Thanks Mom!

Thanks to my Mom at Quite the Normal Life. She gave me my first blog award! Woohoo! I don't know that I am deserving of this, though. I only have two-four readers...
The rules are:
* Display your award.
* Link back to the person who gave you the award.
* Nominate at least 7 other blogs. (I'm going to have to break this rule, I only read 6 blogs on a regular basis, and my Mom's is one of them and another one is new to me)
* Put links to those blogs on yours.
* Leave a message on the blogs of the people you've nominated.
* Enjoy your award!


I would like to give this award to:
* Jen at JRH. Jen is just such a sweetie and her blog always makes me smile.
* Heidi at Everyday Adventures. I love to read about her experiences with her little ones, especially since I can't wait until I have my own little ones.
* Nicole at Exspectantes Beatam Spes. Nicole is a thoughtful, intelligent woman. I always love to read her posts.

This is what you get when you raise cattle next to power lines...

"two headed bovine"

Just a quick hello to the world on the internet. I am feeling a tidbit sick tonight. I woke up with a sore throat, and I am now sneezing. It's probably my own fault. I have a hard time falling asleep at night. I figured out that I may be keeping myself up late accidentally on purpose. I have so little free time right now. The only time I really get to myself is when I go to bed. My mind usually races for a long while and I will decide to get up and read or play with my computer for a while in order to have some me time. It's not on purpose, really, it just sort of happens. Not only that, but I went to part of the home football game this evening. It was drizzling, and I'm sure the damp hasn't helped with the sore throat. Such is life.

So that's all from me. The photo above was taken in the early springtime of this year. I had wanted to edit it earlier, but I had already done two other photos from the same photo trip, and I didn't want to overwhelm my Flickr page with too many similar shots at once. I absolutely love this shot. The power lines and the perfect perspective on the animals makes for a funny shot. I hope you enjoyed this tiny bit of levity! ;)

Oh, by the way, I collect cow stuff oddly enough. It's a weird story, but one for another time, I think. My favorite cow object is a clock my husband (then boyfriend) got for me in Switzerland during our band trip my senior year of high school. It has a swinging udder pendulum, and is the epitome of tacky. I love it. It was hanging in my kitchen in Ann Arbor. :) If you are interested, I have a few cow photos, and you can see them all in this Flickr set: Moo.

Recent this and thats...

"Lily Pad"

So, it's been awhile since I last wrote. I've been a bit busy, what with teaching and all. It has definitely been an interesting and exhausting past couple of weeks. I feel like I'm teetering just on the edge of being overwhelmed. I haven't dropped the ball in a huge way....yet. I hope that I never do.

But, enough on that. I sold my first photo recently!! Hurray! It's not the one above, but if you want to see it click here. It's not one of my bests, but it was sold to an advertising company working for Economic Development Council of the Bloomington Normal Area. The image on the left is the poster they developed from my photo. I think it looks nice.

So the photo above is one of my newer creations. I took the photo at Epcot early this past summer. I finally got around to editing it. I needed some creative me time, so I went through my old photos to see if I had missed any nice photos. I came across this one and wondered why I hadn't edited it before.


For this edit, I changed the color saturation. I made the pinks more vibrant and I desaturated the other colors. Then I started playing with textures. That's really my favorite technique to use in photo editing anymore. I love the way textured photos look. They are just a bit more poignant. However, it's always hard to find the right balance between texture and photo detail. I never want to wash out too many details, but I want the texture to be visible. It can sometimes be a tough call.

I used several different texture layers in this photo. Mostly I used scanned scrapbooking paper textures. They really work great for textured photos. I also used a couple paint textures I created. I wanted some brush stroke textures, and decided to make my own since I couldn't find too many just lying around. The textures are totally utilitarian, though, and are definitely not art in any way, shape or form. :)

I finally added some shading to the corners, to make it look a little more faded out. I just used the paint brush tool on Corel and played with the layer settings until it looked the way I wanted. That's all there was to it.

OK, so I bored you with my photo editing techniques. Sorry for that. I have been having trouble falling asleep at a decent hour, and I find typing can sometimes make me sleepy. (It was a horrible thing when I was trying to write papers at the last minute in college...) Besides, it had been a while since I had posted anything.

On a side note, I changed my banner, just for fun. I love my old "Lonely, in Yellow" photo, but I felt it was time for a change.

I hope my 2-4 readers are doing well! :) God bless! Until the next time I need to make myself sleepy!