Nurture Photography ~ Orange/Fiery and Red/Snapshot

Last week's Nurture Photography link up slipped by me, so I figured I'd just share both my orange and red photos today.  Hope you don't mind.  :)

First up ... orange/fiery ...

At a photography workshop that I taught recently, the ladies wanted to learn how to do some still life shots.  Which is where this pumpkin shot came from.

We visited a local farm a couple weeks ago.  They had lots of bins of mini pumpkins and gourds. 

The maple tree in my backyard.

Having a little fun with Keira.  I guess this would fall under the "fiery" category.  :)

Next up ... red/snapshot ...

Just a lone leaf we came across in our travels.

My zinnias had been going strong.  I have to check on them since we have had a couple frosty mornings and even had some snow yesterday.  But it is cold and I don't want to go outside.  :)

Alex showing me a red leaf he found.

One of my neighbor's trees.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope to be able to participate again next week when the theme is Purple/Spooky.

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 10.13.13

Hello!  And welcome to another Scavenger Hunt Sunday!  Today also happens to be my oldest brother Dave's birthday.  Happy birthday, Dave!  (Although, I don't think he's ever seen my blog, so he's not going to see this.)  :)

Anyway, another busy week is over.  And another is just beginning.  This is the busiest I've been - ever - when it comes to photo shoots.  I have one today, weather permitting - and four next weekend!  Hoping the weather cooperates for those also!  We've had such a nice stretch of weather - warm and sunny - and the forecast shows that it is about to come to a screeching halt.  :(

Enough about that though.  You came here to see my scavenger hunt finds, so let's get to them.

{m is for ...}

Maize.  As in corn.  Specifically Indian corn, which we picked up on our visit to the pumpkin farm on Saturday.

{what you saw today}

Sorry for the creepy spider photo, but it is was what I saw on Thursday.  A spider with a stink bug all wrapped up.  Good spider!  :)

{corner}

This one stumped me.  Until I remembered the order I received from Mpix this week.  The wallets have rounded corners!  How cool is that?!  Although photos of photos don't really do the photos in the photo justice, ya know?  :)  And I could really use a manicure.

{pink}

You would think my daughter, Keira, would be the one in pink.  But, no, it would be Nick.  He loves pink.  And frankly, he looks good in it!  Must be the brown hair and eyes.  :)  On a side note, why is it so hard to get my kids to cooperate for a group photo?  I bribe them and everything!

{hands}

Alex picked this tiny white gourd at the pumpkin farm.  He loved that it could fit in his little hands.

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you have a super fabulous week!

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Week 44 in Pictures

Last week was probably the looooooongest week in the history of weeks!  The rain started on Saturday, October 27 and continued until Saturday, November 3.  Eight straight days of cold, miserable, windy rain.  We did get a break every now and then ... and the sun even tried to come out a few times on Friday and Saturday.  But overall, it was a very blah week.  We are blessed in the fact that Hurricane Sandy didn't leave much destruction in her path in our area.  Things were predicted to be much worse than they actually are.  I wish I could say the same for those east of us.  We are keeping those folks in our prayers.

I predicted that I would struggle to pick up my camera during the rainy weather and I did.  Several of these photos are "cheats".  I took all of these photos this week, but some were taken on the same day.  We'll just pretend they are from the day I say they are, okay?  :)

{Sunday}

Gross, rainy weather.  I even added a colorful gradient to make my original photo more appealing, but it didn't help much.  :)

{Monday}

The nuttiest Nuthatch that frequents my feeder.  I just love this little guy.  He's so fun to watch.

{Tuesday}

I decided to play around with some low-key photography since I don't do it often.  I'm not sure I did it right, but I like the way it turned out.

{Wednesday}

Despite the fact that my kids don't go trick or treating, we still seem to end up with a huge bowl of candy.

{Thursday}

Poor Blue Jay.  Soaking wet in all this rain.  I was pretty pumped to have gotten this photo of him though, since he is pretty elusive and usually flies away as soon as he sees me.

{Friday}

Very rare to have another photo of me so soon (just featured one last week).  Especially since I hate self-portraits.  :)

I set out with the intention of getting a much-needed haircut and ended up having my perm straightened.  It had grown out 5-6 inches anyway so it was either get another perm or go straight.  I thought I'd try straight for a while.  The girls at the salon kept asking me if I had colored my hair at all.  Strangely, no, I don't color my hair.  The light and dark streaks are all natural.

{Saturday}

Keira got invited to a costume party at a friend's house.  And they ended up going trick or treating.  Fourteen years old and she finally got to go.  :)  Anyway, after much costume searching and deciding, she went as a gypsy.  The clothes were found at Good Will and most of the accessories were borrowed from my MIL.  (And as you can tell, the sun was out for a bit.  But on our way to drop Keira off at the friend's house, it was raining and sunny and we got to see a gorgeous rainbow).

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Indian Summer

Today's weather was absolutely gorgeous!  Especially for late October!  It was around 80 degrees and mostly sunny.  A slight breeze was blowing.  It was glorious!

However, I got up this morning still not feeling great.  I wasn't coughing as much but still felt just kind of icky.  So after getting the kids to school, I went back to bed.  Sure, there were things that needed done, but I wasn't up for doing any of them.  I woke up just before noon and felt so much better.  After a shower I felt like a new person.  I still didn't sound great (and I still don't), but I feel so much better.  Praise God for His answer to my prayers!

Back to the gorgeousness of today ... since it was so beautiful ... and since I was feeling soooo much better ... I decided to take the kids to a pumpkin patch after school.  We hadn't done that yet this year due to so many other things going on.  My friend, Laura, reminded me of a local farm market that offers free hay rides and corn mazes, so we went there.  Free is good.  :)  They weren't doing hay rides today (only on the weekends) but we still enjoyed the corn maze.  And the kids and I picked out some gourds and pumpkins to bring home.

Keira had been at a Stand Tall (anti-drug) rally this afternoon after school.  When I picked her up, she had a spider and a spiderweb painted on her face.

Bribery is what I have to resort to to get Nick's picture these days.  Today was pretty easy - I promised him a bottle of water.  Most times I wouldn't get off that cheap.  :)

Alex needs no bribery.  He was having fun getting lost in the corn.  He even wore his safari hat he got at church last night during our missions conference.

The kids picked these squash out of the bins but we ended up only buying the one Nick is holding.

Of course there were lots of pumpkins.

And corn.

And Keira even took some pictures of me.

It was a beautiful day!  I'm glad we got out to enjoy it because there is snow in the forecast for next week.

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Costumes ... Edited (finally!)

So I'm only a couple days late posting my edits for Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW.  :)  I won't waste any time explaining ... I'll just show you my edits ...

{sooc}

{edit}

I just did some basic editing in ACR - lightened it up, cropped a little, then added the color block for web viewing.

{sooc}

{edit}

Some here, except also a little dodging/burning on his face to lighten it up w/out lightening up the whole photo.

{sooc}

{edit}

Simple ACR edits, then added color block for web viewing.

{sooc}

{edit}

I actually didn't do anything to this photo except square crop it and add the color block.  I liked it just the way it was.  :)

Head over to Ashley's to see more great costume edits and to check out Rosie's lightbox tutorial.  Next week's theme is Macro.

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Outstanding Orange

Orange, a close relative of red, sparks more controversy than any other hue.

{photo processed with The Pioneer Woman's Soft Faded action}


There is usually a strong positive or negative to orange ... 

and true orange usually elicits a stronger "love it" or "hate it" response than other colors.

Fun and flamboyant orange radiates warmth and energy.

Orange stimulates activity ...





stimulates appetite ...

and encourages socialization.

Orange is one of those colors that really stands out, even at a distance.  It seems to shout, "Hey, look at me!"

All interesting facts about the color orange were found here.

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Pumpkins ... Edited

Welcome back to the EDIT version of Shoot & Edit.  This week's theme is pumpkins.  I showed you my SOOC shots on Monday and here are my edits ...

I was very pleased with my SOOC shots this week (I must finally be learning!), so my edits are very subtle.  For all of them I just opened in ACR and slightly increased blacks, clarity, and vibrance.  Then did the normal high pass filter and resized for web.


    

On Keira's photo, I also increased exposure just a tad and did some retouching on her face.

I must say, now that I see my edits posted, I prefer the SOOC versions.  They seem more colorful to me.  Something seems to happen when I save them for web viewing.  I will be looking into that more today to see why that is.

I preferred the SOOC version of this photo.  Again, when I edited it and saved it for web viewing, it lost some color.  :(

Anyway, that's it for me.  Hope you have a fabulous Thursday!

Be sure to head over to Ashley's today to see more great pumpkin edits!

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