this is just my temporary home: July 2011

Friday, July 29, 2011

Goodbye...{for a week}

First of all I want to thank everyone that has followed and/or commented on my blog. It's really cool to get to read your comments and then go to your blogs and read your posts (I'm sorry if I don't always comment).
Anyway, back to the issue at hand. I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a week long retreat/camp with my family and I won't have any Internet access the whole week. Then me and my sister are going straight to Chicago to visit our cousins for another week. However the second week (in Chicago) I will have internet access and I may even be able to upload pictures so I can share with you all my 30 Day pics and 365 that I will have taken at the family camp.
So no worries when you don't here from me for a week up to two weeks (although I will try really hard to post at least once while in Chicago even if it's pictureless). I will continue taking photos for the 30 Day challenge and the 365.

30 Day Challenge
Day 4 {July 28th}:

Day 5 {July 29th}:

Day 4 {July 27th}:

Day 5 {July 28th}:

Day 6 {July 29th}:

Love,
Mary Kate

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Dipping into B&W

Since it's Wednesday, I thought I'd enter this for the first time:

My photo:

Then for the 30 Day Challenge:

I''ll have to post my day 4 photo for the 365 Challenge later, because my interenet is being stubborn and picnik.com is going incredibly slow. :(
The weather is very hot here, although today was a nicer day. I leave for vacation in three days. I'll be gone for two weeks. The first week with no internet access which means no blog posts, but at least for the second week I'll be able to access the internet, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload pictures.
Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting and following!
Love,
Mary Kate

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Touch Up Tuesday

This is my first Touch Up Tuesday and I wanted to share three. Two of an old picture I took a year ago with my original cheep kodak point & shoot. And then one I took with my new Canon T2i.I don't have photoshop yet so I use picnik.com which is working fairly well until I can get photoshop. Also, for the first two photos, I took them so long ago that I'm not exactly sure how I edited them. (And I don't even remember how I re-edited them a couple months ago). I know I warmed the colors, played with the exposure, brightened the eyes, sharpened the features and lightly airbrushed the photo to try and get rid of so of the noise (due to the cheepo camera I had).

I want to show two from the point and shoot because a little bit ago I went back and re-edited what I had already edited. So for these two photos I have the SOOC, original edit and the re-edited version.
Photo 1:

SOOC

Original Edit

Refubished Edit

side-by-side

Photo 2:

SOOC

Original Edit

Refurbished Edit

These are the two edits side-by-side

Photo 3: (This one I took recently with my DSLR and edited once)

SOOC

For this one, I played with the expose, warmed the colors a bit, brightened the eyes, sharpened features, blurred the background a bit more and airbrushed. That is it I think. :)

Edited Version

And real quick:
30 Day Challenge
Day 2:

365 Photo Challenge
Day 3:

Thanks for looking!
Love,
Mary Kate

Monday, July 25, 2011

30 Day Challenge

Hey guys! So I was inspired by Allie over at alliephotographyblog. I was going through some of her labels and clicking on the ones that caught my eye. Last Nov. she did a 30 day challenge where you use one object and take a picture of it everyday in a different place for 30 days. I really liked that idea so I'm doing that now. I'm using an earring of mine.

Day 1 {30 Day Challenge}

My earring is in one of those fiberglass lights.

Day 2 {365 Photo Challenge}


Tomatoes growing in our garden.

I also started doing this photo challenge:

The letter for this week is "I"
My picture:

With my "I" word being "Irresistible"

And the last challenge I'm doing (for right now) is Project 64. I just found that one too, but I like so much that I'm jumping right in at week 29 with the color being "Wisteria".
My Wisteria picture:

.I know I'm now doing 4 photo challenges but at least 2 of them are weekly and 2 are daily.

And before I finish this post, I'll leave you with a few more of my favorite images:

My youngest sibling, Joey (he's 18 months)

The three year old, Benny.

My 8 year old brother, Max.

I know this looks like a fall picture, but actually I just took it, we have a Japanese maple which is red all year.

Love,
Mary Kate

365 Photo Challenge

I tried to start the 365 photo challenge last January when 2011 started, but after just a few days I stopped. I still hadn't bought my DSLR camera yet and my old camera was becomming increasingly frusterating. But I've been inspired by finding all these awesome new blogs to follow and I'm starting the 365 Challenge again! This time I will finish!

So today was day One:

I set up blueberrys on our back porch for today's picture.

And since this is a new blog I thought I share a "few" {well actually make that a lot} of my summer favorites:

My purity ring in a tulip.

At a beach in CT when we visited my Grandfather.

A sunset in Ocean City NJ

Another sunset in Ocean City NJ

Both pictures taken at Ocean City NJ, Left = sunrise Right = twilight

Ocean City NJ sunrise and dew

Left: flower, sunrise Right: my beautiful cousin who was pregnant with twins. (Please pray for her, shortly after this week she lost the first baby and just a couple days ago she the lost the second twin. She has already had two other miscarriages in the past year before these two. She and her husband are really hurting right now. {they do have 3 other beautiful children but the lose of 4 babies in one year as been really hard.} )