Photography

I love my new camera. I take it everywhere with me, taking photos of random objects, people and events. I am debating though, Photoshop or not to Photoshop? I have to admit though, I am leaning towards not to Photoshop. I love the raw colors, the shadows...I love the images in real life, unaltered. What do you think? marybethb.smugmug.com

Namaste, Mary Beth

Blog Image Posts- Visual Communications

1. Take a well composed indoor photo.

The first two images are of Bree, a good friend's four year old daughter. The image was taken inside the horse barn arena. As you can see, her face is in shadows, not only because it was a cloudy day, around 7pm as well as her helmet is to large for her and it is causing shadows to fall across her face. She is centered in the photo, but there is a great deal of empty unidentified space around her. The second image, I raised the contrast to 32, adjusted the brightness down to 23 and curve as well as cropped image so she is more of the focus.

2. Take a well composed outdoor photo, adjust making it "pop" while still maintaining its authenticity.

The images were taken outdoors around 12:15pm. Photo one is the original photo, photo two, I adjusted raised the brightness to +21, raised the contrast to +2, adjusted the curve and cropped to remove a lot of the lower decking of the pier to focus in on more the chairs.

Blog Photo Assignments- Visual Communications

Picture one: Lighten or darken a previously submitted photo.

My first image, I am submitting an image of J.T. It was a beautiful warm day, the sun was bright and the original image, showed a few shadows on his face because the sun was at his side (bottom image). He is a beautiful older horse and I adore him. He kept following me around in his pasture wanting attention, but it was a busy day and I hadn't planned on a trail ride, so he was frustrated at me. You cannot tell in the picture though, he is so majestic and is full of pride. :) I lightened up the picture (top image), and dropped my contrast down, just so you could see more of his face and not as many shadows. The downside to this, is I lost the richness of the sky.

Picture two: Crop.

In the original image of the geese, the frame around them is a bit busy and somewhat bland. You can see shadows of trees, in the front of the frame for example, so I cropped the image, making them the focus.

Moving On

How crazy looking back over the past six years to see all the things in my life that have changed since I started this blog. With everything that has been happening, I somewhat forgot about it, I knew it was there in the back of my mind, but never did anything with it.

Now here I am, May 2014 and my life has completely changed from that day and all of it for the better. My kids are healthy, happy and making good choices. They have overcome the emotional pain of others that chose to remove themselves from their lives, accepted it for what it is and moved on. With the harsh words that have been said to them, instead of allowing it to consume them, it has made them stronger, and I am, as I have always been, proud of them. They are just kids, they are not perfect, but instead of condemning them as others have done, accept them, love them and recognize in them yourself at that age. I have learned that no matter what, you don't give up on your kids, you don't walk away, you act like a parent, stand by them accepting them just as they are. Because I have not given up on them, put others before them, or replaced them, we are closer than we have ever been before. I am blessed in this fact, saying thanks everyday.

With regards to me, I finally, finally have found true love. I have someone in my life that truly loves me, that just doesn't say it to say it. When he says it, he means it, with every ounce of who he is and shows me everyday in a thousand little ways. I am thankful for all the struggles before him, because I never would have recognized what this is, without them. I have achieved peace with my past, happily moving on to live for tomorrow. Life is funny sometimes, I have learned it's not how you look at it, people are to obsessed sometimes with how life looks when in reality, that is not what it is about. It is how you live it that matters, how you treat people, the decisions you make, the people those decisions impact and how. I chose peace and acceptance in others, to treat everyone how I want to be treated and if harm is done, to forgive and move on. We are only human, no one is perfect, there are lessons for us to learn everyday, it is up to us to learn them and apply them in our daily choices and interactions with others.

Even with this wonderful new life with a the best of men, do I ever want to get married again? Would I ever want more kids or adopt? The answer is no. We are 100% committed in every way that a married couple is, we live together, share everything there is is to share, you would never know by looking at us, that we are not married. We wear rings to symbolize our commitment, so why does a piece of paper have to determine who we are? I will always maintain my last name, because it is that of my children and will be the name of my grandchildren. I love Kevin like no other, so to me, all of that is more important than a piece of paper. Our commitment and love is strong and after both of our former marriages, we have learned that a piece of paper does not determine your commitment to each other, you do.

My boys are older, they will have their own lives in just a few short years which means that it will be my time. My time to accomplish goals that were put in the background because I was a mom before anything else. I can travel to Europe if I want, pick up and go whenever I want, I can live, enjoy life, experience everything that the world has to offer. It is my time now, and I have plans to enjoy it as much as possible! I am happy for people my age that have young children, but not jealous at all because some of the best years of their life will be committed to raising kids. Some of them started late, and for them, I love it and I am happy! But I have a few that started over, and that is just a big no way for me. I have raised my kids, I have had my days of potty training and first days of school, their kids will be graduating high school while they are in 60's and when I am that same age, who knows what I will have accomplished by then! I love my friends dearly, but no thank you...I am good with the way things have turned out and I am ready to move on and they love me for it and in fact, at times are jealous. It is all good though. Life is beautiful and we all live it our own way and that is what makes it so much fun.

Enough about that for now. For those of you stopping in, or running across this blog by accident, I will be using this blog over the next few weeks to submit assignments for school, so be on the lookout for some interesting posts and please feel free to comment at anytime! After that, I may turn it into a platform to build my portfolio for photography. We shall see.... until next time...

Namaste, Mary Beth

What is going on here?

Our family has lived in Indiana going on four years this summer. We have been blessed, I will admit. No major health problems, enough money to pay the bills, plenty of food to eat and clothes to wear, but still we aren’t happy.

There are four of us, my husband, our two boys and myself. All born and raised in Texas, each of us with that strong Texas pride coursing through our veins. My husband and I question every day - is our misery only due to our loneliness from being away from our family and friends? Or is it truly another matter altogether? I mean lets face it, lots of couples move away from their families and do just fine, so why such heartbreak for the four of us just because we don’t live in a particular state?

Each day, we ponder this never answered question. We get up each day to drag ourselves through the inches of snow building up around the house, fight the traffic in a small mid-western town, to a job that isn’t as satisfying as we would like, only to repeat the process again the next day. I suppose we have just subdued ourselves to the belief that a greater being than us needs us here in this small town, 1,300 miles away from our roots.

I consider myself a fairly happy person. I love my husband dearly, I adore my kids. I am relatively content in my job. I have a fantastic boss, great supportive co-workers and a pretty decent health insurance plan. I could use more money of course, but who in this day of an economic recession doesn’t! I also have incredible friends that I love like siblings and I am mad about my family.

I am not looking for miracles in this blog, nor am I looking for answers. I simply want a way to reach out to the world and share my moments, both sorrowful and glorious with you, my dear reader. I have dreams, motivations…professional and personal goals that I want to share. Let‘s start with my dreams. What are they you ask? Well my friend let me tell you. As clique as it sounds, I want to write a book. I want to write a story that will make you breathless, with scenarios so real, you can feel every word deep in your soul. A book so real that you will cry right along with the character convinced it’s really YOU I am writing about.

Have I started this wonderful award winning, best selling novel yet? No. Not quite. I am still on Chapter 1. I have the words in my mind, but once they get to paper, are jumbled and unromantic. My sentences read like that of a two year old and I get depressed, stepping back from the pages for a few weeks only to come back and once again feel the frustration of not getting my words down exactly right.

How do I overcome this? Any ideas? Anyone? I know that I need to stop being so critical of my work. Write it down once and leave it alone, to stop pondering over each and every word reaching for perfection in each syllable and adjective. I need to just let it be. But I am very much a perfectionist with my work, I can’t help it. A habit I know I will need to break if my dream will ever become reality. I feel that it is the one true reason that I am not a household name yet.

I guess I should close up today’s entry. Maybe between now and my next entry, I will have a solution for something mentioned here today. I will make myself a goal though for today. Start writing a story for one of my favorite magazines-Zoetrope. It doesn’t have to be long and it’s a beginning, right?

Enjoy your day and Peace Out!