Babies!

I'm at that age in which everyone around me is seemingly popping out babies. For me this is an opportunity to delve into a new genre of photography while offering (hopefully) my friends some quality shots of their newborns, free of charge.

In truth, this is easy work. The kids are cute and I just have to make sure the lighting is right and press the shutter release. This has also given me an opportunity to utilize some basic editing techniques to make the photos more unique - vignetting, black & white, sepia, aged, etc. It's amazing how a small change in colors can drastically alter the feel of a shot.

A special thanks to Luke & Eliza for being absolutely adorable.

Get those fingers out of your mouth!

Selective Colorization

You've probably seen photos in which one color is kept (yellow for instance) while the remainder of the photo is turned to grayscale or Black & White. This editing technique has always intrigued me, and in truth, baffled me, until I recently learned how to do it myself in Lightroom (and realized it's relatively simple). By definition, selective colorization is "a post-processing technique where most parts of a photo are converted to black and white while some parts are left in color." The technique is utilized to draw he viewer's eyes to a particular part of a photograph; to make it "pop." I've found that this technique has brought new life and focus to some of my otherwise "busy" photos.

But then, does this go against my basic post-processing mantra - less is more? What really gets to me about post-processing is when the photographer tries to trick the viewer - when we have to ask ourselves, "Was this edited, or not?" Through selective colorization, I'm not trying to fool the viewer into thinking I took a better photograph than I really did. The photos are clearly edited. No one (at least, no one I know) sees the world in black and white with a splash of color here and there.

Maybe I'm just altering my theory in order to allow for my new favorite editing technique :)

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

tree eert

My goal, one day, is to take a reflection shot that blows the world away! Baby steps, baby steps.

:) Thanks for following us in our photographic journeys.

Brookside Gardens

My friend/photographer Ashley Kurzweil and I made a field trip to Brookside Gardens in Silver Spring, MD today.

We arrived around 2PM, on a mostly sunny day, and the lighting was perfect.

Here are a few shots from the adventure. There are some pretty cool flowers and plants in this world, and Brookside is a great place to go to visit them.

Small Actions, Big Results

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to be contacted by Sarah Ause, fellow photographer and animal lover, who works for Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, UT. You know all those photos of the cute kittens and pups that need to be adopted? She took them. Are we a little jealous that she has the best job in the world? Yes. For those who don't know, Best Friends is one of our preferred charities and Lauren and I actually visited them briefly while traveling this summer. We're already planning a trip back and hope to volunteer for a couple weeks.

Anyway, we've become e-friends (did I just coin that term?) with Sarah and she's been giving us a ton of tips related to improving our photo skills. She's really talented, and self-taught, which we love. She also offered to make a post about Photos That Give on the Best Friends Facebook fan page. While a seemingly small gesture, I knew this could be big for us. Best Friends has over 125,000 fans, all of whom received a PTG shout out on their news feed yesterday afternoon.

We've gotten over 1,000 visitors to our website (so far) from all over the world! Seriously - Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South and Central America, Canada, Asia, etc etc etc. We've added 50 fans to our Facebook page (and at only 175 or so fans, that's a big jump), and we've even made a couple sales. But most importantly, we're connecting with people who are interested in and support our mission - getting e-mails from other photographers, comments on photos, and justification that what were doing makes sense. Having someone say "Hey, I think you're doing a good thing" is just as good as making a sale.

So thanks Sarah, and everyone else at Best Friends, for helping us spread the word about our mission. Hopefully it leads to bigger donation checks from us in the coming months.

Impossible is Nothing

If you've followed our blog over the past couple months you know that I had my first Canon Rebel DSLR, along with 3 lenses, stolen out of my truck this summer while we were traveling cross-country. I filed a police report, called local pawn shops (in Tracey, CA), and scoured Craigslist postings for my gear, all to no avail. But maybe it's too early to give up hope. Check out this article.

National Geographic Photo of the Month: Cockfight

by Ario Wibisono

Suradita Village, West Java, Indonesia (2010). Children playing with their roosters. Actually it was not a real cockfight because the roosters didn't wear blades on their feet. Children like to play this game because they almost never have toys in their life.