Photos
I have a shoot at 8am tomorrow- so, by all logical reasoning I should have been asleep a long time ago- but…. I’m not.
The Weekend…
Listened to Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ all weekend long in the car. Really solid album… I remember playing their album ‘Funeral’ for a couple of my friends when it first came out years ago… they looked at me and said: “Who is this? They’re weird.” But I knew they were going to stick around…
Shot some photos with my sister tonight after a long afternoon nap…
Etsy
If you like my flower headbands (I sport them quite often!) please take a moment and check out my brand new Etsy. I’d appreciate it ever so much! I went the way of Etsy because I felt like it was the easiest, tidiest way to go about this… seeing as I’m not a business person!
There’s a few headbands listed- and I will definitely be posting more if the interest is kept up- I can also custom make headbands in a specific color if desired. Message me and let me know!
My Etsy
P.S.- a HUGE thanks to my gorgeous models Allison, and my sister Val. Aren’t they gorgeous!? And they were such good sports, trekking through tall grass, risking chiggers and creepy bugs, and fashioning a goose-beater-stick for the crazy drunk goose that was running us down. (I’ve seriously never seen such a weirdly behaving goose. Scary. And no, we didn’t use the stick. We just waved it around un-menacingly while squealing and running away. No geese OR girls were harmed in the taking of these product shots)
EmilyOh! Preview Photos
So its taking me longer than I thought it would to get my headbands photographed and the details together for purchasing, but its coming together. Tonight I had a lovely new friend join my sister in modeling the headbands, and here’s a preview…. stay tuned for details on how to order/purchase your own fabulous EmilyOh! Headband.
The Heart
More than anything… God is teaching me what it means to be content in Him. I am the eternally awful student, lacking in self-discipline and failing miserably on a daily basis- but He’s working on my heart.
Its a hard lesson to learn, one that I know will never be fully achieved until I draw my last breath and am with Him for eternity… but to even have a glimpse of contement here on earth, in my life…
Not because I have ’stuff’, not because I have ‘achieved the dream’, but to know and cherish Christ dearly and to have that outpoor on everyone I am in contact with…. and to be happy. To be full of joy, to hold strong in the hard times, and be grateful in the good.
*added later*
I was getting ready for bed last night, after I had posted this, and Psalm 23 popped into my head. Its one of those memory verses my parents drilled into my head from a very young age- a WHOLE chapter… it became just sort of mundane and like a meaningless recitation for so long, but when it popped into my head, and I took the time to read over it in the NLT translation… wow. THIS is why my parents wanted me to learn it. To memorize it. To be able to quote it in my sleep.
The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
2 He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams.
3 He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to his name.
4 Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.
5 You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
6 Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
forever.
Emily, Oh! Head Bands….
Hey all,
I’ve had a lot of inquiries about my flower head-bands…. as seen in these photos, sported by myself….
… and I’ve found a brand of silk(ish) flowers that I absolutely adore, so I was wondering if anyone has any interest in purchasing their own?
Right now, I’m offering two different types, the full-blown, dramatic, oversize Josephine Blossom Band:
…and for the girl who may not be prepared for to take on the ENTIRE blossom (that’s a lot of flower, I know!)… the more demure, but no less girlie, Juliet Bud Band:
Now, I just snapped these photos quickly this morning when I didn’t even have any make-up on, so I’ll post some more official photos later this weekend/Monday when I have the chance, so you all can see the product a bit better, but right now, I have a total of 2 Juliet Blossom Bands in light Pink (as shown in the photo) and 3 over-sized Josephine Blossom bands, 1 in Crimson, and 2 in light pink (as shown).
These come on a one-size fits all elastic black band and look gorgeous with your hair up, down, curly or straight! I have about 5 of them that I wear whenever I need a little something to dress my outfit up! (As a wedding photographer, I find that they are the perfect accessory, as I don’t wear a lot-if any- jewelry other than earrings because it gets in the way of the camera and bag- so these add a little flair and are out of the way!)
I’m offering a deal for anyone interested, the Juliet Bud Bands are $10 ea (+shipping) and the 3 Josephine Blossom Bands are $15 ea(+shipping) - these prices are just for these 5 bands! If you’re interested, let me know- leave a comment with your e-mail and I will be in touch. Also, if you are interested in a color not offered- please let me know and I will create a custom band for you!
More photos to come!
The Peony.
I’m a pretty laid back person. I have opinions and tastes for things… but a lot of times if you ask me what my favorite [insert: movie, band, food, ect- here] a lot of times I’m like… “uh?” I mean, I LOVE music- so its hard to narrow it down to a single band or artist. I have like, a top 5 list…. the same with food… I despise when you’re in a group setting and they start doing ‘ice breakers’ and they ask you things like, “What’s your favorite meal?” Um? My tastes change depending on what I feel like when I’m hungry? I love pizza. I love Mexican food. Chinese. Mediterranean. Breakfast at any time…. and don’t even ask me what my favorite movie is. I mean, obviously, A&E’s Pride&Prejudice is pretty close to the top, but then again, so are the LOTR trilogy, and The Princess Bride, and Almost Famous…I could go on and on!
But I have 2 things that I KNOW are my favorite…. and they’re cliche too! I know my favorite candy. Plain, simply, Hershey Milk Chocolate. Bar form, or as Hershey Kisses. No fancy almonds, or mint, or caramel filling- just give me Hershey’s milk chocolate and I’m a happy girl. (My roommate is aware of this and sometimes blesses me with random acts of Hershies.)
And I am now sure what my favorite flower is.
I give you…. the Peony:
I seriously could have shot this one flower 100 times… its gorgeous. I was wanting to find someone I knew who had a Peony plant (bush?) so I could have one… and it just so happens that I pull up to my sister-in-laws house… and there one is, right in the front yard. Me to her: “You have a Peony plant! Can I have one?! Please?!” Her: “Oh, is that what that plant is?” …and she let me have one! Yay, yay, yay. Seriously- before this year if you had asked me what my favorite flower was, I would have said I didn’t have one. But now, its totally the Peony.
Music to Fit the Mood
So if I had to describe my mood tonight with music… these two songs by Tegan & Sara come to mind…
Call it Off & Where Does the Good Go . Both these songs have been played over and over again on itunes, on mix CDs, in the car, on the ipod…
Beautiful Things…
Working on a creative project with some lovely ladies…I love that I have some people who enjoy being creative with me….
The wind in all its glory…
The sunshine in all its golden warmth…
The flowers formed in delicate beauty, & the majestic clouds skirting high above…
Nothing compares to the glorious wonder of a God who sent His son,
To save a wretch like me;
An imperfect, flawed and tragic being.
The grace and mercy of the cross can never compare to anything else on earth.
He makes beautiful things out a vast expanse of nothingness. Writers block never plagued Him, He never had a lack of inspiration… He is truly the Great and Magnificent Creator.
Snowed in.
I’ve watched movies. Cooked, baked, washed dishes, trekked outdoors, took photos, edited a few, made playlists, created valentines for some amazing people I have in my life, and ate way too much. (especially the chocolate cake I made)… plus they’re talking more snow tonight…
[....the beginnings of Valentines for some special girlies in my life...]
I’m not really a fan of February…. it makes me want to wear sweatshirts and my big furry boot-slippers and hide-away in my bedroom with a movie. (incredibly non-productive… plus it makes my roomie think I hate her…not good.)
If I get snowed in tomorrow…. expect more blog posts. That’s all I have to say on the matter.
Post Processing…
I’ve never done a typed out tutorial before… I’m not sure how good I’ll be at this… honestly folks, I just google something if I want to know how to do it- that, combined with countless hours just trial and error in Photoshop is how I do it… but I’ll try to show how I do a few things… I get a lot of questions about how I do the “light circles”… or, ‘light bokeh’ as us photographers like to call it (I don’t even know how to pronounce that correctly, but I know how to spell it!) so, what I thought I would do is walk you thru processing a photo step-by-step. Sound good?
First… let me tell you, when I first started shooting with my DSLR, I was a fan of aperture priority mode… loved it. Then one of the photographers I follow online mentioned how they only shoot in manual, and they only work with other photographers who shoot in manual, and I freaked out. MANUAL?! Too hard! I took one photography class and had a hard time with all the manual settings… but I was bound and determined to nail it… and I’m pleased to say I am a 100% manual shooter now. Getting your exposure correct in camera will do amazing things for your photos….
- steps off of her soap box-
onward!
I edit all my photos with Adobe Photoshop CS3. Just so you know. I also own several sets of Totally Rad Actions. ‘Pool Party’ in some form or another is one of my staple actions. If you’re just playing around with photos, The Pioneer Woman has basically the same actions (created with the help of some of the Totally Rad people) HERE, for FREE.
SOOC image: (straight out of camera)
I over-exposed this on purpose, as I wanted the window in the back to be blown out, and the rest of the photo to have a soft glow.
Next, I usually tweak the color balance a bit… but I won’t show that since its a minor change. When I add a texture, ‘light bokeh’ or lens flare to a photo, I usually try and remember to do that next, before I do any other post processing. For this photo, I’m going to layer on a light bokeh I took of some Christmas lights:
(just a hint kids- to get these? Just take an out of focus photo of lights. Christmas lights, city lights, ect… turn your lens off of ‘auto-focus’ and shoot! Super out of focus will make the light circles large, closer to focused will give you smaller circles.)
So, I have both this, and the other photo opened in PS. Hit your ‘V’ key, and that should give you your dragging tool. Drag your light photo over to your original photo. So you should have your first photo with the lights photo layered on top.
I’m not going into layers here… if you’re wondering about that please Google them and read some of the really good info out there. If you use Photoshop, you need to learn about layers!
Next step…. go to your menu on the side… your layers palatte… and see where it says ‘Normal’ and has a drop down menu?
Hit that drop down menu and you can choose from a myriad of different options for layering your top layer over your second layer. For this particular photo, I’m choosing “screen’ mode. Its soft and light, which is the feel I’m going for with this series.
Now, this one turned out pretty good, sometimes I tweak the opacity of the ‘lights’ layer, or the color balance, or stretch it/shrink it to look how I want, but this worked perfect at 100% opacity, in the location it was originally placed.
Next, flatten the image.
Then, I’ll use my ‘Pool Party’ action, or, if you have The Pioneer Woman actions, ’70’s’. I’m pulling it down to about 60% opacity:
Flatten the image again.
Then, open the ‘brightness and contrast’ menu, and I’m setting the brightness at -41, and the contrast at +31. No particular reason, those settings are just what my eyes like. I’m then opening up the color balance menu again. My settings for this particular photo are; Cyan@ -22, magenta@ -12, yellow@+22:
I decided it was too dark for what I was going for, so I opened curves, and in the first menu tweaked it a bit:
And then…. I guess I’m done with it… here’s the original and the finished product, side by side:
so… sorry if it was hard to follow? I hope this made someone happy, or answered a few questions? I don’t think I’m very good at this tutorial thing….
The Window
Ever since I moved into my apartment, I’ve been captured by the light that comes thru the window in my bedroom… today I finally got around to doing some photos in front of it… sorry for the excess of me… but I had noone else on hand to model- or I would have chosen them… these photos sort of capture my loves… light, music, photography and reading….and a touch of romance (in a nerdy, bookish way)
there’s a few more on my flickr…. I love them all… the colors, the light, the window….!
Red.
Cross number 6 off my ‘25 to do before 25′ list….
6. Dye my hair RED. (I always swore I would do it bright, cherry red at least once in my life… the dream has toned down a bit, less Clementine from Eternal Sunshine… more, “I work in the real world”)
Except… here’s the fun part…. it’s pretty red…. like, Clementine from Eternal Sunshine red… and I am happy. It’ll probably go a bit darker before I go back to work on the 4th, but for a week or so… I’m in love…
I had it ugly blonde/orange/yuck for a night/morning…. (do I make an ugly blonde or what. Sheesh. With my crazy dark eyebrows… its just scary.)
but it was worth being ugly for half a day… yay red.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Thursday Night at Home
So my plans for the evening got canceled, so I’m staying in… bad news was I had a bunch of chicken marinating in the refridgerator because I was supposed to have dinner guests… so I had to cook all that up… and I’m not a big meat eater, so, needless to say, I now have leftovers… I hope I eat them, I hate throwing things out.
Sunday
Can I just say I love the weekends? I love the weekends.
I took some time this weekend to do a little thrifting… one of my goals was to acquire a collection of random water goblets. Ever since I moved I love having people over so I wanted some neat glasses to serve drinks in when I have “dinner parties”. I am quite pleased with my finds that I will add to my current collection…
The kitchen colors at our apartment are turning out to be red, green (like an olive/pear green) and cobalt blue. I’m a fan… and the goblets match the scheme perfectly.
I also had some time to do some painting and arranging of a wall in the dining room….
I added a couple pieces today… both black canvases, I drew a wood-grain pattern on one and the other has Owl City lyrics written on it… (Owl City lyrics are adorable!) The oval frame is thrifted, and I taped some neat wrapping paper I have in it (which coincidentally is the same wrapping paper in the center frame behind the sketches…) I also painted the “e” glossy black (it works because both mine and my roommates names start with “e”) and framed the top left-hand photo/Copeland lyrics piece of mine. I’m liking the arrangement so far…
I finally painted my big “E” glossy white and the little owl is one of my spray-paint projects.
…and… I got my curtain hardware up (with a screw-driver no less. I don’t have a drill… I am a girl who does not have tools…I should probably get on that) and hung up the curtains that used to be in my bedroom for temporary curtains till me and the roommate find something we like better. They’re made out of vintage scarves sewn together and the curtain ring/clips are from Ikea.
A productive day… now I can’t wait to have some people over.
Inspiration Friday Vol. 1
I’ve decided to start posting things that inspire me on Fridays (since my work-week is generally Mon-Thurs, I have some time to catch up on Fridays) I’ll use Fridays as a chance to post photos, eye candy, blogs I follow, music, what-have-you… anything that I have found inspiring during the week….
Let me start out by saying that I found WeHeartIt and am in love with this site. I’m able to clip inspiring images and photos from the site, or anywhere else on the web, and it keeps track of them for me (much more time and space effecient then putting them on a folder on my computer….) There’s all types of gorgeous eye candy on the site. (Granted, its probably more female oriented… but score. I’m a girl)
Here’s just a few images that are inspiring me, and making my fingers itch to pick up my camera….
(check out my WeHeartIt site to see credits: emilyo)
This week I have been listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s “Plans” album (its perfect for early fall) a mix CD my roomate made me, and the new David Gray album, “Draw the Line”. All beautiful fall music. (Thanks Phil, you were right about the David Gray)
Inspired…
I was inspired by two lovely ladies who’s blogs I follow:
Old Lady in a Teenager (the lovely and talented Ms. Kara)
And the equally inspiring and beautiful Emily, of (Inside a Black Apple), via her fashion blog, Some Girls Wander …
I was inspired to create my own… (sorry for the awful photos… better ones soon?)
Just a little ribbon, a spool of which came to 79 cents, and 7 gold star appliques sewn on with a bit of gold embroidery floss….
I sort of love fall….
![1 by [Ehdom].](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2232/1953239431_41d44d5ce0.jpg)
New Digs…
I’ve finally had a chance to do a little around the new apartment… here’s a few shots of my bedroom:
The walls are this gorgeous peacock blue/teal color… I’m in love. (only two of the walls are painted.)Peacocks are sort of an obsession if you couldn’t tell from my logo….
The paper lanterns and light fixtures are from Ikea… I love them to death. The pink frame is thrifted and spray-painted by me, with, a print of my very own in it. (and, p.s., I love my new paisley sheets from Target, their clearance section is awesome)
My cluttered, but fairly tidy dresser and mirror. Vintage jewelry box that used to be my grandma’s, a jewelry tree from Ikea, and a lamp and lampshade from Target…
…I love Peonies, so I made up this little arrangement today. I like the way it pops against the walls. I’ll shoot a better shot when I have some daylight.
book corner…it’s amazing how many books fit in that little shelf…
I’ll shoot some of the other space next time I get a chance.
Words that Move Me
Have you ever listened to “The Thief” by Brooke Fraser? I recommend it. Its beautiful. The lyrics are absolutely gorgeous. When I sat down and read them the other day, I about cried. They express so perfectly thoughts that I have in my head and heart. I’m not one for planning a “future” wedding in my head, but I think this song would be beautiful in a wedding ceremony. (I AM a wedding photographer. Give me a romantic, girly, break, please.)
“You, sing me to sleep
Talk down my walls
Look through my windows as I wait
You could be the thief
I give the key to
You’re ruining me
With secrets and gestures and looks
With sonnets from second-hand books
Playing the chords in me nobody knew how to play”
I wish I could write like that…
and I also wish I could figure out how to play this song on the guitar… I can only find tabs for it, and I can’t read tabs… I guess I’ll have to break out my keys and figure it out on my own.
