SnapArt2

I have been having a blast playing around with the SnapArt2 plug-in for photoshop! Too bad my free trial runs out in 14 days... Guess I will have to break down and buy it! The top image 'Reflections' is from NYC (yes, another NY photo! What can I say? I love that city!) First I ran it through Camera Raw to adjust the exposure and then I used the Oil Paint filter for the painting effect. The second image is one I took outside my front door one night while it was snowing.. I used the Color Pencil filter on that one. The last image is from my trip to Punta Cana a couple years ago. I love the palm tree and the effect the Impasto filter adds to it.

This weekend is shaping up to be a big one! I have a lot to do around the house, gotta start getting ready for our cruise to Bermuda! Saturday we are going to the Caps game in DC and I am trying to talk my wonderful Hubby into going down early so we can see the Cherry Blossoms. Hope everyone has a good rest of the week and weekend!!

Annapolis Workshop

This past weekend was BUSY! Friday we had my cousins John and Jillian stay with us for the night, then Saturday, we went to dinner with some friends and then got together for a Rock Band Night.. so much fun! Then bright and early Sunday morning, I got up to go to Annapolis for a photo workshop with Karen Messick. I had a great time and learned a lot! Here are a couple photos from the workshop.

All the images were processed in Photoshop. I downloaded the free trial of SnapArt2 and played around with that for the bottom two images. I love the plug-in!

New York City

This past weekend I took a trip to NYC with my Mom. We had a great time! Saturday we saw a show and went to dinner at this fabulous Italian restaurant complete with a singing waiter! After that we went to Eataly and did a little shopping and got some gelato.. yum!! Sunday we took a walk through Central Park and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That place was HUGE!! I don't even think we saw a quarter of the place! Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted by the time we had to catch the bus home.

The tryptic above is made up of 3 photos I think represent the city well.. the first image is from a previous NYC trip that I took using the lensbaby, the second photo is from a band we saw playing in central park and the third image is of a taxi in times square. I created the tryptic in photoshop and converted all the images to B&W. The image below is one I took with my regular camera, processed in Aperture 3 and then added a border on my iPhone using the Photoshop Express app.

New Beginnings

I have been wanting to make a blog for a while.. but had no idea what the subject should be and I am not exactly the greatest writer. What I really want though is to take people with me on my journey to become something I always wanted to be... a nature photographer. When I was little my plan was always to be a photographer for National Geographic.. but life kinda got in the way.. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life, I have a wonderful husband, Jason, we own our home and share it with two cats and a rabbit. We have an amazing extended family, and I have a good career as a Cardiac Ultrasound Tech. I am very happy. Now Jason is in school getting his Masters and he is really going after his dream and I couldn’t be more proud of him, he has really made me want to go for my own as well. Realistically, I probably won’t be published in Nat Geo, but this is something I want to do for me, something I really enjoy and I would like to see how far I can go with it. I am really just getting started.. I don’t have all the fancy equipment or computer programs (yet). I just have my Nikon D3100, a couple basic lenses, the little knowledge I have from a couple classes I took in high school and college.. and Me.

This photograph is from a trip to NYC last year. It was taken with my Lensbaby Muse and then processed in Photoshop CS5.