Andrea and Dan: Engagement
See the cute dog in the first picture? That's Francois. A french bulldog with a fancy name and absolutely adorable owners. Francois was adopted a little over a year ago by Andrea and Dan. Frankly, if I were Francois, I wouldn't want anyone else adopting me. He is so loved, cared and pampered. Can you expect less affection from two people already madly in love with each other?
Dan is into social work. Andrea works for a non-profit Pediatric AIDS Foundation. I am sure I do not have to write more for you to understand that this couple is all about giving.
I will spare the beginning of their love story until they get married on March 21st. Nothing short of a miracle. Nasim and I are honored to be chosen as their wedding photographers and are looking forward for the perfect day! 21st of March is special. It is the day when day and night are equal in length. According to the Zoroastrian Calendar, it is the first day of Spring and the beginning of a New Year. Coincidence? Let's say Andrea and Dan are a match made in heaven. Let 21st of March, the first day of spring be a symbolic meaning of their new life as a husband and wife.
We met for the engagement session at a park right next to their new home. While it was a little chilly, both Andrea and Dan were filled with energy. Oh, and Francois was über-cooperative. Isn't he adorable?
Nostalgique
At times when my husband is away on a business trip or any trip whatsoever, I get so nostalgic, I start flipping the "pages" of Lightroom to glace over our old images. Oh, I do own those old style coffee table albums, too. If the technology keeps up the way it has been, I will soon forget which shelf is generously occupied by my albums. Instead of thinking or speaking out loud, which I do a lot, I decided to write my thoughts out loud. I am not sure if there is such a thing. If there is not, I hope people list "writing out loud" under my name in Wikipedia.
So, my husband is away for couple of more days. I am stuck home with my little dudes with no wallet or my phone! All my husband's fault! Which means all I get to do is cook, watch TV, attend to my boy's needs and get nostalgic of how my husband would play with the boys every night to give me a time off. Right about when I finished the last sentence, my younger son Osman, who is still not sleeping at 11:34PM is calling for his dad! Awwwwwwww, we miss you daddy-o, come back!
StudioWed Denver Grand Opening Soiree
Along with many wedding professionals of Colorado, I was invited to witness the grand opening of the new and fabulous StudioWed Denver. I simply couldn't pass this wonderful opportunity to participate in this event and get to know wedding professionals of Denver during this event. The studio is hip, stylish and very cozy. I am sure every bride who enters the premises of StudioWed will find comfort and assurance that their special day is in the safe hands of true professionals. Debbie and her team did an outstanding job creating such a warm atmosphere. Kudos to you guys!
Below are some of the images I took last night. I love this table setting and the floral design!
How to Submit Photos to Foodgawker and Tastespotting
If you have stumbled upon this entry, you are most likely having trouble getting your photos accepted by either FoodGawker or TasteSpotting. Believe me when I say I've been there and done that to get my photos through :)
You submit a picture of your favorite dish and wait for an e-mail from the site admins. Here comes the long awaited e-mail, in which it states that your image was rejected, because it was either dull, unsharp, had lighting issues or whatever other reason the admins came up with! At times, it gets very frustrating to find out that your precious creations were chosen not to be displayed on famous food sites. I too got very frustrated the first couple of times, until I figured out how to do it right. For those who are in the same boat as me, the following tips should help you to get your pictures approved by both FoodGawker and TasteSpotting.
Continue reading 'How to Submit Photos to Foodgawker and Tastespotting'
How to Whiten Teeth in Photoshop
Who wouldn't want pearly white teeth gleaming through a beautiful smile! This is a quick and one of the most effective ways of whitening teeth in Photoshop. I've tried many different ways before, but once I adopted this particular method, I never went back to my old ways again.
Here is how I do it:
- Open the image in Photoshop. If you are in Lightroom, simply right-click the image and click "Edit In"->"Edit in Adobe Photoshop".
- Zoom in enough to make it easy to work with teeth by pressing CTRL +.
- We are going to be using the 'Magnetic Lasso' tool to achieve this task. It is located in the upper left corner, under the 'Crop' button.
How to Brighten Eyes in Photoshop
This Photoshop tutorial is for brightening people's eyes and making them pop in portraits.
Eyes represent the soul of a person. They tell our story and are capable of magically transferring our emotions to the viewer. Good photographers know the importance of being able to capture people's inner feelings through their eyes, which is why they always strive to highlight the eyes by bringing them into complete focus. While as human beings we are quite used to looking at people's eyes while communicating to them, it doesn't always work the same way in photography. Sometimes there is just too much distraction in the picture and other things to look at that we would not even notice in everyday life. Whatever it is, these distractions move us away from the real story of the subject, getting us lost in insignificant details.
Fortunately, there are some simple tricks in Photoshop that can help to bring the viewer's attention back to the subject's eyes. In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to brighten your subject's eyes and make them "pop".
Curtains and Life
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about getting new curtains for our apartment. There was a lot of work involved in hanging the curtains. Since the ceilings were too high for me, my husband did the entire job by himself. I ironed the curtains though! Just as I hoped that we were all done, my mom told me that we did a lousy job assigning curtains to each window. As a matter of fact, it looks like there is more work ahead of me...
Each set of curtains came with clear instructions. Well, I have the curtains but I lost the instructions. A girl does not need any instructions, I said to myself. At least that's what I initially thought. As you see, I am still on a big mission and God only knows when it is going to end!
Here is the current look of my little nook I created for myself. I admit that it looks a little different right about now! It might look even more different a week from now.
Aside from not feeling very well for the last week and not being able to go out as much, we are trying to keep our sons busy and entertained. We added one more lesson to our routine daily exercises. In addition to book reading, phonics, drawing, watching cartoons and playing games - Omar is learning to write. He is doing pretty good, I shall admit. Well, he is no genius (at least not yet) but he is mommy's little smartie pants!.. and he needs a haircut.
2 Day House Cleaning
I bet Nasim that it would take us half an hour to hang the curtains. He said that it would take at least 3 hours to put up 2 full rods. Judging from my posts, you can probably tell that it took us 2 whole days! Well, the good news is, I haven't lost or won the bet :) We went out to our favorite Chinese place to celebrate the end of our two-day curtain hanging, spring/winter cleaning! Sorry, no pictures today :( I am so tired that even dark black tea cannot snap me out of my misery! I miss my camera and hopefully will have enough time to play with it tomorrow and post the promised pictures.
Later days everyone!
Where are my curtains?
My thoughts leading to hang new curtains in our small apartment led me to write this random post. We have postponed curtain hanging for a long time, thinking that we would be moving to a new place. Shortly after, we will. Truthfully speaking, I am so attached to this place and less likely would want to move. So, I begged Nasim to give me this opportunity to see my curtains hanging, which are tailored specifically for this apartment. My husband agreed to help me hang them and decorate our little bird nest!
As I was getting ready to drop an emotional "look-I-am-so-happy" entry in our blog, I searched the computer for the "before" images of our apartment. I ended up looking through the pictures of 2006, which by the way, are all point and shoot camera images. As I was looking at them, memories gushed through my brain with simple, but very pleasant moments. I did pick one picture of our living room, but decided to choose some more images to portray the beginning of my journey that started back in 2006.
How to photograph children
Photographing children can sometimes be a challenging task, since children typically do not like posing for the camera (especially when they are too busy doing something they like). Everything happens way too fast, making it extremely difficult for the photographer to capture the moment. Because of that, many of us end up with blurry and out-of-focus photographs and wonder how we can improve our photography skills to get better results. After learning much about child photography, taking pictures of my two boys and doing some work on the field, I decided to write an article and provide tips and pointers on how you can successfully photograph children.
Powerful child portraits are much different than "look at the camera and smile" pictures. A true portrait will reflect a child's personality, energy and uniqueness that every one of the bundle of joys have.
