Scared?...not yet, but a little uncertain. Reliant on God? 100%!

Lately our 6 year old daughter, 'Jewel', has been awaking during the night and also complaining randomly throughout the last few weeks about leg pain, especially in her right foot.  It's been a very unusual thing as she has been saying her foot is very cold and hurts to walk on.  Obviously my first thoughts were of poor circulation and that she is sleeping on it in a wrong fashion, but after about two weeks of this going on I've begun to grow a bit concerned.  Sometimes she acts perfectly normal and walks, hops, and runs on it as if it's totally fine only for 2 hours later her to mention again that she has some reoccuring pain.When my husband and I have asked her about describing the pain; Is it tingling? Can she 'feel' her foot/leg and is it numb?  How badly is the pain?, Jewel's only answer is always the same 'It just hurts and feels cold.  Can you please put some blankets on it?' 

To me this is rather unusual for a 6 year old but for the past two weeks I've tossed it off to the side refusing to think negatively that it could be something overly concerning.  I mean she did have quite a bit of activities going on recently that could have caused her to slightly twist her ankle causing her some discomfort or whatnot.  She's in cheerleading, she had her birthday party at an indoor bounce house, and she has a ton of cousins, not to mention daddy (my husband) who loves to 'rough play' with both our kids so any number of these things could have jolted her leg in the wrong manner.  The only problem with this theory is that myself nor my husband  recall her ever approaching either one of us on any specific time frame about her hurting her foot, ankle, or leg EVER.  Her onset of sudden complaints came out of nowhere so we are a bit perplexed.  At her age she should not be complaining of cold feet or consistant, yet random leg pain so I've decided to call our family doctor.  The nurse put me on hold to speak with our doctor who told me to schedule an appointment to bring her in for some testing.  The appointment is for tomorrow at 2PM so I'll have to get her out of school an hour early, which she is looking forward too.  What she won't be looking forward to is the blood work that the nurse already warned me that they would be 'drawing' from 'Jewel' to run some tests.  I haven't shared this part with Jewel as I know how she'll get; more scared than the average 6 year old, and so full of anxiety that she'll more than likely 'wet' herself.  I'm waiting to tell her tomorrow before the appointment, probably on the drive there or in the waiting room but definitely not before school starts or who knows what will happen.  I can only imagine if I did tell her in the morning that she would more than likely focus on this throughout her entire Kindergarten day, preventing her from concentrating on learning, eating lunch, or even playing at recess.  Yes, this truly is how 'worked up' she gets over some things.  So I'm waiting and I'll be praying about the right time to tell her but I'll also bring her favorite 'blankie' that she's had since she turned 1 years old and still sleeps with to this day. (I'd better slyly get this from her grip right now in her sleep before I forget it tomorrow.)

Please would you keep Jewel in your prayers?  Not only for the needle injection she'll get for having her blood 'drawn' but also for some safe answers as to reasons her foot/leg is suddenly and unexpectantly giving her some problems.  I'm simply clueless and don't know what to think....

Thank you kindly,

Precious Baby

I ♥ Faces - Kids Category

This weeks #38  I ♥ Faces Photo Challenge theme is 'Blue', which means any photo's entered into the contest must have the color blue in it.  'Fair enough.' I thought since I just took some photo's of an adorable little baby boy and just happened to use an awesome blue ribbon in parts of my photo taking.  I had tons of fun working on this photo and this precious little one was a perfect little angel to work with!  The hardest part I have when entering any I ♥ Faces photo challenges is that there are so many photo's I want to pick and choosing the best one is SUPER difficult for me.  There was one I took of a gorgeous little girl and her bright blue eyes were just popping right off of the screen, and then another one that I had taken of a little boy who was playing to himself with such imagination using awesome blue colors in the home made tent/fort he had perched up around his living room furniture.  But in the end I went with this photo; partially because my husband likes it over the others, and partially because I just adore newborns.  So there you have it; a precious and most peaceful baby!

If you haven't visiting I ♥ Faces give it a try.  It's load of fun and make sure to check out all the awesome other photo entries that you'll find there.  Best of luck to you!

Image Converter and Watermark Software Give-Away hosted by BatchPhoto

First of all let me begin this post by sharing with you that I am not queen of blog 'Give Aways'; in fact I get easily tire of visiting other blogs that constantly and forever use Give Aways to promote their own site, that is unless it is a blog or website that is solely geared towards product reviews or they are a site that is there to benefit others such as Toddler Craft.  All other family or personal style blogs just bug me when all I do is visit their site to read about yet another 'Give Away', which to me only seems to be used to promote their site and nothing other than that.  Some may beg to differ, but this is my post so I can say as I please.  There are, on occassion personal family blogs, such as myself will host a blog 'Give Away' and to me I find this perfectly fine; again if on occasion, but when you go to the same family blog and all they seem to do is sucker you into playing along to win a free gift every other week or two, than to me it just feels overkill, like all they really want is your attention as if they are 'buying you' to visit their site.  Well let me reassure you I am not in the habit of doing such Give Aways and my blog speaks for itself as I have only done 3 TOTAL in the over 3 solid years I have been blogging!  With this being said, I simply could not pass up on this rare and awesome opportunity to offer this Photography Watermark (and so much more) Program as a free Give-Away to one very special blogger.  Please read onward if you are interested...

For all  fellow photography lovers.  I have been blessed and honored by a special person,  the creator of BatchPhoto,  to offer a special blogger friend of mine the opportunity to have a free Pro License Code Key so that you may have full reign and access of this very unique, super user friendly program that I have also been blessed with through BatchPhoto.  In case you are not familiar with BatchPhoto please read my posting that I did below this one after you finish reading this here. 

As many of my friends and family know I am very attached to my Nikon and love to carry it practically anywhere that I go to.  This being said I have been wanting to discover a simple way to begin placing watermarks on all of the photo's I take and post online, whether it be my personal blog or emails I send to others, but especially for my photography website which should be opening fairly shortly.  None of us want theives to come in and steal the images that we snapped away at only to see them used by strangers.  As many of you recall this happened in real life to a young family who had their family portrait on their blog only to discover that someone had copied it without permission and used it for advertising purposes in CZECH REPUBLIC on a full size bulletine board.  I fully recall learning about this story on the news awhile back.  Just imagine their surprise when this was brought to their attention!!  Well I don't know about you but I never want to be left in the dark about this possibly happening with any of my family photo's, especially when it comes to my kids.   If you have never heard of the story you can read about this on her blog by clicking here.

The point is we all want to protect the photo's and images we take and what easier and better way to do this than to use a super friendly program like BatchPhoto Picture Watermark.  BatchPhoto is revolutionary and powerful photo manipulation program that makes it SUPER easy to convert, resize, watermark, annotate, touch-up, apply effects, and rename hundreds of photos in a single operation.  What I was initially searching for was a simple way to watermark all of my photo's by asking other photographers ways to do this and most of the replies I received were to use Photoshop.  Well from the get go with my experience with Photoshop I have been constantly overwhelmed, frustrated and mentally drained trying to figure out the ropes with their high profile software program.  So I decided to attempt viewing the Photoshop tutorial just one last time for a simple watermark application and when I went to this tutorial site I noticed off to the side there was an advertisement by BatchPhoto for their product on creating watermarks on photographs in less than 5 minutes time.  Naturally this grabbed my attention so I clicked on the link which had a free 30 day trial without supplying any phone number, credit card or personal information whatsoever...extra bonus. 

After downloading the 30 day trial I began to follow the simple instructions for watermarking my photo's and in no time at all....I couldn't believe it....I had a clear and visible watermark on my photo!! I was in complete shock that the whole process was super simple, easy, and for the first time in a long  I completed a program task such as this without ever getting the slightest headache!! 

Now I, along with the creator of BatchPhoto am offering this Pro license Image Converter and Watermark Software hosted by BatchPhoto Watermark Software as a 'give away' to you, my wonderful blogger family and friends.  All I ask is that you follow my blog, add a blog posting on your site linking it back to mine regarding this Give Away and leave a comment here about why you would love to have full access free of charge to Batchphoto for your own use. When you leave your comment also let me know that you've done all of the above that I've mentioned.

If you would like to read more about this Image Converter & Watermarker Software and what it offers please click on their link here:  Image Converter and Watermark Software.  And remember there is SOOO much more this program can do besides adding a watermark to protect your photo's that I have't even touched on.  I'm very excited and anxious to check out all of their amazing features which I'll probably spend all day playing with tomorrow sometime!!

Here are just a few of BatchPhoto's main features which I copied off of the website:

BatchPhoto's main features:


Graphic Filters (see the complete list by clicking their site above)

Annotate: Add Date/Time, Comments, and Watermarks

Touch-Up: Adjust Brightness, Sharpness, Contrast, Colors, Reduce Noise, and more

Transform: Resize Pictures, Rotate, Crop, and more
Add Effects: Apply Sepia, Black & White, Frames, Charcoal Sketch, Oil Paint, Shade, Swirl, and more

Functionality

New: RAW Development. Batch Convert RAW Photos from Digital Camera Makers like: Canon, Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, Kodak, Pentax and more!

Take Advantage of Multi-Core Processors for Editing Batches of Photos!

Convert Pictures from one Image Format to Another (More Than 100 Image Formats Supported)

Rename Photos with Meaningful Names

Apply Profiles on Multiple Pictures with the Right Mouse Click Directly from Windows® Explorer

Use Projects and Profiles to Improve Your Productivity

Take advantage of accurate previews for both the original and the enhanced photos.

And it goes without saying, a  HUGE SHOUT OUT TO  BatchPhoto, for hosting and sponsoring this 'Give Away'.  I am most certainly positive that this product will not let you down.  You simply can't go wrong with something this simple and easy to use.  Period!  Now who wouldn't want a free version of this program after hearing all of these awesome features???? I too was blessed by the creator of Batch Photo to give me a free key code for the Studio 9 Version at no cost to me simply for sharing this information.  Again, thank you BatchPhoto.  If your interested and would like to get this free version for yourself than just do what I mentioned above and let me know that you did this so I can check it out. 

My first photo watermark, the super easy way! I'll reveal my easy secret soon.

Well as many of my wonderful family and friends know, I'm a fanatic when it comes to photography with snapping away like a fool behind the camera lens.  Well soon I hope to be going Pro with my photography, which means a lot; having a photo editing program that is user friendly as well as having all of my work protected.  Most of you awesome friends know that I own the full version of Photoshop but have had the most difficult time utilizing all the many features it has.  For a mom like myself who loves to click away behind the camera lens but also has responsibilities of taking care of the kids, keeping the house in order, paying bills online, running errands upon errands, making sure the kids are at cheerleading practice and Tee-Ball practice and games as well as now trying to work at building my own photography business it goes without saying that the more convenient something is for me (as long as quality isn't compromised) the more apt I'm going to use that item. 

Such is the case with the recent Product Review I did with Portrait Professional Studio 9, which you can read and view here and here.   I absolutely loved their program and have used it many times over.  Some of my friends have also told me that they purchased this program after reading what I wrote and giving the link for them to visit and download a trial version for themselves.  So far I haven't heard any complaints about the product yet; they all seem very satisfied and happy to have discovered something so easy to apply.  Yay!! 

So now onto this photo below.  I will tell you that I did play around with two different photo watermark programs but I'm not going to tell you which program I used just yet.  I want you to tell me what you think first before I do.   The before and after of each of the photo's I took of my son are pretty obvious but I still titled them 'Before', 'After'.  LOL.  I'll tell you more about the features of this product once I read up on it some more.

BEFORE

AFTER

Below is another watermark I added to a photo I took of my young little cheerleader as she was sitting on the sidelines waiting to cheer the footballers on.  She's the one in the hair ribbon screaming with her viens about to pop out!

So what'd ya think?  You like?  But wait, there's so much more you can do with this program like instead of adding a text watermark you can upload a photo of any logo or image trademark you use for your business and it will transfer easily to a watermark just the same and you can position it anywhere on the photo that you wish to.  I'll use my business card for example but I'll enlarge it (yup it allows you to enlarge watermarks too so that you can cover the major parts of the image preventing someone to use it and simply crop out your marking. Allow me....)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

            

Now that makes it rather difficult for a theif to try to steal my photo, unless of course they wanted to just use the lips or nose, which would be rather odd I would think.  I know, I know...I should have made my business card watermark a lot more transparent, but you get the idea. 

So there you have it.  There's also an option to delete your watermark should you decide to allow someone the privelge (upon them paying for your photography services and photo's) to own all copyrights of that image, which is just as simple of a process to remove the watermark as it was to place it.  Now we all remember what happened to Daniele with her stolen picture; it was all over the news.  You can check out her blog where she discusses that by clicking here.  (Pretty freaky and amazing story huh?) I don't know about you but I certainly don't want any of the photo's I put up on my blog to be stolen the way her family portrait was without permission.  I plan on adding this watermark to all of the photo's I add on my blog ASAP.   And just to note, that even if an individual should decide to print the image without your permission, rest assured the watermarking would come out in the print just as you see it here. But there's so much more you can do with this program like adding shadows and glows.  You can even apply a set of watermarks, resize, rename and convert hundreds of pictures all at the same time!  Let me know what you think, would ya?  How much would you pay for a simple, easy to use program such as this?  Share this with me as well if you would.

God is leading me to the Passion He placed inside of me...

Well I already received my DBA (Doing Business As 'Christian Creations Photography' down at the County Clerks Office and recently just received my business cards, return address labels, car magnets (to promote my photography) and little extra's like pens and whatnot to use and give away. I also typed up my full contract for clients to sign stating that I have their full permission to take their photographs.   I'm still working on my website which will take awhile to get organized, which will not be open until it is completed....God has been truly good to me.  And as we all know in order to begin a small business it's good practice to give some freebies away.  So with this being said I am offering to take photo's of families or inidividuals (kids and babies included) for free in exhange that you allow me to use these images to my discrection; meaning on display on my webiste for all the world to see.   This means I will more than likely use the best photo's that I take on my website gallery to show other clients my work.  And the photo's I take will be my property, however I will give print out the images for you for free or if I have it available, I will give you the CD of the photographs I take without my watermark (which I'm still trying to perfect through Photoshop), along with a signed consent from myself which would give you permission to copy and print as many of the photo's as you wish. 

By all means, my photography passion is a work in progress but practice makes perfect so I shoot away at most everything I can and then 'edit' and play with it from there.  If you reside near the Houston (preferrably the subards of Houson like Clear Lake, Pasadena, La Porte, or surrounding locations) I will gladly travel to your place during day light hours and use some of my practice skills to take some great photo's of your family, together or even separately.  If I am busy and can not meet with you at a specific time than we can work something out.  If it is during the evening hours that you would be available I would ask that you please wait until my husband can accompany me so that I am not traveling alone to an unknown location. 

I already have approximately 5 families who are gracious enough to allow me to take photo's of their family and children, which will be a huge blessing to me.  These dates have not been set up yet but I am very excited to get them going here shortly.  I will only have two more spots to take freebie photo's of your family in exchange for you signing a release form to allow me to use as I wish.  Please note that when I say 'As I wish' that I do not mean in any distasteful manner, corrupt, or falsified ways.  I would simply use the photo's as is the way I snapped them and if you would prefer to help me pick the images to display than I also be more than happy to allow you to help me pick those images out as well.  But you will have to email me in advance so I can know this.  You can email me at my Photography email which is:  Christiancreationsphotography@yahoo.com.  Remember the photography business website is still under construction and still not available right now, but as soon as it is I will email everyone. *

Business Card Front Side

Business Card Back Side

Business Car magnet

* Please note that website is still currently under construction and is not available to view at this time.

'The Snake Man'

"Contemplative" Photo Theme Contest at  

I ♥ Faces.com.

Mesmerize Me.....

Well here it is; the look I was longing for all week and just happened to capture last night during an event my 4 year old son was very much looking forward to attending; a visit with the 'Snake Man'.  As soon as our church shared with us that they'd be having 'Snake Man' as a visitor for whomever would love to attend we knew that once we shared this with our little boy he would be enamored to partake in this exciting event.  And sure enough; we couldn't have been more right!   Once we shared this with our kids they both, even our daughter was anxious and eager to go,  looking forward to church all throughout the entire day yesterday.  "Okay, I'm ready Mom and Dad; let's GO!",  we'd hear from our son about every 10 minutes starting at least 6 hours before Snake Man would even be present at our church.  

Snake Man was quite interesting and though I truly didn't know what I could possibly 'get out of it', I actually learned some extremely valuable educational tools to look for if ever in the company of any snakes.  So for this I was quite glad that I decided to go.  Though my true reasons for going were hidden beneath my camera lens to capture either my son or daughter in a 'stand still' look in totally love and aweness at the snakes that they had never seen, and craved so deeply to touch, pet, and possibly hold, and this was the look I finally captured as I looked down (at first without my camera up to my face) and noticed the look my 4 year old son held on his face.  When I realized he was in this trance locked look for what seemed to be well over a full minute (which is quite a long time for a just turned 4 year old), I knew I'd better grab the shot!  And I did. 

I don't know about you but I can totally tell and see in his look how dazed and mesmerized  he was by being so close to this snake and then being told he could actually hold it if he wanted to.  He just stood there without moving for quite the timeframe.  It was the perfect shot; the look on his face with the slight smile of aweness, and his eyes glued to the subject at hand was all there.  I wondered if he felt as if he were in dreamland.  I think he did, especially later when a snake was actually placed around his neck for him to hold.  I'll post the rest of these photo's taken from last nights event later today.  But for now I wanted to get our name entered into this Photo Contest held with I ♥ Faces.  If you have never checked out their site before and have a love for photography the way that I do than I would urge you to check out their blog.  They give tons and tons of  Photography tips and lessons, and loads of links for you to click on to read even more awesome Photography sites.  So go check out  I ♥ Faces for yourself; today!  Either click on the link in red that I just gave or click on their blog button below to take you to their site.   I'm actually heading that way myself right now so if you'd like I'd love to escort you over to introduce you to their team! 

Product Review

Portrait Professional Studio 9
Product Review

I heard about Portrait Professional from a great blogger friend, Leanne, who first shared her experience of this awesome product after she was first introduced to it.   After she trialed it I also decided to test out the product myself especially since I love taking photo's for a living.  Not to mention I currently own several different photo editing software programs including the most famous Photoshop, so I was very curious in testing Portrait Professional Studio 9 with my full version of Photoshop to see how they compared 'face to face'.  


Well I was soooo  blessed to obtain the Studio 9 Version for free which has different options to test on the people you take portraits of and was instantly captivated with the results.  My overall reaction to Portrait Professional Studio 9 was that I was impressed with the user friendly ease of this program and how quickly I was able to restore and enhance photos within just minutes compared to how long it's taken me to figure out Photoshop. I still love Photoshop and will never 'ditch' this full software program that costs quite a pretty penny, but will simply use Portrait Professional Studio 9 as a 'plug in' to supplement images that I can't seem to quite figure out with Photoshop.  

There are a few things with Portrait Professional Studio 9 that my husband said he felt made the enhancement to my own image appear too 'fake' looking, but after applying some of his input we both settled on 'sliders' that still looked like 'me', just a 'better' me.  Here is the one photo (below) that  I used as a 'tester' for Portrait Professional Studio 9.  The first image is without any touch ups made and the second image is only applying Portrait Professional Studio 9's program.  It's still not quite 'perfect' but you can see how the second image my skin is clearer, my hair is smoother and the overall look of myself is more pleasing, at least to me anyhow.  Now let me know what you have to think if you will.  You can download a free trial version of Portrait Professional Studio 9 by clicking here  or by clicking on the Portrait Studio 9 link listed below in red and use one of your own images to test the results out for yourself if you'd like.  It's definitely fun to play with and if you don't like something you did too much of or not enough of it's also an easy fix, the tools are right there guiding you the whole way through. 


So a big SHOUT OUT to Portrait Professional who gave me this opportunity to test their product (and keep) and compare it to my full version of Photoshop that I own.  I am still working on figuring out all the ins and outs with Photoshop otherwise I would add this same photo of myself to show you the comparison between the two, but for now all I can do is reveal the before and after of my 'untouched' photo of myself shown side by side after applying the tools using Portrait Professional.   This ought to say something in itself as, like I stated earlier, it only took me minutes to take this photo of myself and make it look 'cleaner', 'sharper', 'smoother', 'clearer', using Portrait Professional Studio 9.   Go ahead and give it a whirl and see how you like it as well and comment back to me about what your impression/thoughts were.  I'd love to know.  Also please share your do's and dont's likes about my image here, but go easy on me as this is only the second image I've played with using this program so even though it's still very user friendly I still have to work on 'tweaking' some things.  And now for my before and after of my own photo:

                  BEFORE                                                 AFTER

                          

Now before some of you critics begin with the negative remarks on my 'AFTER' enhancements I want you to focus in on the betterment of my picture, the hair being smoother and more tidy (not so scraggly looking), as well as my eyes showing more opened and bright, I removed some of the fine wrinkles that were above my forehead and  my skin texture appears smoother also, but just maybe a little too much, which I'll have to play with some more.   I must admit I did have a difficult time with my mouth area as I couldn't seem to get it set at a 'slider number' I felt didn't look too fake but yet not lose any of the color I had, but in fact I made the color too red so I already know this, so no need to mention it.  My mouth area was my hardest area to work with probably because my upper lip is so small.  Overall though as a plug in with my other software programs like Photoshop I believe Portrait Professional Studio 9 will greatly do wonders for all my photo subjects.  I'm very excited to work with this program some more and see what else this bad boy can do. 

To see my other post and photo I used Portrait Professional with click here.  So that's why I say 'go easy on me' as I'm still getting myself acquainted with this program, but so far I do enjoy it so. 

"I hate/love my cell phone!"

This is what the title was to an article I read in a magazine the other day, but I don't remember which magazine it was in, wish I did though so I can re-read it again.   Basically this is how I feel about my laptop.  I hate/love my laptop!  I hate it because I love to type down all my thoughts on my blog and my two kids blog/diary of their lives so I don't miss a thing.  I enjoy writing, though I'm no expert, but like to record the things that happen during the day with either myself, my husband, my kids, extended family, ect.   Another reason I love my laptop is that it's the outside to my world of being a stay at home mom.  I can connect with friends on Facebook, Twitter, email anyone I'd like to and stay in complete (well almost complete) touch with those that I'm not in close contact with.  I feel connected which is important to me.

I hate my laptop because when I check my email there are a ton of messages and I feel obligated to reply out of being polite, which ties up a lot of my time pulling me away from the household duties that I should be doing and more importantly limits my time with my two young kids which should be my priority above all, with the exception of my husband.  I love to read the replies that I get on my blog and get a little 'tickle' out of them (unless of course their bad or sad).  I love my laptop/computer because it gives me something to do that I want to do, something I enjoy; self teaching myself many Internet things like creating blog buttons, working on my photography editing programs, and doing favors for friends. 

So, even though I've said this before, after reading this magazine article I plan to once again, try to discipline myself and prioritize the things that need to be done and downsize the others. 

The same goes for my Nikon.  I love/hate my Nikon.  I am a photoholic and snap away at everything which I love because it captures memories I long to keep, yet I hate my addiction to my camera because I miss out on the beauty from my actual eyes, not to mention all the fun.  For instance my kids birthday party this past Saturday; I had my Nikon in fast mode to take pictures super fast to never miss a 'shot', but behind the lens I missed out on playing with my kids because I was too worried about getting 'the moment'. 

Please pray for me so that I can conquer these addictions, because addictions are so very hard to break.  I don't mind being on my laptop or using my Nikon at all but I just need to limit the use of both of these. 

I'm going to be praying that God helps me in these two areas and that through that He will provide the right time frames for me to accomplish the things I need to as a wife and mother.  Will you please pray for me too?  Thanks if you do! 

"Before and After" - My first portrait photo editing....go easy on me!

Well here it is; my first successful semi-successful (trial and error) edited photo. I'm hoping that I can use this entry into Mr. Linky's iHeartFaces.com (on their Before and After challenge) since it's not a contest but just for fun. Hopefully I can.  I had to ask because I'm using an old photo that I just edited, instead of the instructions stating to take one older picture and a new one from August.  But as all my friends know our A/C has been a nightmare and then the whole bathtub overflow thing....I'm just thankful we are now entering a new month! Maybe it'll be a new beginning for brighter things to come. Well even if I can't enter their challenge you should still check out their site if you have any hint of passion with photography as it's an awesome place to get tips, tricks, tutorials, meet friends, and ask question with getting great answers too. 


When I first heard about I ♥ Faces it was through visiting my blogger friend Mimi at her blog  He & Me + 3 and I am so glad that I did because in doing so I ♥ Faces has taught me so darn much and has kicked my photography love level up about 10 notches on my belt buckle....I don't even wear belts!!! But reading through their blog, being a member of some of the photo groups, and going through old archives has gained me a world of knowledge in the photography world.  Yeah, and I you thought I knew it all....PUH!!

Okay so here goes: I'll tell you the things I do and don't like in this paragraph. But first the story behind the photo; the top image is of when Jewel had recently awoke a nap after a lovely time at Libby Lu (a place for little girls to get all 'dolled' up) and she had a big red line/dent across her left cheek from a book she fell asleep on which I edited out but not completely because I couldn't figure it out all the way. And as you can see in the top image from just waking up she also had a lot of 'fly away' hairs. Oh and by the way, the make-up she's wearing isn't anything I added with editing, this was from the Libby Lu Boutique she was at for a few hours during the day (by the way this photo is approx. 2-3 years old). I tried my best (wanting to cry though) by smoothing out her skin so it brought back her natural complexion and color but now it just looks like she's wearing  foundation! (Which I don't like) I also widened her eyes a bit and whitened the whites in them (I like). I also whitened her teeth just a tad (very little), nothing major because her teeth already are a good shade of white for still being young. I smoothed and tidied up her hair (which I liked a LOT and removed a lot of the bangy hair  fly aways) which is probably one of the most obvious features from the top and bottom photo. LOL. I did mess up on her nose (right side) because I tried to hard to erase her boogars but erased to much so it looks odd.  I used Portrait Professional but not the Studio newer one like I did here.  Anywho, so here it is anyway.....I can only get better from practice I suppose. So tell me....can you tell? Oh, and I also did a subtle reshaping of her eyebrows, which could have gone either way with just leaving it as it was, but I'm okay that I did this anyhow.


Constructive criticism is very important and wanted/needed so I can work on things more; it's the only way I'll learn.... What I probably should have done as well and will work on some more is lightening up the background; it's too dark.  Although I did lighten it a tad, I probably should have done so more.  I'll work on that on my own at home during some extra free time.

I haven't entered into the 'Before and After' Challenge yet but I'm hoping Amy and Angie might make an exception. If not that's okay, because I would love your opinion just the same!!! And as always constructive critism is great and very desired so I can only make myself a better photo taker and editor.  Lotsaluv ya'll!


**Just read my email from Angie saying that it'd be fine to enter in Mr. Linky's "Before and After" challenge.  Thank you Angie and Amy!

BEFORE

AAAANND....TA DA......

AFTER

Hey, it's no Pablo Picasso or Ansel Adams,  but it's not that bad and  even they had to learn a few things 'eh?