Memories of Summer

All the pictures are from Ocean City, NJ

School has started, jeans and sweaters are out of closets, chai tea is a regular occurrence, and pretty soon the leaves will start to change.

But this summer was amazing and I'm not ready to let it go. Not yet. When I was going back through my summer pictures I realized there were a ton of ones that never made it to the blog. So I decided to share some memories from summer days gone by.

~Mary Kate

More Challenges

Like I said last post, I haven't taken too many photos in the past few days and the ones I have taken are still on my camera which my mom has with her today.

Instead I've found several more photo challenges to join!
The first one is over at A Ray of Sunshine. Her theme is Winter and so I'm entering this picture from last week:

The next one is over at Cookie Cutter and the theme is "color"

The last one for today is hosted by Lucia at her blog - Lucia, etc. - and the theme is "the little things". This is my entry because it's the little things like striped pants and red sneakers and golden hour bokeh that make this picture perfect.

This is my youngest brother who is 23 months.

Thanks for stopping by!
~Mary Kate

Road Block

The most time consuming part of blogging {for me} is choosing and editing the pictures. Usually. 

I just type out a few sentences and let the pictures do the majority of the talking. Usually.

But tonight? Tonight I'm struggling to put my thoughts to words. I've started this post four different times now, going off in four different directions, but I didn't like any of them. I sat down planning on writing a wisdom filled post but I guess that will happen another time.

For now I need to go to bed and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow is an exciting morning, I have my second family session! This time outside. I'll get better pictures but it's going to be about 27-30degrees and a little windy so I might freeze.

 

So goodnight my dear blogger friends. Your sweet comments warm my heart and it's fun to know that somewhere, some of you are reading this. :)

I've been playing around trying to create a watermark that I love and I think this may just be the one! What do you think?

~Mary Kate

 

Photo Story

Today the photo I'm sharing is not my best photo by far (actually it's a pretty bad photo), but it does have a story so I'm linking up with:

Last night as I was cleaning my desk before bed I found this surprise waiting for my on my curtains:

Now, for those of you who live where there are much bigger and scarier spiders, don't laugh. This thing almost killed me! We get these spiders in our basement (and sadly my bedroom is in the basement) and they are the biggest spiders we have. Of course I must kill the horrible beast. However in my photo obsessed head, I decide to get my camera and take a picture of it first. And then I spend about five minutes decided how to get rid of it. In the end I used an index card box to trap it and then I disposed of it. (I'm sorry if any of you are against spider killing, but when it's in my bedroom...)

And since this photo will totally ruin my photography reputation if seen alone, I must add one of my actually good photos:

And then to further prove what I can do, I'm linking up with Macro Friday:

It's not my most recent photo, but I just recently edited it:

~Mary Kate

Scavenger Hunt Sunday,,,just a tad late :P

This is my first time participating in a Scavenger Hunt Sunday and I actually started this post on Tuesday, but I had to get off the computer and this is my first chance back on since then. So, I missed the deadline to link up but since I went to all the effort to take these five pictures, I thought I'd share them anyway! (And as a side note: I use picnik.com for my editing and it's acting all goofy right now and won't let my change the font, so starting with my "sweet" photo, I wasn't able to use my normal watermark/logo.)

1)Seeing Double/Two

2)Whatever

3)Sweet

4)Space

5)Bright

Thanks for looking!

Love,

Mary Kate

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