212/365: She's Back--The Girl in the Golden Light

211/365: One Cool Watch

My hubby always gets compliments on his watch, which makes me happy since I gave it to him!

210/365: Princess Tiana Dress and a Little Nook

I told myself the other day that I would give my daughter a little break from the camera. After all, we have a family session scheduled for next week, and I want to make sure she's extra cooperative. Well, yesterday, she begged for a Princess Tiana dress, and we gave in! Today, she strutted all over the house in her new dress--and I couldn't resist. She was happy to pose for me in a little nook in the neighbor's yard!

209/365: Water Beads

It rained very early this morning--the first time in a while. We really needed it.

208/365: Neighbor's Flower

This flower reminds me of one that we see in Puerto Rico a lot. 

207/365: Zipper

There are days that I take a variety of photos and later as I view them on my screen there will be one that I keep coming back to for no other reason that it just plain appeals to me. That's the case here. I like the depth of field in this zipper detail.

206/365: Cucumbers

Do you think my neighbors will miss these when they come back from vacation?! Just kidding!

205/365: Pastime

One of my favorite pastimes is playing Scrabble. So when I got my iPhone, I was thrilled to be able to play Words with Friends all.the.time. So here's my homage to the original game!

I'm throwing this photo in, too. It's actually someone's driveway! Can you imagine driving up this stretch every day? I couldn't really make out the house but it didn't seem all that big, if you can believe it! But I have to say, give me this driveway somewhere in the south because up here it just reminds me that it requires a snow plow in the winter!

204/365: Black and Whites

I'm still playing with my B&Ws. The first one was shot in color; the second one was shot in Monochrome.

203/365: Ice Cream & Summer Glow

She's gotten an enviable summer tan already! I was hoping to get her to show it off.  She's been refusing to look at the camera lately. This is the the pose I get after the promise of chocolate ice cream. She drives a hard bargain!

202/365: Playing with Composition and Color

201/365: Little Vacuum Cleaners

Don't you just love doggies who help out around the house?!!

Shot in monochrome at ISO 3200. Left the noise intact.

200/365: Running Around with Just the iPhone

I should know by now that when I have a day full of errands, I should take my photo of the day first thing in the morning! Alas, while I was out and about running between an eye doctor appointment and shopping, I managed to pull out the iPhone for a Home Depot garden shot! I'm feeling deflated on this 200th post! I gotta get my mojo back soon!

199/365: Watering the Lawn

Our lawn has been one pain after the next! We're trying to get rid of these pesky weeds. But the heat has set in, and we had issues with the outdoor water spigot.  So the lawn is now brown. We bought some replacement parts and were able to get the oscillating sprinkler to do its thing! Hoping the lawn comes back nice and green!

198/365: Just Because

Hubby brought me these flowers for no particular reason. Yes, he's a keeper!

197/365: Searching for Light, We Found...

A very friendly bunny, lovely flowers and some yummy light!

196/365: Oh, snap!

It was late in the day, and I decided to snap this photo of my daughter. I know wearing white helps with avoiding color casts and becoming a human reflector, but I kept my salmon-colored shirt on since I was just going to take a quick shot. Well, when I went to up-load this photo, my daughter looked like she had the dreaded red-eyes! It was my shirt reflecting in her eyes! Lesson learned!

195/365: Just Dessert

With my hubby's encouragement, I snuck off today for a little time by myself (with the camera, of course)! Not pictured: the iced mocha coffee. What can I say--a girl needs her chocolate!

What I Learned:  

Thanks to Click it Up a Notch for inspiring me to put this together. I'm always learning to improve on black and white conversions in Lightroom. I got a tip about making the skin a little creamier so I'm passing it on here. Here's my photo with the steps I followed below.

There are quite a few ways to achieve a B&W in LR; and you can follow the steps in almost any order you want. These are just my usual steps. I recommend starting off with a well exposed photo. First, I correct the WB. Second, I go to the Basic panel and select Black & White in "Treatment" (above the dropper). Then I raise the contrast just a bit, and if needed I up the Blacks up to 12. Then I go to the Tone Curve and pull the curve up on the right side, bring down the middle just a tad--I'm making an ever so slight S curve here. If the face needs a little more brightening, I may go back up and up the standard LR RAW preset from 50 to 60 (I didn't need to do this to today's photo).

Now, here's the tip I learned and where the magic AHA moment occurred for me: Go to the HSL / Color / B&W color sliders. If your subject's skin needs to be lighter/creamier and less muddy, then go to the Orange slider and move it to the right (it's probably a negative number; you're going to slide it to the positives). This is to taste! If your subject needs a little deeper tone in the lips (or in the case of my daughter's dress, the hot pink bows, too), I took the Magenta slider to the left just a tad!

The following is also a matter of taste: I go down to the Split Toning section, move the Highlights Saturation to somewhere between 5 and 8; then I take the Highlights Hue and move it to around 52 (sometimes a little higher). This makes the B&W even creamier--but less of a true B&W.

And, if the photo calls for it I add a very subtle vignette by using the LR preset that came with the program called "Edge Effects - PC Vignette 1."

Hope this is helpful to my fellow photogs. Please feel free to leave me any comments or questions!

(Photo settings: 50mm lens, 1/500, f/2, ISO 400)

194/365: Boy at the Door

I went outside briefly to meddle with the sprinkler and to find a quick photo of the day. My son was none too happy about this. Something did catch his eye briefly, so I snapped away. For some strange reason, I had bumped up the ISO to 5000.  So this post is very similar to the last post--a happy coincidence.

193/365: Girl at the Window

192/365: Let's Hear it for the Boy

I'm dating myself--but that was the name of a popular song back in my day! It's a catchy tune that is ringing in my ears as I put this post together. He was hamming it up for the camera!

191/365: Sibling Love

Big sister has been loving on little brother despite the occasional toy-related dispute!

190/365: Sunset at Port Dalhousie

On our way back from doing some shopping, we took a quick detour to this waterfront community that has a beach on the shore of Lake Ontario. We were there in time for the sunset and left within 15 minutes because the bugs were getting to us and the signs said the water "may be harmful" (it was a little hard explaining it to the kids!).

189/365: The Blue Princess

Daddy helped in making sure she was a willing participant--that and the offer of some ice cream!

This first one is edited in PSE using two actions, tweaked.

This second one is edited in LR using One Willow's Secret Garden preset with additional tweaking. It's also my entry for  Favorite Photo of the Week!


I also got around to editing several photos of horses that I took while visiting Kristin. If you're a member of Clickin Moms, please look for my post under Picture Share section ("Horses and the 70-200mm Lens").

188/365: The Secret Life of Toys

While searching for picture ideas for my 365 project, I came across a group on Flickr by the same name as my post title. There are some funny and wacko photos in that group! While my post today is not as clever, it does make me wonder about errant dinosaurs in the backyard! LOL

187/365: Golden Path

This is just a glimpse of the path behind our house. Once again, I'm trying to capture things we may overlook every day. I'm also testing out setting the white balance on Kelvin 5800 as one photog suggested on CM.

186/365: Pookie

Our Pookie seemed a bit under the weather today. So I took him out for a little fresh air this afternoon. He's still wearing the bandana they gave him at the groomer's for Canada Day.

185/365: My Buggy Eyes

First, I need to confess that I took this photo at 12:14 a.m. If we were to be sticklers, then you could say I missed my picture of the day by at least 14 minutes. If we were to say that it's a picture before we got to bed every day--then I took it right before I went to bed! If we were to say that I was still on Texas time, well, there you go! My streak is unbroken! Sigh. I've decided not to lose any sleep over it.

This photo represents my buggy eyes. They've been giving me problems--my eyes and the contact lenses that I am supposed to wear. I really want to whine about them. But I'm going to leave it at this for now.

(I will add, for those who are not familiar with my situation and as a PSA, that I have an eye condition called Keratoconus.
I believe the condition does need more public awareness.)

184/365: Christmas in July

That's what this photo reminds me of--and I liked the color effect. It's from a tree in our backyard.

183/365: Grumpy Bird

I think there was some mating going on with other birds! This bird made me feel like a Peeping Tom!

182/365: Vino at Home

We had a very long journey home. We should've been home by Thursday night but arrived Friday afternoon instead. Thanks Delta. We were exhausted. After settling in for the evening, hubby broke out the port wine. We shared this glass (we're not much for drinking!). I love the color of this sweet wine!

I was reminded that with this post, we are officially half-way through our project 365! That feels pretty good! I'm also caught up with my posts--yay! Now I can start visiting my fellow bloggers more frequently again, too! Thank you all for sticking around!

181/365: These Boots are Made for Walking

I went to Texas with a city boy and returned with a cowboy (well, not quite, but he's on his way!). He loves his roper-style cowboy boots!

180/365: Polka Dots

We did a lot of driving around in the northern Houston area, but somehow I never got around to taking any photos! Until we drove back to the hotel, and I asked Natalie to pose for me (she was wearing the other pillowcase dress after all!). She agreed to pose as long as we could go to the pool again. I felt really bad later when we found out the hotel pool was closed for repairs! Oooops!

(For this one, I decided to take it into PSE to sharpen with the USM filter for a change. I think I like the results.)

179/365: Pool-side in Houston

We experienced really hot weather in Texas--no surprise there! With temperatures reaching 100 degrees, pool time was a must!

(Re-posted after sharpening in PSE). 

Girls' Night Out: I had the pleasure of meeting two other Clickin Moms in Houston. Celeste and Lucy were lots of fun! Wish I could hang out with them more often!

178/365: Last Stop: Legoland

Before we left the Dallas area, we had to pay a visit to Legoland. My son enjoyed every minute that he spent surrounded by all those Legos!

177/365: Hamming it up at the Museum

I got my daughter two pillowcase dresses. This one is called Penelope by Lexicam Studios (and a fellow CM). Natalie wore the dress to our Ft. Worth museum outing and was very willing to model for me. Yay!