Stars, Stripes & Red Bug Bites

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.

What better way to start this blog off than with a promotional shoot for my Fourth of July minis. Ryan Kate absolutely loved her little outfit from Random Ragalia. It was a $30 steal!! Right now she is totally into wearing a bathing suit all day long, even if she isn’t going swimming, so that probably helps. This new “Wear it, mama!” attitude sure has helped with these promotional shoots. For the past, I don’t know… 25 months and 15 days of her not wanting to have clothes put on her at all — it sure hasn’t been easy. (FYI… She is only 27 months today.) Thank goodness for this new chapter! She has also started to follow instructions when it comes to posing! This makes my mommy/photographer heart leap with joy. See that little hand over her heart up there… that only took 16 shots to get. A lot of them looked like this.

Of course, Daddy got to tagged along to hang the flag and make sure she didn’t run for the highway. He loooovvess to come on these shoots **insert in ALL of the sarcasm EVER** but I literally couldn’t do them without him. Ryan Kate is getting better at cooperating for these shoots but she is still a full-blown firecracker at times. So having him there really helps me out.

What he missed while I was shooting was the army of red bugs marching up her little legs! Ok, I can’t totally blame this on him, but lesson learned. I now come prepared with bug spray! This may be what she was doing in this shot though.

You’ll learn through out me blogging about Ryan Kate or if you ever actually meet her that she can’t hide what she is feeling. Every emotion is written all over her face. I hardly ever walk away not getting a shot of her giving me or Justin the evil eye.

But as long as she keeps giving me an equal amount of smiles everything will be good.

After any good and quick promotional shoot comes the editing process. A lot of people comment on my editing. Some good, some bad. The bad use to affect me so much, but now I just roll my eyes at it (even if it is just mentally). My artwork will never please everyone. It has taken me years of teaching myself to edit at the level that I do now. Trial and error, baby; everyone goes through it. All of that has built up a lot of pride in myself though. Nobody gave me this talent. I took it. I own every error and every accomplishment. So yes, I use Photoshop (obviously) and sometimes I photoshop some more. To me as an artist it is absolutely no different from an artist painting something then going back and adding their special touch to make it a masterpiece. When I plan these shoots I do them with the intent of framing my artwork in the end. They are art to me, not just a picture.

So with that being said here is a breakdown of what actually went into editing the picture above. Time: 35 mins. From the start I straighten the picture a little and cropped the right door to remove a string hanging down (not shown). Next I lowered the brightness a tad to get more of the sequin detail on her top. Then on to cleaning up her skin. On this specific picture the only thing I really did was remove the bruises (there are a ton of tiny ones, she’s a rough kid). After cleaning up her skin, I added two Greater Than Gatsby actions. If you haven’t tried these as a photographer, you definitely should! This really gave it the blue/gold-ish effect I was going for. Finally, I added the sparklers in. This shoot isn’t one that I would use or classify as extreme editing, but I will definitely be sharing those in the future.

&& ta-da… That’s about all it took. A flag, a $30 Etsy steal, photoshopped sparklers, and silly toddler.