Portrait Photography and Other Things

I have revamped my second blog to be more of a homepage for my photography gallery and to include portrait photography. I have taken pictures of my kids for forever!! Most people who see my pictures will just ooh and aah over them and make comments like I should be doing this for a living. These pictures include everything from my Tree Series to my 'portrait' of my children. I love to take all kinds of pictures and I don't believe every 'portrait' shot should be posed. Some of my favorite images of my children are shots I took when they "weren't ready" as they put it. Catching the person in real life is as important as having them sitting in a stiff pose that feels wierd (but for some reason makes a great picture). Don't get me wrong, I feel that regular portrait photography has it's place as well, but I also feel that seeing people in a natural setting has it's advantges as well. You can truly capture the essense of a person by shooting them interacting with the world and the people around them.

Now, hard as it may be to believe, I am not the only person who feels this way. It has become a trend in protrait photography of late to take what is called Photojournalism Portraits. Which is pretty much what I just described. So, if you are looking for some great portraits of you, your kids, your whole family, then send me an e-mail and we'll work something out. You can click on over to my Photography Blog and take a look at some images of my own kids and my Art Prints that are available for purchase. Keep in mind that if you do not live in Texas, I will probably not be able to travel to take your pictures. For that matter, if you do not live in or near Central Texas, your chances are pretty slim as well. So, with that in mind, if you are still interested then you can e-mail me with details of the location you would like to have your photo session and I'll see what I can work out.

Now for the 'Other Things' my title implied. Above you will see four images that I have available for purchase in my gallery. I recently joined a group on LinkedIn where you can post your site with images for people to take a look at and give their feedback. I thought it was great so of course I listed my Gallery page for review. I have so far gotten only one response back on this feedback request and I was mildly disappointed with the comment. I feel that every artist has a particular style that can be attributed to them or that can be attributed to the artists they admire the most. What one person likes another won't, what one person will buy to hang in their home another will look at and wonder what drugs they were on when they bought that. That's just the way it goes. Different people have different tastes, right? So, would you ask Van Gough to make his brush strokes a little less visible? Would you ask Monet to make his landscapes a little sharper in clarity? Would you ask Ansel Adams to take more color photographs? (Granted you can't ask any of them to do any such thing as they are all perished now.) I am not trying to label myself with such great artists as those mentioned above, but it goes without saying that each one had a very distinct style that they used for their art. A lot of people can look a painting that was done by Van Gough and they know he did it by it's style, and it it's not one of his, then it was created in likeness to his work. Since Ansel Adams is my favorite photographer I can see a black and white image hanging on a wall somewhere and depending on the composition have some idea if it was one of his works.

Get to the point already!! Right? The comment that I was given is that my images tend to be "way over-saturated and way over-processed" and that I should "put up some regular images to appeal to more people". (Those may not be exact quotes since I didn't actually go look at the comment before posting here.) I felt that the comment was given in a helpful manner, and that the person was not trying to bash my work, just give their opinion, so I'm not taking any hard feelings from this. However, I can't help but wonder why someone, a fellow artist and photographer, would suggest I change my style to suit the masses. I'm not incapable of creating a standard image that has not been saturated to draw out color or processes to create a piece of art. I just like the bright colors and the interesting look of the stuff I do create. Other people like it too! At least they tell me they do, and they talk about which images they would like to have of their own, so I assume they aren't just lying to me. I wanted to post this here, to see what some other people think about the subject and perhaps to get some additional constructive critisism about my art. So tell me in truth...are my images too colorful and too processed? Would I do better to offer a plain jane photograph for the masses? Or should I stay true to my personal 'style' and create art that is appealing in my own eyes? If history is anything to look at, I won't get rich off my work until I'm dead anyway, and then everyone will be trying to copy my style too!!

I ♥ Faces - "Hands On" Challenge

This week at I ♥ Faces, they are moving away from faces. Which is totally cool with me because I love to take pictures of people and not just of their face. Hands can be very distinguishig and interesting as well as mouths, feet (not bare, unless it's a baby), eyes, etc. Well, to be even more of an off the wall kind of person (like I need any help there) I present you my image for this week's challenge:

My boyfriend's best friend Bruno allowed me to take this wonderful image of his "hand" recently and I thought it was a great shot to share for this challenge. Hope you enjoy my image and be sure to click the link below to see everyone else's Hand images!

Has Hell Frozen Over?

I apologize for the poor quality of the above photo. It was taken with my phone since I am at work right now.

This is the 3rd time it has snowed here in Texas this winter (maybe more) and I'm just curious if this is a sign that hell has frozen over.

Where Are You From?

I work with the public and some people will hear me speak and say "You're not from around here, are you?" To which I answer, "No." The resonse to my answer varies at times but it usually amounts to "Where are you from?" I hate being asked this question, because it usually involves a long explanation. My answer to the question is "Which year?" Which makes people automatically say "You must be a military brat." Here comes the explanation. "Yes, my father was in the Air Force for 22 years before he retired, however, my mom and dad divorced when I was 8. I went to 16 different schools (that I can remember) from Kindergarten through my Senior year. The longest I was in one school was 3 years, which was the school I graduated from. And oddly enough, that was when I was living with my dad. I was born in Japan, then we moved back to the states in Maryland. A few years later, my dad was shipped to Italy, it was during this time that he and my mother divorced. He was in italy for 4 years, then went to Germany for 4 years. Then he returned to the states and was stationed in Florida for a couple of years, then in New York. Looking back, I would have moved LESS, if I'd have lived with my father."

I hunted down a map of Japan that actually had the town I was born shown, but for some reason it's not showing up on here right.

Anyway, here is my list of places I've lived:

Japan

Maryland

Massachusetts

Ohio

Texas (all over the place here)

Florida

New York

I think I got it all, maybe. That's just the states I've lived in and not the individual towns. So, I have moved a lot. I always swore that I would not move my children around all over the place like my mother did and I have done well so far. They have been in this one town at the same school for 6 years now. Much longer than I ever was in one place.

What brings on a post like this? Well, I have my very first review item on the way and I am very excited. It is in some way related to something I have said in this post. Are you curious? You'll just have to wait and see what is coming. Be sure to keep your eyes open, because there will be a giveaway involved as well!

So...where are YOU from?

I ♥ Faces - Fix It Friday #44

TGIF!! I am so glad Friday has rolled around again. Not just because I now get two whole days off, but because it's time for:

This week's image is the cutest little girl. The original image was a great pose, but she was in shadow and I didn't like the houses in the background....but that's just me. So here is the original image.

First thing I did was to cut her out of the image. I then chose a new background for her and pasted her on it. I cropped the feet off the image since I couldn't get a good position of them on the new background. I adjustd the B&C on the girl and then merged it to the background. The only other thing I did was to add a Diffuse Glow to the merged images. Here is my 'fixed' version.

Hope you enjoyed my fix. Have a great weekend everyone, and don't forget to click the I ♥ Faces logo at the top to see what everyone else has done!

Top Ten - Convenience

TOP TEN LIST OF THE MOST ANNOYING THINGS CUSTOMERS SAY OR DO

10. Customers get mad at us clerks for not selling them tobacco or alcohol when they do not have valid ID.

          It is the law for us to card people before selling tobacco or alcohol. Our company policy states that we have to card anyone who looks younger than 35. Even if I've carded you before, and even if I've sold to you before, that does not mean that I am not required to do so again. Besides, I see HUNDREDS of people every day and I cannot remember everyone. It is illegal and will, at the very least, cost me my job if I sell to a minor. I could possibly go to jail for selling alcohol. So yes, I will card you, and I will refuse you if you don't have ID.

9. Setting an item down wherever you happen to be standing instead of taking it back where you got it.

          My store is not that large, it would not take you 30 minutes to cross the store and put something back where you got it (more like 30 seconds, if that). At the very least, if you decide you don't want it, bring it to the counter and I will take it back to it's proper location. It is very frustrating to walk through the store and find a pack of gum in the box of crackers.

8. Leaving trash on the counters and floor when there is a trash can right next to you.

          I have on many occasions had to dispose of creamer tubs, stirrer straws, napkins, straw wrappers, and may other things that someone has left lying all over the place. Or in a few instances, they attempted to throw something away only to miss the trash can and will just leave the trash where it falls. I find this extremely frustrating, do these people do this at their house too? Or is it just the lazy mentality that someone else is there and it's 'our job' to clean your messes?

7. Setting an empty coffee pot onto a hot burner, and then not even bothering to mention that you emptied a pot.

          I don't know how many times a day this happens. Someone will get coffee, get the last (or most of the last) of a pot of coffee and then set the empty pot back on the HOT burner. Really? They don't bother to turn the burner off (which is really easy, just flip a switch) or even tell me that they used the last of the coffee. As a manager, and even my clerks, we have a lot of things that we are required to do and cannot check the coffee pots every couple of minutes. A lot of times we don't realize this has happened until we smell the stench of burning coffee. It's not that hard to tell me (or whoever is working) that the pot is empty so that we can either A- turn off the burner, or B- make more coffee.

6. Thinking that the little latch that holds the gas pump open for fueling is fail-safe.

          Those little latches are for convenience, so a customer can let go of a cold handle or even wash a window or two. Theoretically, they are supposed to click off when your tank gets full. However, it is a man-made mechanical device, therefore it can and will fail occasionally. It is still your responsibility to watch your fuel, our pumps are Self-Serve. If you do not watch your fuel and the little latch does not click off and gas spills all over our parking lot, we will not give you a 'refund' for it. And if you threaten to set that spilled gas on fire (again...I actually had someone say that to me when I refused to credit the spillage) I will call the cops so fast your head will spin.

5. Failing to read obvious signs.

These lovely signs are right at the checkout counter and inevitably someone will come up and ask me if we sell money orders or if we accept bill payments.

Can you guess what people do instead of reading this sign? Yeah...they yank on the door (or push from inside) more than once, because they didn't figure it out the first time. I've seen people try three and four times to get through this door, with this sign up, before finally trying the other door. I honestly don't know that they ever saw the sign or if they just thought they'd try the other door.

I know what you're thinking...people will slip on the wet floor. Nope, luckly that hasn't happened yet. But what they will do is run into this sign. Trip on it, kick it across the floor, all because they did not see it.

4. Customer: "Can you turn that pump on?"

    Clerk: "I'm sorry, our pumps are Prepay."

    Customer: "I'm going to fill up." or "I don't know how much it will take."

          We have these fairly large stickers on all of our pumps that state, Please Pay Cashier Before Pumping. You'd think that would make sense, that you have to pay money first. If you have a card, you can even pay at the pump and never have to come inside. However, people seem to think that the Pay First portion of that sticker does not apply to them simply because they are going to 'fill up'. The whole point behind having customers prepay is because of all the idiots that thought it'd be 'fun' to pump and then drive away without paying. So, companies had to do something to stop this theft and loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus PREPAY. If I don't know you from Adam, do you really think I'm going to just turn the pump on because you want me to? Our company policy states that I am not to turn that pump on without recieving payment first or possibly lose my job over it. You needing to fill up is not worth me losing my job. If you don't know how much you'll be getting, overpay and we actually can give you your change back.

3. As I am marking and checking currency to ensure they are not counterfeit I hear "I just made that." or "It better be real, it just came from the bank."

          I realize that you are trying to joke around and make casual conversation, but I hear it over and over and over and I can only laugh so many times before I just want to roll my eyes and tell you to kiss off (only not nearly as politely). I check every bill that comes into my hands from $5 to $100 with the nifty counterfeit marker. The larger bills get a closer inspection of the strip and the watermark. EVERY SINGLE ONE, I will mark bills from my own wallet when I purchase something! I have seen fake $20s in my hand that someone handed me (and I did not need the marker to tell me those were fake). I also know that one of my clerks took a counterfeit $100 because the marker said it was real money (and it was...it used to be a $5). All I'm saying here is that you should stop and think that we have heard these lines over and over and don't get offended if we don't laugh every time you say it.

2. Customer: "This pot says Decaffinated, does that mean it's Decaf?"

Yes, I was actually asked this question.

1. Customer: "Is that your bathroom?" or "Can I use your bathroom?"

This picture is actually from my store, and you have NO idea how many people point at that door and ask me the above questions. In the small version of this pic, it may be hard to see the pink sign on the wall that says PUBLIC RESTROOM with an arrow pointing at the bathroom. In a conenient store, if the clerks, manager, or owners don't want you in a room, regardless of where it is positioned, there will usually be a sign on the door that says something like EMPLOYEES ONLY. Not RESTROOM, which imples that yes, it actually is a bathroom.

*All of the above images were taken at the store that I work at and manage. I in no way am trying to ridicule anyone....ok maybe I am. I really am just trying to help anyone who reads this become a better customer, because no matter how many times I've been told "The customer is always right." I say "Like hell they are!"

For Max - and an idea

As some of you know, I recently got myself a new camera. I took about 200 pictures with it the night I got it of anything and everything I could find. This little guy was one of the anything and everything. He is a cute little figurine, and in real life he's green. Now you are probably wondering why he's purple now. Well, that's because Max loves PURPLE! Who is Max, you say? Well, to find that out, you'll have to take a trip over to his mom's blog To The Max. All I'm going to tell you is that he's the cutest little boy with some special needs. I have enjoyed reading about his improvements, triumphs and even stories about his little sister (who incidentally loves blue). I had the thought to make Max his very own, personalized picture, so I did just that. As I finished up, however, I realized that this could possibly be the opportunity to really help out those with special needs.

My idea is thus: I will upload this image to my Shutterfly Pro page and offer it as a digital download purchase. However much money I make in 'profit' will then be donated to a research hospital or other such cause. I think it sounds like a good idea. The problem I am running into, is who do I donate to? I know there are a few research institutes out there, but which one would be best? I welcome any suggestions. Please send me an e-mail or just leave a comment with any ideas you may have. I do not want to limit my donation to a specific disorder research as I would like to actually start a series of sorts for special needs kids and have numerous images up for people to download to donate.

Thanks in advance! If you want to go ahead an purchase this print as a digital download, then you will need to visit HERE. I will be sure to keep track of all the money raised ($25 per download) so that it can be donated once I find a suitable place to donate to.

Experiment - Free Sponsor Listing

I am trying an experiment that I heard about from Josh Hanagarne in a post he wrote for ProBlogger. You should see a widget bar on the top of my page showing six 125X125 pixel squares that state YOUR AD HERE. This is my official casting call for sponsor auditions. I am offering a free month of sponsor listing for anyone interested, be it for your business site or just your blog. You will need to e-mail me (not just enter into the comments) the following information:

Your Name:
Your Site Name:
Your Product:
How you heard about this opportunity:
What qualifications do you possess that should make me choose your site for the free sponsorship?

I will be accepting "applications" for a couple of weeks and will announce the 'winners' on February 28th. The chosen ones (sounds important huh?) will need to provide their site image in jpg format at 125X125 pixels. I can resize the image if it is too large, but if that has to be done, there is some chance the image or lettering will get distorted. If you don't have a button and don't know how to make one, feel free to contact me BEFORE I announce the winners and I will see what I can do to assist you.

The winners (or chosen ones) will have their link/button displayed at the top of my page for the month of March at no charge. Anyone wishing to continue their sponsorship beyond that time will need to contact me for payment options. I will be offering a one month Sponsor listing for $25 past the free month.

Qualifications: What I'm looking for in a sponsor is a neat and interesting site. Whether you blog or have a business page, I want my readers who click through to be able to tell what it is and navigate with relative ease. I will not approve sponsors of anything that is considered 'adult' content, or in bad taste. I am looking for artists, crafters, moms, adoptive parents, anyone really who has a good answer to the qualification question.

I realize that there are a few possible outcomes to this post. 1) I will have no one show interest whatsoever and will feel like a complete idiot. 2) I will have a huge mass of applicants that I will have to hire a secretary to help me sort through them all. 3) If I have more applicants than 6, I will have to actually choose  4) Someone may get upset at my choices.

I hope that no matter which of the above outcomes take place that everyone who sent in an 'application' will not hold a grudge and will understand that I will not be making personal choices. The choices that I make will be what I consider best for my budding business as well as the chosen sponsors. If you think you may get hard feelings if you are not chosen, then please do not apply. I would rather have no applications and call this experiment a dud than to have people angry for a simple thing such as this.

Thanks to all who do actually take the time to apply, I can't wait to hear from you.

P.S. You will need to e-mail me at jayde778 at yahoo dot com

This Week's Featured Image - Week 8

I really liked the featured image that I used for last week, of course, I like all my images. You might say I'm a little biased. I am especially fond of trees though, my boyfriend has compared me to a tree in a beautiful poem, and I have always loved them even before that. Of course, my boyfriend has also (unintentionally) compared me to a donkey as well, but that's another story. Sorry, I didn't get this changed out last night, I was finishing setting up my new ordering page for my photography. Click on my SHOP button in the upper left corner of this page to check it out and place your order. All the images I use for my Featured Image can be purchased as prints there as well as many others that haven't made it to the title yet.

Here is last week's image. This was taken at the local park. This tree is huge and just gorgeous. It begs to be photographed. I have used it to take pictures of my daughter in and it makes a wonderful portrait setting as  well as a stand alone image. To create this look I used my usual Brightness and Contrast approach followed by Saturation at about 25%. I then inverted the image and I believe I used a Cartoon tool to create the drawn look on this one. I finished with the Diffuse Glow tool and this was the finished result.

The original image is on the other computer so I'll have to add it later. Have a wonderful day!

I ♥ Faces - Fix It Friday #43

It's that time again!! Time for :

This week's image it just too cute, but had a blah background and some lighting issues. I had fun with this one, and I even created a slide show to explain the processes I went through to create the "Fixed" image. I just hope I can get it to upload!

Sadly, no, I cannot upload the slideshow. But I will show you the original image and my finished image and figure out later how to show the slideshow. Be sure to click the I ♥ Faces link above to check out what everyone else had done!

The Original Image.

My "Fixed" Image.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my work here. Be sure to stop by my SHOP and browse around my own photography and digital art. Who knows, you might find something you like!

Canon EOS Rebel XS

This has got to be the MOST awesome camera ever! Ok...so maybe I'm exagerating, but it's the best camera I've ever owned, I've had it less than a day and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! If you have a spare $499 lying around I highly recommend it! Yes, I splurged a little with my income tax refund, but I really needed a good camera to take pictures with if I'm going to try to become a pro, right? Check out some of the awesome pics I've taken already!

Notice the great detail of the scales under his chin!

LOOK...you can see the fur on him and it's obvious that he's a black cat and not just some random black blob. This is probably the BEST picture I have ever taken of him.

It allowed me to focus on a single drop of water. Amazing, and this is just with the standard lens too.

I'm going to have to stop loading pics on here because they are very large files and take a long time to upload. Another thing I wanted to mention about the above photos. Most of you have seen my digital art, my editing skills, I have not touched these! I haven't so much as opened them in my editing software yet. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on some nice new images for my Shop. If you aren't following that one, you can go HERE and follow so you can see the new images as I load them. I am hoping to get a few done and put up in the next few days so keep a look out for them. I also plan to TAKE lots more pictures. It is just so fun with this great new camera. And the even more fun part is, I haven't even learned how to use all the cool features yet!

Hope you all have a great day! I plan to have an AWESOME weekend!

"Review Me", Valentine's Cards, and other stuff

I have been looking for ways to make money with my blog since I started this thing a few months ago. Call me a greedy blogger if you wish, but I am really tired of having to wake up at 4:15 AM every morning to work a 10 hour shift at astore where the corporate office is hundreds of miles away, yet they think they know how to run the store (by run I mean what items, products and how much what said items and products) better than I do. I have been doing this job for over 2 years now, and I have yet to have a bad audit (I mean a really bad audit) and have actually been told that I have one of the best audit numbers for the entire company (over 70 locations). I have also been passed over THREE times for a promotion to District Manager and I am just all around fed up! So, yes, I want to make money with this blog, lots of money, so that I can quit that job and 'fire my boss'! Anyway, back to the topic at hand. ☺ I found a great site called Business2Blogger and signed up for their e-mails  as soon as I read about it. It's a free service to bloggers and I would recommend anyone going and joining. I did some more hunting around the other day and found the Review Me site. I'm not trying to bash this site, but I was a little frustrated to get this e-mail from them today.

Hello,


We are sorry but the website you have suggested http://www.jaydescorner.blogspot.com has been declined at this time. The main reasons a website is declined are:

- The website is a suspected fake.
- The website does not have enough link popularity.
- The website does not have enough traffic.

*Please note that our algorithm that accepts or rejects inventory submissions can make mistakes and if you feel the above criteria does not accurately describe your website, please reply to this email asking for further review by our editorial staff.

The first one is the one that really gets me...my site is a suspected FAKE! What? You mean I've been posting counterfeit blogs all this time and didn't realise it? Holy crap! Then the others, not enough link popularity and not enough traffic. Well, I know I don't have a lot of traffic yet, that's why I'm hunting down these sites, silly people! Finally, my absolute favorite part "our algorithm that accepts or rejects inventory submissions" so my site is a suspected fake because a computer program looked at it and said so? A real person didn't even bother stop by and check it out? Ok, maybe they get a lot of requests and I am certain that their program usually works well. I am just frustrated that I have to build my traffic to build my traffic! It seems like a viscious circle to me, kinda like the you have to have credit to get credit deal. I won't go into that one now!

Secondly on my list is the Valentines that I created for my daughter this year. This will be her last year to pass out mandatory Valentine's at school since she will be entering Junior High next year. Amy is into Twilight right now (what teenage girl isn't, or adult girl for that matter!) She really likes the romantic goth look and skulls. Since the prepackaged Valentines they sell don't usually come with skulls on them, I decided to get a little creative. She approved them last night and I will be sending them to the printer today after I make sure they are 'perfect'!

Pretty nifty if you ask me! I'll be printing this as a 4X6 image from Wal-Mart on regular photo paper. The prints usually only run about .15 cents each so I'm not looking at spending too much to get them done. Just a little bit of gas money to get to the Wal-Mart (which we don't have IN my town and that sucks).

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling for one day! I'll leave you with a recomendation to visit my friend's new blog Pic Crazy. I posted a blog about it here. She is new to blogging and could use some new friends to help her along! Hope you all have a great day!

This Week's Featured Image - Week 8

I know I haven't been on in a few days, but I have really good excuses reasons. Friday was a busy day at work, so couldn't do much there. Then I had to get ready for my date Friday night as soon as I got home. I had a great time. We went out to eat and watched Avatar. Yes, it really is a great movie. I loved the scenery as much as anything. Then Saturday I HAD to go shopping, because my income tax refund came in and I had lots of stuff that I needed (and still need) to do with it. So forgive my absense, but I did actually remember that I am supposed to change my Featured Image today. Here is last week's image.

The flower is a Rose of Sharon (or so I've been told, because I don't know much about plants, trees or flowers except that I love them) from my back yard. It has pale purple blooms and they are truly gorgeous. I started by cutting the flower from the original image in which it was actually centered. I then used Brightness & Contrast to increase the definition, and of course Saturation to enhance the color. The 'drawn' look is accomplished with the Colored Pen tool and I really liked the way it looked with that alteration. Time for the background. I found an older image I took of just some foliage and went through the same process as above, B&C then Saturation. I placed the flower over the foliage, but it seemed too .... something. I just knew I didn't like it. Then I remembered the gradient tools I had and used that to 'cut' the stripes out of the background. I used a purple Gradient Fill on the base, then replaced the cut piece and I really liked the play in color. I then used the Colored Pen tool once again to match the flower and added the shadow behind the flower for depth. I really like this one, I think it turned out very well. As you can see (if you look to your left), I used a cut of this image as my Shop button.

Here is the original images I used, the flower and the foliage.

Hope you all enjoyed my image for last week and that you will enjoy this week's as well.

This Week's Featured Image - Week 7

I think I have the right week number...maybe. This was last week's Featured Image nonetheless. I am very sorry about not having this posted Sunday, I even forgot to change the image Sunday. I didn't remember until I was sitting at work Monday. Then I had a couple of other things to post about and didn't want to overload my blog and have a couple of posts get missed that way. As it is I think one did anyway.

So for this image I took the picture with my Samsung Propel (that would be my cell phone). This was at the farm with Kevin's family when the HP Photosmart camera we had decided to be a PhotoDUMB camera (if you've been to my Shop you would have seen that lovely play on words already. HINT HINT)

 Anyway, I used PhotoImpact to alter the image as usual and I really am not sure what all I did to it. I know I used Saturation, I think I may have used Diffuse Glow, and other than that I used a Frame to create the scratchy look. I will have to start keeping a log of the things I do to a picture to get them from start to finish.

I will post the Before image later when I have access to the other computer. It is currently entertaining Kevin with Netflix movies. I will also have to make note to get a very large USB drive to store all my pics in so that I can have access to them from any computer.

Here is the original image. Have a great day everyone.

Giveaway Winners

I went to random.org today and it generated 2 numbers for me, #4 which was Lynette from Crazed Mind, and #11 was Nessa from Ramblings of a Texas Housewife. I have already notified both of these wonderful ladies and they have picked their winning images. If you didn't win here, then be sure to check out their givaways of the 2nd 4X6.

Lynette chose Tree Series 1

Nessa chose Farm Life Series 2

Thanks to everyone who entered. As I stated above, keep an eye out on the above ladies blogs to get a second chance at winning. Or feel free to visit my Shop and order some prints!

INTRODUCING!!!

A few weeks ago (maybe it was closer to a month) I got a message on my facebook from an old High School friend. I haven't spoken to her since right after I graduated (1995). She and I were best of buds and hung out ALL the time. We were art geeks together and both of us developed a massive love of photography. Thanks to the world-wide-web she and I are in contact again and that is just AWESOME! She has started her own blog Pic Crazy, and she and I are in cahoots to possibly start a dual blog with a really neat idea. (More on that later, after we brainstorm some more!)

So why don't you go drop by Pic Crazy and say HI to my friend!