A Labradoodle Saturday: Week 1

Annie does not like having her photo taken. But I like having photos of her. I follow so many blogs and photographers that do their yearly 365 days or 52 week projects. I have always wanted to participate but found my life lacked the proper subjects (kids). This year is going to be different. I have decided to post every weekend with an "Annie" post. I am going to base the photos I take off of a photographer I follow (My Four Hens) and her weekly themes. 

Friends, I give you: Reflection. 

I cannot wait until December where I can look back over a year of this sweet pup. This series already feels special to me after I lost my childhood dog yesterday. After my mom called and informed me that they had to put Molly down, I searched through all of my photos for pictures of her. Sadly, I could not find that many. I am also going to try and put myself in some of these images with Annie. It is so important to be in the pictures yourself. I hope doing this will better prepare me to photograph my own children and to also be in the photos with them. 

Enjoy! 

Spring is in the air.

After these past few brutal days of cold, it was so nice to have a day of warmth! Annie enjoys it too. 

Can you spot her?

They make my heart sing. 

For the past few weeks, they have been clearing the scary trees behind our house. Today, the finally made it directly behind out house. It is kinda scary sitting in your living room and looking out the back window seeing men cutting down huge trees.. But we are so glad this is happening because one tree already fell during a storm and rest looked far from safe. 

Dirty face.

Oh ya know, just a little sword fighting. 

I hope my flowers last until we move. And I am still in love with my sweet birds my Pa made me. 

On that note, we move in 46 days!!! That means we graduate in 44 days!!! We are just a little bit excited! We already have our apartment and just need classes to end so we can move our lives to Nashville. 

Tomorrow, we are shooting another music video for Trinity Avenue. So look for those pictures and updates on our Facebook page on for a new blog post! 

Lastly, I hope you all have a wonderful Easter with friends and family. 

Annie, in action

So, as I have already posted on Facebook, I am dying to shoot a newborn session. I have so many wonderful ideas and my first step was buying the supplies for my backdrop stand! So today, Justin and I went and bought about 50 feet of pvc pipe! So of course when we got home I had to try it out. Therefore, you are presented with the picture below. Annie and a white sheet I had helped with my trial session. 

We then preceded to go outside and run all of her energy off. She is so fast. Like cheetah fast. Like lightening fast. She can also jump. Like a basketball player. Like really high. She literally has springs in her legs. I have a video to prove this but I don't like how I look in it so I can't bare to post it.. =)

We love her. And she makes some silly faces. 

I love seeing that joyful face running towards me!!

Bahahaha

So sweet. We cut her hair around her eyes last night. So I have been singing all day "I can see clearly now, the hair.is.gone" I know, cheesy, but she likes it. =)

She loves the outdoors. This weekend we are traveling west to visit the nephew for his first birthday!! woot woot!! So Annie gets to stay with Mrs. Cindy over the weekend. She will have a blast and Lady is staying with her this time too! 

This week has been dreadful, so excuse the silence on the blog, on our page. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Stay warm! 

February?

70+ degrees today. These cold temperature have been hard for Annie. Being cooped up in a small apartment is too much for this pup. Today, we took her out for an afternoon stroll. Below are some pictures from our outing. I love walking around Bryan. It is always so peaceful. We always run into other people walking and everyone is always so joyful. Gorgeous blue skys. 

                                        

I love them. 

About to catch her stick

Silhouettes

I made this fun silhouette of Annie, our Labradoodle, this week. Why? Because I love silhouettes. With silhouettes being so popular right now, many people want to do them themselves. Below are some simple steps for how to make a silhouette in Photoshop. 

To begin, take a picture of your subject. Make sure their face is looking straight. I try to put them in front of something white, it helps in post.

I have opened my picture up in Photoshop. I then take the magic wand tool and select the background. I try to select a portion at a time and delete. This way I do not have to undo if the magic wand selects part of her hair flares. 

After I have deleted all of the background. I take my eraser and erase some of the left over remnants throughout. 

Next, take the magic wand tool and click in the white area. This should select all of the deleted out area.  After you have clicked, right click and select "select inverse." This will then allow you to capture the subject perfectly. 

Then, go to "Image" then "Adjustments" then "Hue/Saturation." If you are a Mac user the short cut is command+U. 

After the Hue/Saturation window opens, move the lightness bar to the left to black out your subject. 

And that is how I make my silhouettes. I then erase part of the body to give it a different effect. 

As you can see in the above pictures, my subject was hanging off the right hand frame. After you are done, you can easily move it to the center. Take the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and drag a large square around your subject. Make sure to not cut off any important parts. While still having the box selected, click the "Move Tool" (white arrow) and drag your subject to the center. To get rid of the box, go back to the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and simply click anywhere on your image. 

I hope you find this silhouette tutorial helpful. A key part is making sure your subject is up against a solid wall. This silhouette of Annie worked pretty seamlessly. However many do not work out so well. =)

a little pruning

Our dearest Annie. She is by far, the most annoying thing to photograph. She purposefully does not look at me. I make all sorts of exotic noises and never receive any recognition or eye contact. I feel like she is a child sometimes and fully understands what she is doing. I find I can catch a glance if I hold something up real fast (like a leaf) and make an excited sound (like "AH! Look what I found"). 

Anyways, the point of this post to boast about my amazing skills. Annie's tail hair has been insanely long. When we had her groomed last, the woman did not even trim her tail. It was like a giant flag sweeping around everywhere. It looked grose. And I hated it. We all hated it. So! I cut it! I cut a good four inches off. Her hair is at my favorite point right now. She looks scruffy without being a knotted, matted mess.

Like???

Honestly, she could be making eye contact here but I just can't see her eyes because of her hair. I think cutting her eye hair will be on the to-do list for today. 

So pretty!