Tips On Making Your Photo's CLEAN!

Ever wonder why your pictures look crooked or something about the image just says "messy"? Here are some ways of making things look straight, and neat!


Take advantage of the grid in your viewfinder or LCD screen, which is provided in most digital camera's. This is great for keeping everything lined up and even. If your picture includes objects in the background with lines, this grid is very helpful for keeping things looking straight and sharp. This image below I took of my son last summer. The line coming from the top of the fence behind him is what is important to keep even. With a lot of great shots come candidness. In this particular moment, I saw my son standing there looking out at the water. Before calling his name, I took a second to quickly"set up". I do a lot of photography down on one knee since I'm photographing little short guys all the time! That way, we're straight on. So I looked in my view finder, put my subject in the center of the screen (with help from my grid) and then I made sure that the top line from the fence was straight with the line in my grid. I then called out, "Hey Warren!" With a quick turn around, I got my little mismatched boy looking right in the camera, and everything STRAIGHT as can be!

Another option is post cropping. Most software that comes with your camera will offer this option. Your computer most likely also has a cropping option in whatever program you use to view your pictures. Look for an 'edit' button if you don't see the word 'crop'. With post cropping, there's always the chance that you may need to sacrifice something in your image to make it look neater. You may find after playing around with the image that you like the original better. That's when the undo button comes in handy :) But sometimes sacrificing part of an image, means gaining a much more attractive and finished look. Below is a before and after of a picture that was taken very quickly! Taking pictures of lots of little kids and trying to get them to all look happy at the same time means something usually isn't going to be perfect! The swing they're sitting on is slightly slanted on the ground, but who needs to know that in a picture?! Cropping screens always have grids 

as well. So use those lines to line up with lines from the scene you're working with. I have an option when cropping to align the image, or tilt it. Very helpful for situations like this. 

When taking a quick (or even not so quick) picture that may need potential cropping, it's always a good rule of thumb to leave yourself some extra room. This also serves as a double purpose for when you print your pictures. Depending on the dimensions of your print choice, you may need to crop a portion of your image to get the desired size. So if you have some extra room, you won't need to crop off feet (a huge pet peeve of mine that I will speak of in the future!) or tops of heads.

Hope this might help with making your pictures look clean!!!

One More Thing.....

My oldest son (the tallest blonde on the swing above) is graduating pre-school on Friday. I can't believe I'm going to be the mother of a kindergartner. I find myself forgetting so many things lately. I blame it on being a mom of 3 kiddos! I go from one room to the next and forget the reason why I'm standing there! As many things seem to escape my memory, one of the moments I will never forget is the one when I met my first baby. How is it that he's gotten 5 years older, but I still feel like a young chick?! (a young chick with a memory of a 90 year old!) I'm looking forward to enjoying this summer with him before he officially starts his full time schooling for the next 13 plus years! Milestones are so bittersweet. 

A Little Introduction

Anyone who knows me would have my back when I tell you that I was born with the God given gift of gab. Of course I am blessed with other gifts too, but if there's one thing I love to do...and I think I do well... I love to chat! My husband and I will have long talks, (which of course he loves) and when we get to the point when I can feel the energy of our conversation coming to a conclusion, I will often say, "oh and one more thing!". He loves it :) To justify my more recent love of chatter, my full time job is being a stay at home mom to 3 children. Their ages are 5, 3, and almost 9 months. It's pretty obvious that there's not much adult conversation going on in my normal day. When I am with other adults during our day, it takes 2 hours to finally finish a conversation that would've taken maybe 5 minutes if there were no such thing as interruption! So there you have it...this girl has a lot to say, and I think I have some great and even beneficial things to share. I'm hoping to reach out to many readers, but we shall see how it goes. I plan on using my hobbies and other gifts, along with my chatty Cathy gift, to get across to people!
I mentioned my full time job is being a stay at home mom. Before that happened, I was working as a full time cosmetologist doing hair, make up, waxing, and nails. After I had 2 children, I went back to work for a couple of years and loved getting out of the house and having some "non-mommy time". When I got pregnant with my 3rd baby last spring, I decided to call it quits in the salon. I still have some clients and my family that I do from home, which keeps me up to par! What's been keeping me even more busy the past couple of years is photography. I've had a love for this hobby since high school. I took a class in college and then more recently took an online class and did a lot of self teaching with books and practicing by taking millions of pictures!  I officially have started my own little photography business and it's been an answer to my prayers. I'm my own boss, I decide when I work, and I can do lots of the work from home. I love it! One more thing that I've been doing for several months now is leading and teaching a small group Bible study. I've learned so much from doing this and although sometimes it feels like I have a lot on my plate, I know that I am doing what it is I am supposed to be doing right now. Last but not least, I have been very interested in a healthier way of living. I haven't made any major changes thus far, but perhaps in the following weeks to come, we may just see some transitions. 
I look forward to sharing stories of motherhood, beauty tips, photography tips and lots of miscellaneous!
I will always make sure to conclude with a random:
One more thing....
So my husband loves, but does not own, motorcycles. A few years ago a good friend of ours let him borrow a Harley for the summer. As much as I hated the idea of it, I decided to brave up and go for a ride. I started out timid but I found myself enjoying it quite a bit! Anyway, so you know how when one biker drives past another biker they sort of put their hand out as if to say,  "Hey there fellow biker, have a good ride."? Well I was clueless to this little secret (or not so secret) biker code. When I saw my husband do this for the first time I said, "hunny do you know that guy?!" He laughed at my lack of slick motorcycle knowledge and filled me in. I then thought he was the biggest dork lol! Now I know that if you're driving a motorcycle and pass a fellow biker and you DON'T do the cool hand motion, it's just plain rude. Today I was driving in my mini van (I'm the coolest mini van driver ever so don't judge!) and there was a motorcycle in front of me and I witnessed this hand / wave...whatever you want to call it...thing happen. I thought, well why do just these bikers do this? Why don't us fellow mini-vanners do this too?! I mean, a friendly gesture to say, 'have a great day carting your van full of stinky kids around! I support you!' would put a smile on my face for sure. So if you see a crazy, but very cool, girl (yes I still call myself girl because it sometimes sounds weird to me to call myself 'lady') waving with style to my fellow mini van drivers, it's me! I hope you join in doing this, maybe we can start a new trend together :)