Fair Night

I had an amazing time at the fair! I was able to get the shots I wanted and more! Now that is awesome to try something for the first time and it just work out!

I was even asked by a worker if I worked for the newspaper, and he said it looked like I had expensive equipment. ;) --why, thank you, it does happen to be expensive. :D

I'm just so happy and so excited, that I have to share a few pictures. :)

-MarLeahJoy

Photo Booth

We had a lot of fun with the photo booth at Marty's going away party!

I was able to get everyone but three people to participate. ;) Which means that there are way too many to post on the blog, so I just have a few on here. 

Okay, so I said a few... but it was really hard to weed out the funny ones :P

(And trust me, this is a few compared to how many we took!)

So I hope you had a good laugh!

-MarLeahJoy

P.s. I realize it is kind of unfair to post of all these people and not include a goofy one of me... so here you go. ;)

Lensbaby Love

I'm super excited about my 50mm lens -- that I should be getting shortly :D -- but I still love my Lensbaby.

Here are some of this week's pictures with the Composer Pro + Edge 80.

Major sun flare... but I kind of like it because it doesn't distract from the main subject, but almost show cases her.

I think she was in need of a nap ;)

Those pictures of her seem to have quite the style change from one to another. I almost think my favorite style is the first one of my Uncle next to Lacey because it seems to have the perfect blend of the soft look that super sunny pictures give, but still preserving the right color.

These are cabins that are on our national campmeeting grounds located in Monark Springs, but we just call it Monark. We had a workday there Saturday to clean everything up, and I had to pull out my camera to finally capture these cabins that I have always loved. Monark has always been so special to me. I cannot wait for it to start!

This week, me and my camera should have a little fun together... ;)

Tuesday -

• The Canon 7D will meet the 50mm f/1.8 
• Possible photo booth (at Marty's going-away party) It should be fun as long as everybody participates in the goofiness :P

Someday this week -

• I'm supposed to take some more pictures of Marty and Alyssa before Marty leaves for WV. (I know my sister will miss him like crazy, but I think I might miss him just a little bit, too ;))

Wednesday thru Saturday -

• It's the Newton County Fair... I have some big plans for pictures and video clips, so basically I'm just going to stalk the booths, rides, and random people. Haha ;) I can only hope it turns out as I envision, though. Oh well, I should at least come away from it with a few pictures to share.

Everybody have a fabulous week!

-MarLeahJoy

New Lens :D

Well. I ordered a new lens. I'm pretty excited to get it!

I've have a family session coming up with some young children, and I was getting pretty nervous at the thought of trying to manual focus with little children. And I've heard it's good to keep the pace of a session as fast a possible. 

I also watched a video that really recommends shooting in aperture priority (Av) so that you don't have to spend time worrying about manual settings. The aperture is all manual on a my lensbaby so I can't use Av with it. 

So, the big question arose: 50mm or 85mm?

Okay, so I chose the 50mm because my Lensbaby Edge 80 is already 80mm and I feel a little handicapped when I have to back so far away in a confined space.

(I honestly like the more professional look of an 85mm than a 50mm, and it may or may not have caused me to consider the 85mm for a few more seconds :P)

Then, to get the f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens? (1.2 is way out of my price range)

Obviously the 1.8 lens is cheaper than the 1.4 so you would expect the quality of the 1.8 to be considerably less, but after a little research I found that the 1.8 lens might even have fewer quality faults than the 1.4. Which doesn't mean that the 1.4 still won't look better to the artistic eye...

Anyway, I was happy to see that the less expensive lens really wasn't all that bad in comparison. 

So, yes. I have a 50mm f/1.8 on it's way. 

-MarLeahJoy

Testing New Actions

I love Pure Actions for Photographers. They always have an offer on their Facebook page for free downloads and so I tested out their "Ice Cream Sundae" collection.

I've always wanted a good black and white method that had a lot of pop, and these actions certainly have that contrast I like. So, I'm already in love with the "Hot Fudge" and "Cookies and Cream" actions. :)

This was a little boy who was up in West Virginia when we went... he's such a cutie!

Edited with Cookies and Cream

Edited with Hot Fudge



-MarLeahJoy

Asbury Knob, West Virginia

Sunday the 16th, we took a hike up to a "knob?". I really don't know what to call it, but basically it overlooks Greenbank - a little unincorporated town.

My sister and her boyfriend, who was raised in Greenbank.

 Part of the view from the top of the "knob".

 The view of Greenbank and their observation satellite.

The whole crew :)

-MarLeahJoy

Gahhhh!!!

I'm so frustrated and I don't know what to do!

It's about facebook quality for images.


I look at other photographers' images and the quality looks great!
But, mine stink! And it really shows up with my watermark for some reason.

I've tried everything: No resizing, some resizing, resizing and saving process recommended here, and tons of private test posts to see if the quality will be good enough before I actually post it.


If anybody has some recommendations/advice... please let me know.

-MarLeahJoy

Blueberry Picking

It's just another thing we do in the summer... pick blueberries. :)

I knew I had to bring my camera along since we were going to be out there

during the perfect morning light.  

Half-way through I found this spider and his perfect little web, so I deserted my bucket of blueberries and spent quite a bit of time right up in his personal bubble to get some pictures.

Here's a little closer shot - as close as I dared to get. I'm really not a fan of spiders too much. I am just mostly fascinated by their intricate webs.

Eh... the spider apparently found his lunch.

And my sad bucket of blueberries. I was the slowest picker, but then again... I think I always have been. :P

-MarLeahJoy

Editing Then and Now

Abbey recently asked me to put her Senior pictures on Facebook... that is all fine and good until I go back to get the files and I didn't save my edits in photoshop files only JPEG. I like to post to fb with PNG so I have to refer back to the photoshop file and then save again in the right format.

Anyway, so I'm not overly impressed with the pictures I took from that session anyway, but after I started to completely re-edit a few pictures, I realized how "yuck!" some of my previous edits to the coloring were compared to what I would do now.  Yeah, wow, I didn't realize I would change so much in a few short months... 

The left picture is SOOC (Straight out of the Camera) and the right is today's edit...

Below is my edit from a few months ago.

Yeah... the coloring looks just as bad as it did SOOC :P
It looks like it came from a different era or something.


I can only hope that I keep improving faster and faster
because this stage is kind of embarrassing :/

And, I'm even being vulnerable by posting this because
someone out there might actually think that the image
SOOC looks better than my edit.

-MarLeahJoy