I ♥Faces - Before and After

This week the theme for I ♥ faces is Before and After.  The goal was to show growth as a photographer because of the weekly contests.  I definitely think that I have learned a lot, but you'll have to decide for yourself. 


I choose this photo below as an example of a photo that I edited before learning from I heart Faces.  I boosted the saturation and the contrast. I would boost the contrast until the background was black and the highlights were blown out.

 

(In-case you are wondering the picture on the left 

was taken at a Halloween Murder Mystery Party, 

that is why Dylan is wearing make-up.) 

Recently I had the pleasure of taking pictures of my cousin's son.  He was such a ham that night!  I love taking pictures of babies, and he was looking right at the camera and cooperating wonderfully! I cloned out the background and enhanced his eyes a little.  I also have a much better composition. I used a flash for this picture as well, but processed the picture more naturally.  I also used filters in PSE.  Oh how I wish that we lived closer, I would go over and take pictures of this cutie every day! 

 

I decided that for this challenge I would try and use Flash to display my photos and that was not an easy task. I took a class on Flash about a year ago as part of my grad school program. I am reminded of the common saying "Use it or loose it!"  I easily figured out Flash, but unfortunately I was not able to find a good site to host the flash file and it was not viewable to others.