The Cherry Bomb!

The OB Cues Ladies 9-Ball tournament was this weekend in Richardson, TX. I wasn't 100% looking forward to it because I was travelling alone and I hadn't been playing any pool at all, but I did want to see all my friends. Amazingly enough, I actually didn't do half bad in the tournament and almost made it until Sunday. I didn't mind not making it until Sunday because I got to stay out late Saturday night with my friends and I didn't have to get up early. I showed up on Sunday to watch my friends play, and I had great conversation with my friend Samm, from Samm's Side Pocket. During our conversation that covered many topics (some of which I'll deny 100%), she agreed to be one of my guinea pigs and let me take her picture.

Right outside of the pool hall was a nice shaded corridor of the strip mall. So, we set up shop and I took a few photos of Samm. I haven't had much time to go through all the pictures, but I'm super excited with the way this one came out:



I've now had time to go thru some of the other photos, and I like how these came out, too:

Meetup ... Texas Style!

I had the opportunity to meet up with some other local photographers earlier this week. I was really nervous, because they are all very talented and I'm still relatively new to all of this. We met for dinner at Duke's BBQ up in Georgetown, TX. The food was good, and the restaurant was really cool. It was large inside and had a huge outdoor patio with a very large grassy area. All the other photographers showed up with their kids, which was really nice, because I got to finally take pictures of kids. They ran around outside and I got some shots, but only a handful came out good enough for me.

Baby L



Baby A





Miss T

Information overload.

At the suggestion of a friend of mine, I visited an online tutorial site, lynda.com. All I can say is WOW! I just recently purchased Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS3 and just finished a 5 1/2 hour online video tutorial on Lightroom basics. I didn't watch it all in one day. This was over the span of a week, but it was absolutely what I was needing. I consider myself computer savvy, but I am completely new to Lightroom. Last week, Julia showed me a quick overview of Lightroom on her laptop for an hour or so. When I got home that evening, I felt that I had a basic understanding of what Lightroom was all about, but I needed more. I could have probably figured everything else out on my own after playing with it for some time, but the information that I learned from this online tutorial would have probably taken me months to learn on my own. I highly recommend this website if you haven't come across it already.

As for Lightroom, I'm totally happy with this application. I never realized what a powerful application it was and everything it is capable of doing. Wow! Just wow.

Little Miss H

I got to hang out with my friend Julia today for a few hours after work. We spent a couple of hours going over Lightroom. Wow.. what an incredible program. I had installed it on my computer, but hadn't opened it yet because it looked pretty overwhelming. She showed me the basics of everything, and its amazing how powerful this program is. I can't wait to really dig into it, but its going to take many hours learning this program.

After we were done with that, we headed out to the backyard and took pictures of her adorable neice. I believe she is 5 years old, and is very active and NOT SHY AT ALL. Which is great for when you are trying to take pictures of a child. Its amazing how fast kids move around and how they do not like to stay still for even a few seconds. I got about 50 pictures of her before she was done. Out of the 50, I think I got 2 good pictures and this one is my favorite:

Spring ... how I miss thee ...

One day in early spring, while I was out geocaching, I found myself in this very small wooded area in between huge residential areas. I just happened to have my camera with me and took a few shots. Spring isn't over yet, but it already feels like mid-summer.