Dress-up Photo Shoot

To debut what this elf was up to in the wee hours of the night prior to Christmas, the kids and I had a little photo shoot (They were SO much fun!).

This dress-up set is made up of different coordinating pieces for lots of costume variety and with adjustable sizing (velcro, ties, smocked backs, etc.) for years of use. So here's a sampling of possible costume combinations. Any thing you see that isn't plastic was made by yours truly.

Oh and you should also know that Elyette posed herself 90% of the time :)...

Victorian Sweetie I made the base of this hat from craft foam so it may not last long, but it was a fun experiment (makes me really want to try out a hat making class)

Belle of the Ball
Ain't she a beauty?

Masquerade

Mystery Maiden

Rags...

To Riches

And I'm not one to leave Dude out of all the fun...

Its a bird, its a plane, its...

Robbing the rich to feed this chubby :)

Buttler King

Howdy!

My Knight in plastic armor
...who tried to kill me- and the camera- thus ends our photo shoot.

Carson and Marissa's Wedding

Yep, FINALLY a post... meh, better late than never. And I don't think I need to warn you that there are MANY pictures. Its a wedding post, thats to be expected ;).


The highlight of my summer was my little sister, baby of the family, Marissa, getting married June 12th to Carson Stam. Welcome to the fam Carson! Boz and I got to do her photography. Hence the reason I didn't post right away. We were editing... but now I have no excuse 'cept laziness.

More pictures here and here



one of my personal favorites!

The whole crew (Stam and Smith) at the Temple. It quickly became apparent that the 80 chairs we had set up for the reception the night before was only going to cover "us".

I think Jack enjoyed being pretty much parent-less at the temple (since mom and dad were busy snapping photos)... hey Boz, where's that pic of Dude lying in between the automatic doors?

Even better than being parent-less was having "Ria" (his cousin Zacharia) to play with. They are best buddies! Jack still "talks" about Ria.

And guess who was pretty much ALWAYS right next to the bride :)?

She was a good little flower girl.
The lovely Bridesmaids.
Daddy and his baby.
My family! sniff, sniff... Miss you guys!
Front(left to right): Elisa, Rachel, Stephanie, Mom, Marissa, Amy, Jacob, Jennie
Back (because we are the only tall ones :)): Dad, Matthew, Me
The Grandkids... haha. Classic. Poor little Julia and is that Jackie we're loosing there in bottom left?
At Las Margaritas, Missy's fave, for the Luncheon. Don't you love her dress too? She made it of course :).
I think our massive numbers overwhelmed them a bit so it was a LONG wait for half of us (we lived off chips and salsa for a while), but it was soooo worth it. The food was SO good!

-Oh and please ignore the fact that I look like crap! I did the whole day. I was a pretty busy. Didn't have time to dry my hair even, but hey the Bride looked great and I'll take some credit :). Which I'd like to mention, I got to be her hairdresser so they let me go with her and my mom to the bride's room after the sealing. That was soooo neat for me. The last time I got to be in that room, I was the bride. Didn't know I'd get that privilege again!

So can I just say the Smith's can throw a party (mom deserving ALL credit of course)!!!
Great Food!

Heck, who wouldn't want to go to wedding where the centerpieces are baskets of bread served with garlic butter and cravats of oil and vinegar?
We had a pasta bar, mmmmm. Too bad I was way to full from the Luncheon to dig in. I think Boz rather enjoyed himself though!

I did, however, non-stop nibbled on these tasty appetizers. Oh and mom, I really want that Mediterranean salsa recipe!
Italian Soda Bar-the closest to alcohol you get at a Mormon wedding :).
Classic Steph and Scott.
Dancing!
Love this one. (to mention dresses again, I LOVED my mom's dress!)Save this one: Boz dancing. Only for Elyette :). This is probably only 1 of 2 pics of Boz at the wedding... that's what happens when you're the one behind the camera.
We mostly enjoyed watching the kids dance (I think the boys were all in the movie room :)).
Cake!
Hmmm, I think they were too nice.But my standard may be different.
We all we're pretty pooped.

It seriously was awesome! Can my frugal self just brag too on how little these HUGE shindigs come about from (k, I have some tact, so I won't give the actual $, but I bet you'd NEVER guess).

It all comes from having so much talented family!

-Of course the first to honor would be MOM! Who did it all! How many dresses did you sew mom? Not to mention the Bride's! This wedding had a LOT of sewing. Marissa did her fair share of it though. Marissa, Elisa and I spent up to the end sewing table runners :). In fact I think I was even tacking down my mom's dress for her in the car on the way to the Luncheon!
-My sisters, mom, brothers-in-law (maybe my brothers too :)) were on mad food prep duty.
-We all set up
-Melissa made the cake!!! (honorable mention here!)
-Aunt Diana arranged bouquets.
-Bruce DJed.
-Jacob MCed.
- and the list goes on...

Oh and I can't leave out my uncles' (namely Sparkie!) contributions to Smith weddings either: The Car. Sorry, its a rite of passage. (I guess they needed to give Carson the license plate to make sure they destroyed the right car?)

People are still shocked (aka: appalled) when they hear what happened to our car. I, quiet frankly don't get what everyone is so worked up about (a car has never been harmed). I wouldn't feel loved if they hadn't. Don't know how Marissa feels :).

I think she got off fairly easy. Just some Chocolate syrup smeared all over the windshield that was washed off before we even got to see it!
Love you guys! Hope its been marital bliss since!



PS: The car legacy (The good ones of my memory)
Elisa and Wes: Rewired horn to brake (I was impressed with what swiftness Wes set it right)
Jacob and Melissa: Took the tires off, wheeled them in during the reception and put them on the gift table with a bow. (Calm down, we put them back on before they were even leaving)
Boz and Maegan: Filled the entire car to the ceiling with packaging popcorn (from sun roof). It was good!

Super Flash Extravaganza BM 1.0 Flash Attachment

Problem:

1) I’m cheap. I don’t really like spending money on stuff unless I really need it.
2) When I take pictures, I want them to look as good as possible.
3) I live in an apartment whose lighting resembles that of a cave.
4) The built in flash on any camera is anything but flattering.
5) I’m a dork and I like to build things from household parts that function less efficiently than product they are trying to replicate.

Easy Solution: Buy a flash. This violates rule number one and five, therefore this solution is not viable.

Dorky (but cheap) Solution: The Super Flash Extravaganza BM 1.0 flash attachment. This little gadget will give you soft lighting for your indoor pictures using the built in flash. It resolves every one of the above problems. Not only that, but it is sleek and stylish.

The results: Here are three pictures with different flash settings.

No Flash: The natural light looks good, but the shutter speed is slow and the ISO is all the way up to 1600, making it both noisy and blurry.

Standard Built in Flash: As expected, the shadows are harsh and the lighting is very unnatural.

Super Flash Extravaganza BM 1.0 Flash Attachment: Soft natural lighting without the noise or the low shutter speed issues.

Not too bad. I wouldn’t say that it can replace having a solid flash, but for pictures taken in my cave of a home with a low white ceiling, it works quite well. Costing a total of a few cents, basically to cover the cost of hot glue, there’s no real harm if I happen to lose or break this thing.

Oh right, here's a picture of it. Notice the modern sharp edges.

Family Portrait

We decided to get together this week for a family portrait.

Photoshop White Balance

Last year I was a little annoyed that Photoshop didn't have a "click on white to white balance the picture" function. So I wrote this little script to do just that. I figured someone else out there might have some use for this too.

All you do is use your eye dropper to select a color that should be white to make it the foreground color, then play the script. It will give you a few parameters to adjust so you can fine tune your color adjustment, and tah-dah, you have yourself a white balanced image.

A few things to note:

1) It applies the white balance to the layer that is selected, not the entire image.

2) It saves a new layer, so it is completely non-destructive.

3) I wrote this for Photoshop CS2. I would assume that it works for CS3 and CS1, but I've never tried. I knowthat it doesn't work for 7.0. I did make a 7.0 version though, so if anybody wants that one, let me know and I will try to dig it up. I'm pretty sure it didn't have as many options.

4) It has a black balance option too. Click on something that is supposed to be black and make that color the background color. I have never actually used this with good results, but it's there in case your picture has really messed up shadows.

5) It actually works pretty well. If your colors are way off, then it's probably better to fix it by hand. I think having the intensity and the threshold options are pretty handy, being that I generally don't want my whites to actually be pure white.

Known issues:

1) If you have more than one layer selected, it is going to screw stuff up. It won't mess up your picture, but it will create a bunch of layers and the white balance won't work.

2) Mac users, it works just the same, but you don't get to preview the changes you are making when the dialog is open. I suggest unchecking the "merge to single layer" option and just adjusting the opacity of each layer that the script creates. This is the same adjustment that the "Intensity" knob adjusts.

These are the only issues I know of. If you find other problems, let me know, and I will most likely do nothing about it.

How to run:

Just stick it in your Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Scripts folder. Next time you open up Photoshop, it will be under File->Scripts.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

White Balance CS2.jsx - you'll want to right click and save as or it will just open up the code in a new window.