I can’t believe I didn’t post the entire month of November. So sorry! It was a very busy month, filled with…

Starting my own photography business. Yeah, I decided to go for it. Well, just wading my toes in slowly. I would hate to get burnt out on something I love so much. But, most of my photography posts are now over at the new photography blog. You can also become a fan of me on Facebook (that sounds so narcissistic) or follow my photography Twitter account.

Celebrating my birthday. A bunch of us Scorpios got together and threw a big party. Then I went to Orlando to spend my birthday week at Universal and Disney. And I know I just linked to the photography blog twice more. I promise I’m not abandoning this one.

Being busy at work. Although, that’s pretty much been non-stop all year.

Starting Christmas shopping. I’m already halfway done!

And, um, NOT finishing the things I’m supposed to do before I’m 28. Yeah. Uh. We’ll just move that to the Before 29 list. (But to be fair, there was only one thing I didn’t do!)

This week’s Fix-It Friday.

The original:

The edit:

This week’s Fix-It Friday..

The original:

My edit:

The iPhone 3G has a basic built-in 2.0 MP camera. If you upgrade to the 3GS, you get a 3.2 MP camera, with autofocus, auto white balance, and auto macro. I would love to upgrade, but it’s not all that feasible at the moment. (Hey, AT&T, why don’t you offer some incentives for current iPhone users to upgrade to the 3GS??)

As you can see, the camera has limitations. Over the past few months, I’ve acquired a nice collection of photography apps to enhance my photos to make them look somewhat better. The main problem is most of the photos come out looking rather flat. Sure, I could move them to the computer and edit in Photoshop, but that’s a pain when I want to take a shot and immediately stick it on Facebook or Twitter. So here are some things I use:

Camera Genius
This is a photo-taking app. It allows you to zoom, set a timer, put guides on your screen, and more. It’s handy. I mostly use it when I want to take photos of myself.

Pano
Another photo-taking app. It allows you to take multiple shots and stitches them together in a panorama for you.

TiltShift Generator
This app applies a tilt-shift effect to your photos. I love it because it allows you to super fine-tune all the details. And not only can you add blur, but you can also play with saturation, contrast, and vignetting.

Best Camera
This app provides many different filters to apply to your photos. There are your basic warm, contrast, lighten, darken, vignette, desaturate filters, as well as some more custom ones, such as Jewel and Paris B&W. Kind of like actions for your phone photos. The downside? There’s no way to adjust anything. You just apply it and go. So, for example, if the Jewel filter saturates your photo a little too much, there’s no way to fine-tune it. Unless, you combine it with other apps.

Photoshop.com Mobile
The newcomer on the block. Adobe’s app allows you to crop and play with exposure, saturation, and tint. There are also filters here too. You can make your photo look like a sketch, add soft focus, borders, and a few different color options. I eventually hope they add more features, as most of this stuff I could accomplish in other apps.

Crop for Free
I used this before I downloaded the Photoshop app. I’ll probably delete it soon. It’s very simple. You can crop your photos. The downside? There’s no way to maintain aspect ratio that I could figure out (same goes for the cropping feature in Adobe’s app).

Flickr
A must-have for any Flickr user. Allows you to upload photos to Flickr (surprise!) and you can even choose to geotag with your current location. Neato.

And now, the photos!

Here is a photo of Vera that I snapped one day (using the timer, since she was sitting next to me).

I cropped myself out slightly (using Crop for Free).

Then I warmed it in Best Camera.

Then with TiltShift Generator, I added some blur, upped the saturation and contrast, and added a vignette.

Another example: A photo I took of my soda-can-castle-in-progress at work.

Added blur with TiltShift.

Then used the Jewel and Vignette filters in Best Camera.

Here’s a couple panoramas I made using Pano:

This photo wasn’t taken on my phone (it was taken with my SLR), but I used TiltShift Generator on it:

Here’s one of Photoshop Mobile’s filters:

Canon also has put out a dSLR Camera Remote app that I desperately want. It’s $20 and I just haven’t decided if I’d have much use for it right now. But it sounds neat!

And now for this week’s Fix-It Friday!

The original:

My edit:

This week’s Fix-It Friday was a really underexposed photo. This just shows how much you really can fix a photo.

The original:

The edit:

What I did:
Obviously rotated and cropped.
Levels correction.
Pro-retouch under his eyes slightly.
Lights On (Totally Rad Actions): once at 100% and again at 30%.
Pool Party (TRA2) at 100%.
Then a slight texture over the whole image at 50%.

I couldn’t decide what to do to this picture. Her hands seemed distracting to me. I tried cropping it, but didn’t like it. I tried blurring them a little, but didn’t like it. I went back and forth, back and forth. Here’s what I finally came up with. I’m not as happy with it as I’ve been with some of my previous fixes.

The original:

The edit:

What I did:
Liquify on her left eye ever so slightly.
Claire-ify at 100% (TRA2: The Revenge).
Slight Pro-Retouch (100%) and Eye Bump (100%) (Totally Rad Actions).
Pross Crossessed #2 at 20% (TRA).
Troy at 50% (TRA2).
Select-O-Pop on her face at 50% (TRA2).
Green With Envy on the greenery in the background at 50% (TRA).
Boutwell Magic Glasses at 50% (TRA).

See more fixes at I ♥ Faces.

I haven’t been in town on a Friday in a while! But here is this week’s Fix-It Friday, courtesy of I ♥ Faces.

The original:

My edit:

What I did:
Some slight cropping and rotating.
Pro-Retouch at 100% to smooth out face and Eye Bump at 100% (Totally Rad Actions).
Claire-ify at 40% (TRA2: The Revenge).
Warm 70’s Love (Jesh de Rox’s Colorshift Actions).
Select-o-Pop at 60% on the eyes (TRA2: The Revenge).

The original:

My edit:

What I did (using Totally Rad Actions):
Lights On at 100%
Lights On (again) at 40%
Pro Retouch under his eyes
Eye Bump at 75% to brighten his eyes
Oh Snap! at 50%
Pross Crossessed #1 at 40%
Boring Selenium
Then added a vignette.

I did a shoot with my nephew Alex and my niece Carly last week. Alex turned two in June, and Carly is now over three months old!

Sorry for picture-overload, but they are sooo cute!

Here is this week’s Fix-It Friday.

Original:

My Edit:

What I did:
I did a bit of Liquify on his left eye to open it up a bit.
Then Pro-Retouch to even out his skin, and Eye Bump (100%) to brighten his eyes.
Then Troy at 50%.

And that’s it!

“using a cellphone display light for a product shoot” from Jann Lipka on Vimeo.

I was inspired by this video, so I grabbed my tripod and set up my camera in my garage. There are no windows in my garage, so it’s completely black when the lights are out. Then I snapped these photos of my stuffed pig Gary (named in honor of Gary Larson), using only my iPhone (the Flashlight app) as a lightsource.

Exposure: 20 seconds
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 35mm

In this first shot, I moved the phone all around his face, on all sides, to get a nice, even light.

In this one, I kept it all to one side, although I did “paint” it a bit instead of just keeping the light still. But you can probably tell it was mainly focused in one area.

I think it’s a pretty neat trick! I’ll have to think of some things I can use it on.

Here is this week’s Fix-It Friday photo from I ♥ Faces.

The original:

My edit:

What I did:
I didn’t want to mess with the crop this week.
I used Pro Retouch very slightly on the light shadows under his eyes.
Eye Bump on his eyes at 70%.
Warm It Up Kris at 50%.
Oh Snap! at 75%.
Yin (lighten) on some of the shadows on his shirt.
Yang (darken) on the trees in the background.
Pross Crossessed #1 at 20%.

I discovered this on Ruby Slippers’ blog. It’s a feature from I ♥ Faces that occurs every Friday. Basically, they post a photo, then invite readers to post their own edits of the photo. Since I’m trying to practice my Photoshop skills, I thought this would be a neat place to do so. So, without further adieu, here is my edit of this Friday’s photo!

Here’s the original:

My edit:

First, I cropped the photo. I was going for a vintage look, so I made good use of my Totally Rad Action set. Here are the actions I used:
Old Skool at 50%
Boring Sepia at 100%
Antique Tone at 100%
Vignette & Blur at 90%
Lights On at 70%
Boutwell Magic Glasses at 100%

It’s been such a crazy week that I can’t believe I haven’t written a post about this! My niece was born on Monday, April 27, at 5:42 pm. This makes me an aunt x 3! I went and took some photos of her tonight, but I hope to do a good photoshoot with her and her almost-2-year-old brother Alex after she comes home.

A tie!

Aidan

and

Faithe blowing bubbles

**Note: If you don’t see the poll, click the link at the bottom of this post that says “Read the rest of this entry.”

Continuing in the tradition that I started last year, it’s time to vote for the 2007 picture of the year. Remember, you can vote for it because it’s pretty, it’s funny, it’s cute, it brings back memories, whatever you want. Then the picture with the most votes by February 1 will be the Picture of the Year.

The nominees are:

Aidan Photo by Ben.	The rings Photo by Jessica.
Talcum Photo by Jessica.	Detail Shot Photo by Jessica.
Bamboo Photo by Jessica.	Union Station from behind the Frist Center Photo by Jessica.
Faithe blowing bubbles Photo by Jessica.	Aww… Photo by Jessica.
Musica statue and skyline Photo by Jessica.	Cookie Monster and Ben Photo by Jessica.
The kiss Photo by Jessica.

(more…)

My goal is, over the course of the summer, to take pictures of many of Nashville’s landmarks and cool architecture. I started today by taking a trip out to Centennial Park. I realized that, although I’ve been living in Nashville for almost a year and I lived 45 miles away for over 18 years, I had never been to Centennial Park. So I grabbed my camera and drove down West End to the park.

I walked around the one-mile loop twice while I was there and snapped a bunch of pictures of the Parthenon. I also took some pictures of a few of the cool trees that are in the park. These are all in the gallery. Hopefully, over the course of the summer, I will be adding to this gallery.

Ben and I are going to the Ren Fest tomorrow, and then (hopefully) going out to the Frist Center on Monday. So I plan to take some pics of the outside of the Frist Center and of Union Station while we are there.

It was my anniversary present from Ben. I did some research and finally decided on a Canon Powershot A550, which is a 7.1MP budget camera (though my bank account laughs at the word “budget”). So, I would love to do a Day 5 update on my Faerie costume, but I haven’t got the stockings in yet to do the wings. Therefore, I have nothing really to take pictures of, so I thought I would treat you to this lovely picture of my TV.

And you can tell I need to dust.

So our anniversary was on Tuesday. We went to the Melting Pot downtown. Neither of us had ever been there before, so it was quite the experience. And very, very yummy.

For our first course, we got the swiss cheese fondue. They gave us three or four kinds of bread to dip in it, as well as apple slices, cauliflower, carrots, and celery. It was really yummy. I was full just after this. I got a glass of this really awesome Riesling and Ben got a glass of scotch.

Then Ben had a salad for the second course, which I of course skipped. He said that was really good.

For the main course, we ordered the Surf & Turf, which came with two lobster tails, 2 cuts of filet mignon, and Portobello mushrooms. They also brought squash, potatoes, and some other kind of mushrooms, and some different sauces. For the broth, I can’t remember what all was in it, but it was citrus-y, which the waitress recommended would go well with the lobster. They bring everything out raw and you cook it in the broth in the pot on the table, which takes about 1-2 minutes for each piece (they are fairly small pieces). I just ate the filet mignon, which was so good and even better after I dipped it in some teriyaki sauce. Ben looked like he was in heaven with the lobster. We had a bottle of Malbec to go with this, which was meh, but I don’t really like red wine. The manager came over to complement us on our choice in wine though.

Then for dessert, we got the Yin and Yang fondue, which is half dark chocolate and half white chocolate in a yin yang shape. They gave us strawberries, pineapple, banana, pound cake, cheesecake, brownies, and marshmallows (regular and some coated in Oreo) to dip. Best. Thing. Ever. Words cannot describe the wonderful things that happened in my mouth. Bananas in white chocolate, good. Cheesecake in anything, awesome. Brownies in dark chocolate, *cue angel’s chorus from above*.

Yes, I highly recommend it.

Chewie and Ben!

I’ve currently enabled comments in the photos section again, but if I start getting spammed again (I was getting a spam comment about every 2 minutes, I had over 500 spam messages I had to delete), then I’m going to turn it off again until I can figure out some way to stop it. This may mean a login script. We’ll see.

It was supposed to snow last night (one to two inches, run to the store and stock up, we’re going to die!!!!) but it didn’t. It seemed to go just south of here. Blah. The only thing winter is good for is snow days.

I finished my Misa costume. I’ve got some pictures up in the cosplay section. There will be more after MTAC.