Shoreline Park, Mountain View, CA

So Jessica C. and I went to the park next to Google for a quick photoshoot yesterday. I am still post processing (learning Lightroom), but definitely getting them up one at a time.

I really enjoyed shooting the people, as you can see in my first few uploads to flickr. Here are a few:

Relatives

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I haven't blogged for more than a week. Well, things have been crazy lately. I went to NYC for a short 3 day business trip (including travel days) Mon - Wed, no time for blogging then!

And then last night I went to a kick ass happy hour with a bunch of awesome local wedding photographers and one very famous Becker. Check out his [b] school blog for some cool PS tools of the trade and other neat learnings! I also had the opportunity to hang with the very fun Mammoth Men.

But that's not what this blog is about... I am blogging about my nieces and nephews. Well, sort of. Here are two pictures of my adorable relatives taken the night before Mindy's wedding:





I finally got around to cleaning up my Yosemite trip photos so figure I'd share these with y'all blog readers tonight.

Good night!

Dinner at Jin Sho

Last night's dinner was beautiful.

The appetizer, "Jalapeno Dressing with Salmon - Served with mizuna green & garlic chips", was really pretty and rather tasty. It was by far the highlight of the evening. Flavorful, unique, had all the bells you would expect from an ex-Nobu chef. But the garlic chips were too burnt and bitter and didn't add to the dish besides making it pretty.



I ordered the really gorgeously presented sashimi dinner. The fish was fresh and delicious, the only negative I can think of (if you can count that a negative) was that all the fish pieces were really fatty which made it hard to finish. I would have liked more refreshing pieces mixed in, I guess. But overall, no complaints!



Henry got the "Angus Beef Tobanyaki - Cooked on a hot “Toban” plate with garlic sauce" was not as flavorful as it was beautiful. I would say it was my least favorite dish of the evening although he finished everything so he must have liked it. There were a lot of carrots ~ perhaps that was a reason I didn't like it right off the bat.



Overall we had a great time. And the prices were ok for a special occasion. Just not overwhelmed with amazement like we were when we went to Nobu.

Comments - BASIC Photoshop

Thank you so much to those of you who left me comments when I asked for them! You guys are the best!

Peanut's Mom had the most constructive comment ~ more "tips on using Photoshop"... Hmm... Ok! Here goes!

I am not really sure what everyone's competency levels are when it comes to Photoshop so I am sure some of you will find this EXTREMELY boring... Sorry if that is the case!

I know when I first started trying to figure out PS for photos, I really knew nothing. I mean, I can resize a banner like there's no tomorrow (cut, paste in new file, save) but that was about it. I'm still pretty novice but trying to learn fast.

When I open a photo, I click Alt-L then D (ignore these if you are using a mac). That makes a new background layer. I suppose you can mouse to Layer then to Duplicate Layer. The reason you want to do this is so your adjustments are on a different layer so you can always see the before and after to make sure you like what you are doing... You can add as many layers as you like and turn them on/off as you like.

Then I auto-adjust the contrast, color, level... But stop after each to see if I like the before or after. IF I don't like a certain adjustment I undo it. Next, there's either adjusting the curves or the levels. That's usually about it.

Of course, there might be need for cropping to get to better rule of 3rds or rotating to make sure things are straight (or crooked depending on the style I'm going after).

It really does stop about here, unless I want to make the picture black and white or sepia or add an action. These will have to wait for another blog entry (or I'll just show you, Peanut's Mom, in a couple of weeks).

When it's all said and done I flatten the image back to one layer so I can save it back up as a jpg. If you save it in all its glorious layers then it is a psd which you can readjust at a later date.

Oh, I WATCH a lot of online tutorials and read a lot of tips... That's always super useful!

I'm sure my photography and PS friends are cringing reading this post for how basic it is... Well, I did say BASIC in all caps! :D There's the whole, maybe I should shoot in RAW one day thing that I still have to master too.

Two Years!!

DH and I celebrate our two-year anniversary today. :D Wow, has it already been two years? The second year is suppose to be the "cotton" year. I have no idea what kind of gifts we should give each other for cotton! Maybe a Threadless T.

So, the super awesome gift we gave ourselves this year is a newly installed AC. It wasn't intended to be a wedding anniversary present (kinda lame if it was huh?) but in fact, we just got it working last night and today is the first day we are using it (so it kinda turned out to be our anniversary gift)! Woo hoo! The house is normally extremely hot when we get home from work especially since we still don't have attic insulation yet (next thing on our to-do, maybe by next week?), but today I walked into a nicely cool 73 degrees! Thank you JOE (our awesome AC installing general contractor friend)!

Tonight we are going to go to a Japanese place for some yummy sushi... Now if DH's train can just get back on schedule, we can get the celebrating going!

So today is also a momentous day ~ it's the first full day California allowed same-sex marriages.

My Veggie Garden

I haven't blogged much at all about my garden so far... So here goes.

Last year, I planted two zucchini plants and of course, I was blessed with non-stop zucchinis for the whole summer. I even managed a few calf-size ones worthy of entering into the state fair (but didn't).

Because I was so successful last year with the beautiful California weather, this year I went crazy and planted not only zucchinis, but also cantaloupe, honeydew, a bunch of herbs (ok I had those last year too) and most adventurous of all, 9 heirloom tomato plants!

For my own sanity, I am listing them here (so I can remember):
Black Krim
Black Krim Cherry
Big Boy
First Pick
Tigerella
Boxcar Willie
Purple Calabash
Marvel Stripe
Green Zebra

I also planted some hybrid called Park Whopper ~ but those are from seed so not sure if any are actually taking.

Here are some pictures (I think these are of the Marvel Stripe):





Now comes the 60-100 days of waiting for them to turn big and ripe.

I am so excited!!

Question

For all you blog readers out there...

Why don't you leave comments? :(

It's rather sad to come and blog regularly but never get feedback... ;)

Leave me a comment! Tell me what you like and don't like about my blog! I'd love to write more about what you want to read, and I'll only know what that is if you tell me!

Practices Makes Perfect

That's how the saying goes.

And it's true.

I'm playing a lot more with PS and loving the results more and more each day.

Yosemite

Just got back from my niece Mindy's wedding at Yosemite National Park. It was an amazing venue. The wedding was beautiful. The food was delicious (yum eggs benedict and wedding cake!)

More to come later ~ it is now time for bed. :D

Crash Course...

...on Photoshop from my all knowing husband is kinda fun. Thanks hubbie! :D

I've been playing around with actions and layers and filters and stuff for a couple of days on my own. And just when I think I am getting the hang of it? He shows me another trick or another neat thing to learn.

But, I am getting faster with processing my photos and since wedding photos are so special, I want them to be perfect.

This is one of my favorite ones of the evening. Especially since I posed the party and everything!

Weekends...

...are way too short. I can't believe it is the start of another week already.

I finally uploaded pictures from my friend Peter and his beautiful bride Nana's wedding on flickr, now if I can just find time to process Anna and John's wedding...



I went with an old-world, Hollywood look here. Hopefully it isn't too much. The real problem was that my lens wasn't fast enough in this low light and I didn't have a flash with me so this "finish" was almost necessary because it really brought out the feeling but hid all the lens issues I had. :D

Today we also found some time to do a photo walk in downtown San Jose. See?



:D

Ok, I know, it's a bad teaser... more to come, but it's after my bed time so you'll have to wait.

Good night! :D