Keepin' It Real....

If you ever read my blog and think things around our house are always rosy, then I am failing.  We have a lot of great moments, and our blog tends to show the highlights of life.  But, anyone who spends 10 minutes with us knows that we are a real family, with "real" days, and real issues.    In fact just this morning I was called a "mean old mom" by the sweet 4 yr old pictured below.  Now, I can handle being called mean, but OLD....come on, that's just ridiculous.  Just look at the SOOC (straight out of the camera) picture below.  I'm a clear picture of youth!

In an effort to keep it real around here, I doing a "before and after" post.   I do not have time to edit all of my photos, and a good portion of what you see here on the blog is SOOC.  But, at times, I do love to edit photos.  It can be the difference between a photo that I will treasure, and one that would be forgettable.

So, in this case I had one picture of Peter and I on his field trip.  I treasure these pictures because it's rare that I'm actually IN a picture with my family.  I'm typically behind the camera.  

So, here we go....

SOCC...
I have several issues with this picture.  It's a little on the "cool" and dull side.   Also, I'm pregnant and have pressed my face against Peter's, and created wrinkles by my eye that even botox couldn't help.

So, I started by adding a warming filter.  Already much better.

Then I crop it to remove the random arm from the side of the picture.  I also use an adjustment layer to "soften" those horrific wrinkles by my eye.   I didn't make them disappear, because well, that would be impossible, or look very edited. (don't think I didn't try.)

I was pretty happy with how we looked, but felt like something was missing.  The picture could have been taken anywhere, and didn't say, "we're at the pumpkin patch."  So, I got super tricky and merged some pumpkins into the background from a similar picture I took that same day.  This worked because the pictures were very similar, taken in the same light, in the same field.  So, it didn't take much to "merge" the pictures.  I LOVE the pumpkins in the background, and the picture feels more complete to me.

Final products:

Then, just for fun, I ran a photoshop action (Pioneer Woman, Seventies Action) and adjusted the layers to get the photo to look like this.

So, at the end of the day, this is not a perfect picture of us. But, the last two shots are so much better than what came out of the camera.  Instead of a picture that makes me cringe when I see the blank field, dull colors, and wrinkles (I know, I'm shallow), I have edited it into a picture that is on our blog and will be part of Peter's birthday video next year.  Editing has a respected place in my world of photography!

For those who are curious, I edit in Photoshop CS3.