a singular and unusual trait . . . both of my parents and my sibling had brown eyes. It felt special to be unique in this way. It created some amusement; however, when I began to repeat as a toddler the facetious story that I "got my blue eyes form the mail man." :)

Yellow

All we've had for a week is rain, rain, rain. So happens we have a yellow rain coat and a very willing subject when it comes to mud, rain boots and flopping about in the clover field! As we walked hand in hand through the field, getting ready to take some pictures, he said, "I like being alone with you, mama." Oh, me too. Me too. . . 

Faces and Flowers

This week's challenge at I Heart Faces is Faces and Flowers. This a photo of my daughter celebrating her 4th Birthday. Everything was pink and fluffy and very fancy!

I can't stop!!!

Apparently my inspiration comes in bursts, unevenly scattered throughout the day. I think this, finally, is my favorite!! Added some interest around the edges -- not exactly burning the edges. Used a neutral gray fill layer on overlay mode than painted with black with a really big brush around the edges.

Fix it Friday #52

The day is nearly over but I'm still going to play! This picture was full of possibilities -- as you can tell looking through all the wonderful submissions so far. So here's what I did -- started with curves, cropped, removed distractions, burned the yellow/black sign and the edges of the road and finally, use the Bubba Wildcat texture from Totally Rad. That's it. Oh, no. One more step. Added Gaussian blur to a duplicate layer and put it in Overlay mode. 

Fix it Friday #50

I'm playing along with iheartfaces today and this is their Fix Friday challenge. The photo was submitted by Debbie and what a beautiful girl she has!

So here's how I played today:
1. Levels adjustment to lighten things up
2. Selected and then sharpened the eyes
3. Painted the skin area after selecting the tone from her face, adjusted opacity
4. Smoothed out the skin by using the surface blur filter (Not sure that's what's it for but I like it)
5. Clone stamp for a few little blemishes and to smooth out under eye lines
6. Flattened the layers and then added an overlay layer (to make colors pop a bit more), adjusted opacity
7. Finally, added an omni lighting effect and again adjusted for opacity. I centered the light on her left cheek. I kinda like the the way it creates a lovely glow on her face and highlights her eyes.

So much fun!!