Coffee Anyone?

So a few months ago I sold my soul helped out a friend on a charity photo shoot.

Said friend happened to by John Myers of Myers Creative Imaging.

He takes beautiful photos. His thing is portraits. And characters.

And every year he makes a really cool book of all his character portraits.

Simple, right?

Well, I’m pretty sure I’m owed some residuals off this favor.

I did the book.

And then ended up in the homepage slideshow.

As the main image for the portraits section.

And in an e-blast.

But in all seriousness, this was pretty much the coolest thing that happened to me all week…or quite possibly maybe ever. John takes beautiful photography and he is a blast to work with. Except I’m not sure I like all the getting bossed around that comes with being a model.

The more amusing part of this story is the day after the e-blast went out, John and I were freezing our asses off in a 30 degree horse barn, traipsing through dirt, straw, sawdust, and everything else that comes with a horse farm, because our lives are just that glamorous. Of course, I brought coffee.

And no, I do not look like this in real life.

I look better.

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Falling for Fall: Photoshop Actions

I love fall. Pretty much everything about it is perfect to me.

The leaves change — the air changes — it’s acceptable to drink spiked cider again.

Fall. Is. Awesome.

Luckily for me, Upstate NY has great foliage this time of year. And it’s great for photo-ing. (yes, I did just use the word “foliage” in a legitimate sentence.)

Which means I’ve started playing around the my big-girl camera. And Photoshop.

My latest Photoshop love is the “actions” feature. Photoshop actions are pre-programmed photo edits that basically make for one-click editing. It’s like having your favorite iPhone editing app in your Photoshop, only better.

And because photographers are pretty cool people, you can download most Photoshop actions for gratis, which is how I like to roll. There are too many to different ones to count, but here is a great top 100 (yes, only 100) list.

So…I got crafty and I made this new cover image for my FB.

It uses lots of cross-process actions.

Here is one of the before shots. Eh.

And then after.

And seriously? Every girl needs a pair of these.

Amazing.

Then I played around with HDR.

Before. Eh.

After.

Pretty cool, right?

With just one click.

Pretty. Freaking. Cool.

Friday Find: Vintique iPhone Photo App

You know the saying, “the best camera you own is the one you have with you?” So. True.

Sure, I have a nice Canon T2i, but most times I snap photos on my iPhone, because that’s what I have with me. Which is why I’m obsessed with phone photo apps. It’s the closest thing you can get to having Photoshop on your iPhone.

My favorite new iPhone photo app is Vintique. It has enough filters, frames, and effects that you could make 70,560 different versions of the same photo—and that’s not including the editable portions of each effect.

You start with a new photo or one from your library. Move and scale til you have the crop you want.

You can adjust color, saturation, the exposure, gamma, and so on if you want.

Then add a filter. Vintique has 32 different filters, and each one can be customized. This one is ‘dark mood.’

I picked ‘warm day.’

Next add a vignette or texture. There are 19 vignettes and 26 different textures you can add.

Then pick from one of the 49 different frames.

Vintique has one-step sharing, and you can also import the photos into your Instagram account if you want too.

Or just save to your phone.

Finished!

Vintique is $0.99 and well worth it, if you like vintage photo effects.