Embrace

 Embrace

“Life happens. Adapt. Embrace change, and make the most of everything that comes your way.”— Nick Jonas

Embrace has become by motto for 2020 and was a great key word for this week's self portrait. 

Social Distancing

Social Distancing

"the practice of maintaining a greater than usual physical distance from other people or of avoiding direct contact with people or objects in public places during the outbreak of a contagious disease in order to minimize exposure and reduce the transmission of infection"

Theme: Distance

Another one I had a different idea for but felt I wanted to record our lives in this new world. Here is our March 2020 Family Portrait.

I usually like to create more fine art work for the lightbulb project or my self portraits,  but the theme was "distance" and that spurred this idea for me. And well since my family was on board to do it, I went for it :)

When I started this 52 week project back in January, I kept a notebook of dates and themes. Then broad ideas for some of the themes. It's really crazy how different my life is right now than I envisioned it to be back in January. Originally, I had an idea of me running toward a door in the distance. An idea I have had for awhile. In fact most of it is shot. Figured it would be a good chance to catch up on editing an idea I had back from 2018.

But here I am, two months forward. Living in a different world. Social Distancing is the new life. 6 feet away from people. This seemed more appropriate. I can always create that running door self portrait sometime else. But right now this felt like the right image to create for the theme distance. This is March 2020.

Pumpkin Family

Pumpkin Family

Happy October everyone!

The 1970s

We own a 1971 Chevelle, so when we did our 2012 family self portraits, I made sure to do a fun photo with it. (See photo at the end).

Now that it has been 4 years, my boys have grown quite a bit and I thought it was the perfect time to do this photo again. During my planning for this photo I came up with an idea. I would now forward time along with my boys by choosing clothing that would be later in date to what we wore the first time. It's not an exact science and I wasn't looking to be exactly accurate, more in general theme sense. My new idea is to take this photo every 4 years and not only show that my boys have aged 4 years but I will change our styles to match that as well. So in 2020 I will do this photo yet again but with us in early 80's clothing. I'm hoping by 2024 to have 4 really cool photos that will show us going from early 70's to late 80's like a family might have done with a 1971 Chevelle.

Here is my 2016 version :)

Enjoy!

Our 2012 version:

Where is the Matterhorn?

Another older self portrait, but one I never got around to actually editing. Taken at Disneyland back in December 2012.

2012 | Week 50:
Where is the Matterhorn

We visited Disneyland and of course had to do some sort of Disneyland self portrait. Was actually pretty easy to do (which was needed by the end of the full year of self portraits). LOTS of people staring at all. Which I thought was funny because it wasn't like we were that exciting. And we were very lucky that the white rabbit went by when we were doing this as that part was not preplanned :)

Leave me a comment if you like this photo! And follow me on facebook and flickr!

Family Totem Pole

Family Totem Pole

Whenever I can incorporate my love for fun creative portraits and vacation, I am all for it.  I knew I wanted my family to be a part of whatever creation I came up with for our Alaska vacation.  I started to think about things that were Alaskan and looked into the histories of the cities we would be visiting. One of the cities we were vising was Ketchikan which has a Totem Pole Park. Perfect. We could be our own totem pole! I came up with a list of a few hats we could wear to make us animals and I made sure to bring those with us.


Info on the edit:

Actually fairly easy to shoot, most of magic came in photoshop. I wanted us to look like we were a wood statue but still like us.

I used layer masks to isolate us so that edits I made only applied to us and nothing else.

I started with running a watercolor action I have. It creates deep dark black lines and really outlines us. I did it at a very low opacity and only used the outline part of it and didn't mess with the color.

I needed us to be brighter and have a more painted look. I created a new layer over us and choose a color that was close to what our actual clothes color was. I used a soft brush and colored over our clothing. Changed that blending mode to Color Dodge. Played with the opacity. Lots of back and forth on this one, tried many colors until getting the right look.

I needed to "paint" our faces to resemble a totem pole. I achieved this by creating a new layer, choosing a color, changed the blending mode to Multiply, then lowered the opacity to my liking.

Last I added a wood texture on top of us. The wood texture I used was a long wavy piece of wood that was taken fairly close up. I changed the blending mode to soft light, and lowering the opacity to about 50% so the wavy wood lines showed but didn't overpower the people.

Leave me a comment if you like this photo! And follow me on facebook and flickr!

Groovy | Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday to a self portrait I did in July 2012 with my family.

My husband has a 1971 Chevelle and it gave me the idea for us to dress up for that time era and do a photo with the car. Even 4 years later, its still one of my all time favorite photos.

I have plans to do this photo again this summer! Looking forward to it since my kids have grown so much in the last 4 years!

Leave me a comment if you like this photo! And follow me on facebook and flickr!

Throwback Thursday!

2012 | Titanic 100 Year Anniversary

"I'm the king of the world!"

My Dad loves all things Titanic so I grew up with a lot of Titanic type stuff. So when doing my family self portraits back in 2012, I could not let the 100 year anniversary pass without doing something for it! 

I built everything you see myself from butcher paper and poster board. I used phone books and chairs to hold it together....but once I got inside the boat I realized I did not allow enough room for my arm to do the pose correctly, and at that point I couldn't move the boat I built, so I am turned slightly.

I shot 43 frames....I choose the very first one :)