Beach Play

Crescent Beach is one of our favorite places to spend a sunny day. The sand is so soft and the view, breathtaking. Today we went there to soak up the sun before the clouds came in. My daughter wore one of my new favorite shirts of hers - blue and green stripes. Yum! Just love those two colors together. They're so fresh and um, beachy. :) So today I decided to bring the camera and work on fill-flash exercises on the beach. It was fun. The kiddos weren't so interested in posing for me so I got what I could without bothering them too much.

This shot really shows you the beachfront. And I wish my daughter's pant leg hadn't fallen down during her travel but this is so typically her. She plays hard and doesn't fret about her attire. I love this age, so carefree.


For my photog friends, I decided to process all of these images in lightroom. I did a few adjustments, none to exposure, mostly to color popping and voila. Nothing done in photoshop accept a slight soft light layer with an 18% opacity and unsharpen mask to taste. I really like the effects that I can do with lightroom.

This shot I used fill flash. I know her eyes are squinty but that was pre-flash and let me tell you it was so bright out, high noon!


Love the wind in her hair here as she walks to get more water.



Here I shot up close with fill flash. I think I should have shot more dialed down. Looks a little strong and flashy to me. But I liked the 3D effect and the rich colors so I thought I'd show it.


I'm excited to be shooting on the beaches again!
Thanks for visiting!

Happy Mom's Day

We've arrived in Maine a few days ago and are enjoying sunny days of Spring. Today is the first day in a few weeks that I have taken my camera out of the bag and boy did it feel good! I decided to take on the challenge of noon day sun in the brightness of the open beach in all natural lighting. Here's my three favorite subjects. :) We had a nice time playing at the beach for mother's day. I couldn't imagine a better place to spend the day. We are so happy to be back in Maine! It's just gorgeous and I promise to post some new images soon.

Happy Mother's day!

Growing Up Is....

... Well.....This morning came with a longed for surprise. Our daughter lost a baby tooth, a front tooth, this morning in the most unusual way. It goes like this. Last night, she noticed her tooth was very very lose and we spent several hours telling her ways she could pull it out but she just couldn't do it. I told her I'd even get her a cat if she did it herself (something she really wants) and she still couldn't do it! Well, this morning we were visiting on my bed and chatting and I was wearing a bathrobe and was fixing the tie on it and as I was pulling my tie my hand slipped off from it and wacked her in the mouth, right on her lose tooth! She gasped and wore a startled expression and quickly went to the bathroom to see what was the damage. And I quickly followed behind her wondering if I had hurt her. When we got there she pulled her hand away from her mouth and saw a hole where her tooth used to be! I asked her if she swallowed it and she said no. So, we went back to the bed and found it laying right there. She laughed and was delighted that the dreaded moment of pulling her tooth was now behind her and guess what!? She says, it didn't even hurt. So, what a lucky girl she was to get her tooth knocked out when she needed it pulled. :) This was the first time I have aided in helping someone pull a tooth. She has lost a total of three baby teeth now. The last two teeth were pulled by her Grammy and she was going to have her Grammy pull this one today if it hadn't already come out. Anyway, we just had to go out and take some shots of her new look. Wild huh! I'm still getting used to the gap.




and here's some of her bro.



We played at the park today and I had the camera out so that we could take some images of the M's new smile and of course I had to sneak some shots of my little guy. Here he is laughing for M. She has a way of getting the big squinty eye smiles outta him. By the way, I cut his hair today. He even asked for it to be spiked up! It's been awhile since he's wanted that and so here he is.



By the way ... I love how flickr allows me to share such large photos! Fun huh. Enjoy!

Inspirational Images

Inspirational Images
Originally uploaded by Angela Marie's Portfolio

A few days ago I went and looked at hundreds of photos on flickr and picked my favorites. I started to see that I am drawn to bright and airy styles. Fresh and clean processing. Anyway, it was fun to get a collection of favorite works. I then learned how to create a mosaic of all these photos on flickr. So cool. Now, this is my test post from posting from my flickr account to my blog.