Photography Dreams and Photo Play

So as long I can remember, I've been fascinated with pictures and art. I took AP art in high school which I absolutely loved and if there had been photography, I would have taken that too. I remember harassing my mom for days to buy me black & white film (no digital back then!) so that I could run around and take pictures of her, my brother and dad, and my animals. Photography is a love I've always had but have never really been able to explore in the way I've really wanted to. My dream is to be able to take beautiful portraits of babies, children and families and I've seen, in my mind's eye, that dream one day becoming a reality. Especially within the last couple of years, I've been increasingly more obsessed with learning and working towards this goal, but I've been limited by time and money. I've played around and have even given some photo gifts to friends, but it feels like the last 6 years have been one big hodgepodge of busy! Anyway, now I've actually got more time, but well, photography kind of falls into that "you're only as good as your tools" category. Tools which I don't yet have but have been DYING FOR for the last couple of years and especially now with our little guy coming. I have all these visions of portraits I want to take of him... Anyway, here's the list of things I'd like:

~ 1. An awesome photography camera - Nikon D80 or higher.
~ 2. A great lens - specifically a Nikkor 50 mm 1.4. (This is one that is great for opening up the aperture wide enough to not have to use flash indoors) It's crisp and dynamic and great for portraits, which is what I want to focus on. Hmmm... and if I could, I'd probably shoot for a "Macro Lens" too ~ the heart of taking all closeups. Ok, I'm daydreaming now... back to what I was saying... :0)

~ and 3. The latest version of Photoshop (CS4). No matter what they say, all those famous photographers run their pictures through some sort of editing before it becomes the amazing piece we ooh and aah at.

So, not that bad right? Just a list of three little things. Yeah, well... this little dinky list will run you upwards of a grand, which makes Wally start to hyperventilate just thinking about it, and I'll admit, makes my palms a little sweaty too. Just recently, though, I was able to get my hands on an educational version of Photoshop. Translation = the oldest "ghetto" version of Photoshop, but hey...better than nothing. Well... I have found my new obsession! I've now spent HOURS messing with tools and pictures that I already have stored in my computer trying to make the decent look "phenomenal." Granted, not professional, but pretty dang good! Anyway, here's the one that I like the best of the ones I've messed with so far. Right before my niece Katelyn was baptised, I took her around and snapped some shots of her all beautiful in her little white dress. I thought this was a great picture at the time, but oh the magic of Photoshop.

Here's the pic SOOTC (Straight out of the camera).

And tada! Here it is after Photoshop editing.

So, this is after messing and changing the lighting, working on hue and saturation (I wanted to give her skin tone a warmer look), sharpening parts of the image, blending other parts (to make her skin appear smoother), whitening the whites of her eyes, brightening her actual eye color, brightening her teeth, and running the whole photo through the high pass filter and hard lighting tools. And more...but I don't remember what the stuff is called. Oh, and keep in mind that I had to use a JPEG to upload it on blogger which isn't as clear, so seeing the difference in her eyes and teeth isn't as noticeable here. And now that I'm looking at it again, I'm thinking I might go back and lighten up some of the shadows on her face.

So, did you get a headache reading all that? :0) Let me tell you, it was nothing compared to the headache I got spending hours trying to figure it all out! But I love the finished product and am honestly obsessed with it now. Any spare time is devoted to Photoshop, messing around and writing notes in my little "Photoshop" notebook. (I know, I'm a huge dork). So, granted I sadly may never get the dream tools I want and may never become the amazing photographer I want to be (I'm not giving up hope though!), but I can at least shoot to be the best with what I have. So... armed with my little Sony snapshot camera and my old Photoshop program, I'm going to see what I can do.

So, here's to becoming the next "ghetto" Photoshop queen and to being content with and becoming the best with what you've got.