Blissful Images Photography and a Note of Encouragement

I have been on a Spring cleaning/organization tear lately, and one of the resources I have found to be most helpful for finding organization ideas is the website apartment therapy. I cannot sing the praises of this website highly enough. If you have not checked it out yet, please do so right now.

Apartment therapy often links to other blogs, and it was in one of these blogs that I came across blissful images photography. I was instantly drawn to the soft, ethereal quality of the images and the watercolor-like muted colors. I lost several hours browsing the blissful images shop on etsy, the blissful images companion website, and the photographer's blog. Perhaps it is my lack of experience talking here, but I immediately drew the conclusion that the blissful images were captured with a much more expensive camera than mine. Because, I admit, I am still one of those photographers that believes you need a fancy camera to get fancy images.

It was to my shock and delight that I discovered that most of the blissful images were taken with a Nikon D40. A D40! To those of you who are not Nikon people, I will simply say that the D40 is an entry-level, 6mp DSLR. Until very recently, the camera did not even take a prime lens. Many enthusiasts love the D40, and I am sure it is a great camera. However, it is not a camera I normally equate with serious photographers. I stand corrected.

I find it so inspirational that there are people out there making beautiful images, and even selling them, with cameras that most shutterbugs can afford and handle. Thank you, Mrs. French for inspiring me and teaching me once and for all that it is the photographer, not the camera.

Love, -40

How to Remove Unwanted Images in Your Photographs Using the Clone Stamp Tool

When I first decided that I wanted to tackle the behemoth that is Photoshop, there were two main things I wanted to learn to do: 1.) Get that amazing "eye pop" that Audrey Woulard gets in her photos (I know, I know, she says she gets her shots to look like that straight out of the camera. But some of us need the help of Photoshop; and 2.) Get rid of unwanted objects in my photographs that were ruining an otherwise good shot. I set these two goals when I was still a naive young thing and hadn't yet been exposed to the full beauty of Photoshop. Needless to say, there are oh-so-many more things I now want to learn to do. But I still want that eye pop. And I still want to get rid of those darn things that sneak into my pictures.

Today, I will introduce you to the wonder of the clone stamp tool. This is a picture of my daughter that I really liked, except for that pesky ghosly apparition of my son in the background.

Enter the clone stamp tool. This is a really easy, and fun tool to use in Photoshop. Definitely something a beginning beginner can do with ease.

Open the photo you want to edit. Go into full edit mode. Click on the clone stamp tool. In my Photoshop Elements, Six, it is the eighth icon down on the left hand side of the tool bar. It looks like an "M" shaped stamper. Then go up to the brush selector at the top of the page on the lefthand side (it is a black squiggly line) and chose the size brush you want to use by either moving the slider or entering numbers into the box. I am going to be honest here and tell you that I have no patience. Because of this, I always choose a brush that is way too big and wind up doing alot of "undoing" when I work. Don't be like me.

Now, pick a spot in your picture as close as possible to the object you want to erase. You want to do this in order to seamlessly blend the new area you are about to create with the existing area. After you have chosen your spot, Alt Click on your mouse. By doing so, you have told Photoshop that you want the spots you are deleting in your photograph to look like the area on which you just alt clicked.

Now comes the fun part - click away on the object you want to erase. As you do so, the object will disappear and be replaced with the parts of the picture on which you previously alt clicked. Caution: as you move the cursor around your picture, be aware of the plus sign that moves along with it. The plus is continuously sampling your photograph and using the samples to replace your unwanted object. Keep an eye on it and make sure it is sampling from the correct area(s). I have wound up with a child with three arms and an eye in the middle of their forehead more than I care to admit!

Here is my picture after using the clone stamp tool:

Ahhh.....much better. And my daughter no longer feels haunted by her little brother.

This is such a fun tool. Have fun!

And remember, if I can do it, you can do it!

Love, -40

Seeing the Light - Finally!

In his book Understanding Exposure, Bryan Peterson talks about the significance of different types of light in photography. Learning to understand this significance, and see the different types of light, has been one of my biggest struggles as a photographer.

The lighting circumstances under which a photograph is taken can drastically affect the photo and can be the difference between a ho-hum picture and a showstopper. One aspect of seeing the light is understanding how the light changes over the course of a day and what this means for your photographs. For instance, sunlight at noon is a very different light than sunlight at sunrise and sunset. Mid-day, the light is harsh and contrasty. But in the early morning and evening, the sun is much softer and warmer. The same subject shot in exactly the same way at different times of day can yield startling different results.

I have been struggling to see the differences with my eyes for months, and, suddenly, it is becoming clear. A few weeks ago, I looked out the window at sunset and noticed that everything looked a pink. Now, everywhere I look, I see the changes in the light. My neighbor’s house is surrounded by a golden glow at 7:00 a.m. By 7:30 a.m., the magic is gone. At 6:00 in the evening, my fence looks like it is on fire. By 6:30, it is back to its normal state.

This is my fence at 6:25 p.m.


This is my fence one minute earlier, at 6:24 p.m.

What a difference one minute makes!



My baby in the car.

And just a few minutes earlier.





Do you see the warm glow in this picture that is absent from the one above?


My wall at 7:30 a.m. and a few minutes later.

I hope these examples help set you on your way to "seeing the light" and that you gain your sight more quickly than I did! Experiment, take pictures, and have fun!

Love, -40

P.S. If you haven't read Understanding Exposure, I highly recommend it!

How to Get Great Straight Out of the Camera Shots From Your Digital SLR

I mentioned in this post that I would reveal to you the secret about DSLRs. Then I thought, maybe it isn't a secret, maybe it just seemed like a secret to me, because I knew absolutely nothing about DSLRs prior to buying my first one back in July. Either way, I hope this post will stop at least one of you from bashing your head against the wall or throwing your expensive new camera out of a moving car in frustration because you are not getting the picture quality you expected from your DSLR.


I bought my DSLR after my third child was born. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get a good picture of the boy with my point and shoot. The problem was that 99% of my picture taking was happening inside in poor lighting conditions. With the point and shoot, I had two choices, I could use the flash, which completely washed out my son's pale complexion, or I could ramp up the ISO, which invariably lead to a shot so grainy I wound up deleting it. I needed a fast lens and a camera with better low-light capabilities. I needed a DSLR.

Unfortunately, buying a DSLR was not, as I had expected, the immediate answer to my picture-taking woes. In fact, I had new woes. My images now lacked sharpness and the colors were dull and lifeless. Nothing I did improved the quality of my photographs. I was frustrated and upset. I considered returning the camera, since I preferred the pictures I took with my point and shoot to the ones I was now getting. I went back to where I purchased the camera. The salesperson told me that I was expecting too much and would never get well-optimized images straight out of the camera. He told me that all DSLR images need some post processing. I was outraged. I could not believe that I bought an $800 camera that could not produce, without significant work on my part, images that were at least comparable to those produced by my $200 point and shoot.


After much investigation, I discovered that it IS possible to get great straight out of the camera shots with a DSLR. I'll say it again - you can get great SOOC shots! The secret is in the processing, as the salesperson had told me, but the in-camera processing, not post processing. It turns out point and shoots are specifically manufactured to produce sharp, saturated snapshots that are pleasing to the consumer eye. Manufacturers achieve this by setting the cameras' default settings to automatically apply fairly heavy-handed in-camera processing. In other words, the cameras are pre-set to add sharpness and saturation to the images they capture. DSLRs, on the other hand, either apply very light processing, or no processing at all, depending on whether you are shooting in JPEG or RAW. This deficit of in-camera processing allows you, as the photographer, to control how you want your photographs to look. You can control the look of your photographs one of two ways - you can spend time post processing, or you can change the in-camera settings on your camera. Now, I am not saying that you won't want to post-process your photos. What I am saying is that, in most instances, if you get your exposure right (more on that to follow), you will not HAVE to post-process.

Here's what you should do: Sit down with your camera's manual. All DSLRs have menus that allow you to go in and tweak the camera's settings. Learn how to do this. Play with your camera. Decide whether you like the bright, contrasty colors produced by your camera's "Vivid" (on Nikons) setting, or if you prefer colors that are more true to life. Determine how much sharpening you want applied to your pictures in-camera. Is your camera shooting dark? Play with the exposure compensation setting. You can change anything you want. Anytime you want. And that is a beautiful thing.

Coming Soon...

Rather than wallow in my misery about turning 40 this year, I have decided to involve myself in doing some things that I have always meant to do but never gotten around to doing. One of those things is learning more about photography and photoshop and becoming a better photographer. I consider myself my children's historian, and want to be able to provide them with photographs that beautifully and accurately capture their childhood memories. I plan to chronicle my learnings on this blog in simple, easy to read posts. By doing so, I hope to help other family historians and photographers learn photography as well as to help them avoid making the mistakes I have made/will make as a newbie, and track my own progress. Coming soon - the secret about DSLRs.

- 40