Good to Wow: Faith Edition

My faith is not defined by how faithfully I wake up at 5:30 to read my Bible,




how much money I give to charity,




or how often I attend church.


Are those things--church, giving, and the Word--important to my relationship with Christ? Most definitely. But those things are not the means to measure my faith.

Rather, my faith is built upon redemption and grace.


I am made in His image. He knew me before I was born, and has a plan for me. He loves me for who I am.

It's not about the things I do or don't do. It's about what He did for me.


About the Edits:
Wow - I'm really off this week!! Obviously, I had to up the exposure on both of my SOOCs - thank goodness for RAW! And here are the details of the specific edits:

On the Bible - I did a tilt and crop, ctrl-j/adjusted to overlay, and placed Kristy's Aging Estate texture/soft light 100%

On the Hands - I warmed up WB, ran CoffeeShop's perfect portrait, using color pop, brighten, urban grit on coins, skin smoother, and vignette

Good to Wow: Up Edition, Edited

First, I want to give a shout out to Michelle at Heartfelt Life, Handmade Balance. She awarded me the Stylish Blog Award last week. I have received this award before, so I will not bore you with 7 more random facts about me (or in my case 10 because I am so OCD I have to round it up!). If you really want to know more random facts about me, click on the About Me tab above. But thank you, Michelle! I have enjoyed getting to know you; I have been blessed by your open and honest sharing about life and motherhood, plus you are a great photographer!


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Ashley's tutorial last week was the biggest a-ha moment I've had in this challenge so far. Although I did not apply to my Up photos the colorizing technique as outlined on the video, I did have fun playing with it. I took this photo (which, incidentally, is a DOWN photo):

I wanted the water to be bluer instead of that nasty brown. Learning the colorizing technique as well as the fact that you can fill the mask with black made it so easy to get blue water:

 Anyway, on to my Up photos. Can you believe that I did not know you could isolate a color in your picture on the Hue/Saturation slider? That was the biggest a-ha moment in all of the a-ha moments last week for me! Knowing that was there opened up so many other easier editing options for me! You better believe I used that tool a lot this week. Just because it was so much fun!

So the first shot:

Except for a crop, I really like this shot SOOC; however, I wanted to do some creative editing. I did nothing in RAW, just a crop. Then I cloned out some of the extraneous branches that seemed out of place after the crop.

And here was the fun part. I had in my mind that the brown color of the dead flowers would look so nice against more of an aqua background, despite how pretty blue the sky was. Before learning what I learned last week, it would have taken me forever to use the magic wand to select the sky and then adjust the hue. But this week - easy peasy: I created an adjustment layer to adjust the hue, chose blue, and adjusted the hue until I liked the color. I then increased the saturation a bit...and the plant wasn't even affected at all!

Finally, I placed Kim Klassen's chamomile texture and adjusted to overlay blending mode.

Now for my monkeys in a tree:

In RAW, I increased the saturation a tad. Then opened the photo, did a high pass filter on a new layer and adjusted soft light blending mode to 50%.


I thought about cropping so the focus would be more on the boys, but I just loved the huge spread of branches against the beautiful, blue sky, so I left it as is.

And my lone monkey:

In RAW, I increased the blacks and the saturation just a bit. I then opened the picture and did a high pass filter on a new layer, which I adjusted to pin light blending mode. I then flattened the image, created a new layer and adjusted the sharpness a bit as Jacob was a bit out of focus. Finally, I adjusted the color curves to get rid of some of the shadows on Jacob.



And my crow photo:

In RAW, I cropped and increased the blacks to try to bring out the crow a bit. I then opened the photo and created a new layer. I adjusted this layer to difference blending mode at 50%. I then created another layer and adjusted this to overlay at 100%.



And then my stormy sky photo I pulled from the archives:

I mentioned that I edited this photo once before but wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with it because I didn't yet know what I learned last week. This is how my first edit looked:


You'll notice how strange and fake the trees look because I wasn't able to isolate any one color which resulted in my actions affecting the entire photo.

With last week's lesson in mind, I did a slight crop to get rid of the top of the house, and in RAW I increased the blacks, the contrast, and the vibrance. I then opened the photo, created a new layer, and adjusted it to overlay. This created a very dramatic stormy sky, but also those terrible trees as in the photo above. So I created an adjustment layer to adjust the hue/saturation. I then decreased the saturation and lightened the reds and yellows to bring the trees back to more normal.






Finally, I want to share with you another sky technique I've used several times, one I learned in my early PSE days through a YouTube video that I couldn't find for you now if you asked me to. But I'll try to explain it here. I know you've seen this picture before, but it was a great one to use for this example.

I took this picture in New York and love the buildings but don't like the sky. It is too gray/white...dull.

So I used the magic wand to select the sky area on the right of the photo. I then opened a photo that had a sky in it that I liked. Using the rectangle tool, I selected a section of the sky. I then pressed ctrl-c to copy this selected area. Then I went back to my building shot and chose "Edit" and "Paste into Selection". I then used the move tool to resize and fill the selected area with my new sky.




Well, that is it. Thanks again to Ashley for a great tutorial last week!

Good to Wow: Up Edition, SOOC

I'm looking forward to editing my Up photos, which are all sky shots, because I anticipate applying much of what Ashley has taught us, including perhaps the method that was outlined in her tutorial on greening up your dead grass. Not that I'm going to present any green skies, but the same techniques can be applied here. Anyway, here are my Up shots (ha!).

Two monkeys in a tree. And, lest you think these are all archived photos, no, we still don't have any leaves on our trees.

I have developed a love for and fascination with crows because of all of the wonderful photos I have seen Julie at jules j gallery take of these birds. I previously thought of them as just a nuisance, but they really are so pretty...especially in the winter against the brown grass and white snow. I have not yet succeeded in snagging that perfect shot of a crow, but I thought I might achieve something with some cropping in this shot.

Finally, this photo is an archived photo from a couple of weeks ago. I already edited this, but in light of new things I've learned, I thought it might be fun to give it another go. I love this stormy sky:

Good to Wow: Green Edition, Edited

My SOOC of the missile on board the Growler Submarine:

And my edit:




I didn't do a whole lot to this. Pulled the exposure up a bit, increased the saturation a bit. Then I ran Coffeeshop's Urban Grit and brushed it on to the blades at 65%.

The USS Intrepid (also Good to Wow: Green Edition, SOOC)

Note: If you're here from Jill's blog and don't want to see a million pictures, scroll down to photo #5.

We spent this past weekend in New York City, and one of the fun things we did was visit The Sea, Air, and Space Museum, which houses the Growler Submarine, the USS Intrepid, and a British Airways Concorde.

Our tour into the belly of the Growler Submarine was very interesting.


The control panels were fascinating to see, especially considering what these types of panels might look like on a modern submarine.




Here is the submarine mess hall:


And what good is a submarine without weapons? The missile was pretty impressive.
(Good to Wow photo):

Our next stop was the USS Intrepid.


It has an impressive history. Commissioned in 1943, it saw 2 wars as an aircraft carrier, held up under the attack of two suicidal kamikaze airplanes,








served as a recovery vessel for a space mission,


and filled in as the temporary FBI headquarters following 9/11.


It is as impressive in stature as in history.

We ate in the main Mess Hall


and also got to see the Officers' Mess Hall.




We also saw some of the living quarters.






Following our time visiting the Intrepid, we boarded a British Airways Concorde.


Nothing particularly impressive except possibly the bragging rights I now have to say I've been on one. The one interesting fact that stayed with me is the fact that a flight on the Concorde was very quiet because it flew faster than the sound of its engines.

Definitely more impressive was the short movie we saw about the Intrepid. It presented a history of the ship and included interviews with a couple of POWs like John McCain. I was struck by this quote from Commander Paul Galanti: "There's no such thing as a bad day when you have a doorknob on the inside of the door." Now there's perspective.