SEI April 2011 Challenge

I finally got around to creating a layout from the SEI Blog Sketch for April!

~Jen

My "Pick 6" Photos...

For the last week's assignment in my photography class, we were asked to "pick 6" of our favorite photographs. Well, one thing I've learned in recent days is that while I love taking pictures, I think my true favorite photographs that I've taken are landscapes... hmmm. I wonder if it's because they don't move? :)

I also didn't want to choose some of my older favorites because they were all taken before I "knew what I was doing" (ha, ha). I wanted to choose more recent photos that I took as I learned manual mode on my camera and really focused on my technique, rather than shots I took but just got lucky on, if that makes any sense...

So, here's what I came up with:

A picture of my son taken in the doorway of my office with texture added...

My first 'real' photo shoot - a good friend's daughter for Senior Photos...

Another Senior Photo shoot with a good friend's son...

My adorable niece taken in my office...

My daughter at Christmas...

My daughter on her 12th birthday this year...

Our feedback from the class is supposed to help us decide what our style is... so I am very excited to hear what people say about my pictures. :)

~Jen

Lily Bee Designs Page

During the Creative Retreat Class, May Flaum had several awesome giveaways, and one week, I won some Lily Bee Designs product. Well, they showed up this week! I must say, this set was completely out of my comfort zone, but I decided for that very reason, I would try to tackle it! Seeing the adorable 'pennant' stickers, I started looking for some sketches with pennant or banners on them (another trend I hadn't embraced yet). Searching a few, I came upon this sketch:

At least the pictures were easy to choose! I looked up on my wall, and my eyes went straight to my son's soccer pictures from last summer.

~Jen

We interrupted this blog for...

Walt Disney World last week! I am exhausted... you know, one of those "I need a vacation from my vacation" weeks. So, I'm way way way behind on my photography class which is making me sad. Today was my day to try and catch up, and while I haven't completely caught up yet - I did catch an amazing sunset over the mountains last night, which I decided would be cool to try and HDR-process... I think it's a little dark, but very true-to-life.

*Edit: I actually continued to play around with this picture in Photoshop and settled on another version - a much more saturated photo:

~Jen