Photoshoots and yellow cardigans

Hi!

Today was busy... We did two shoots, which is more than we have done in a while :) So good to get back into it!

And here's my yellow cardigan, paired with some stunning red socks and white thongs (aka flip flops for you Americans). What..,.,? It was coold ok! hehe... And yes, I did wear them to our second shoot.

And, here's a sneaky peak of both shoots ....

Attitude of Gratitude + Design Day

Today I'm Grateful For

1. Thick socks on a cold day...
2. KnitPro that helps me to make pictures into knitting charts! What fun.
3. The new followers I have gotten! Yay, finally! Thankyou for following me ♥
4. Creative people who are aware of good design and make really cool things!

Today I have been working on a travel book design for my class to use when we travel to Chicago and NY in June/July.  I'm pretty excited and the more I work on the book the more I get excited. It doesn't quite feel real at the moment! And there is potentially big news that is kinda related ... but I haven't got confirmation on that yet... so we'll wait and see... 

So I thought I would share with you a few sneak peaks of how the design is looking ... and if any of you live in NY or Chicago and have some insiders tips, feel free to share! Would be so awesome and would help me to get even more excited! 

Fill in the Blanks

Fill in the Blanks via ... all I'm gunna say is you are so lucky I am awake to do this! Right now I feel like someone is standing on my eyeballs and rolling them in dirt haha... loooooong day! But a nice wedding :)

1. What I love most about my home is the lake across the road and the guy I share it with.
2. I'm excited because it's Sabbath! I can chillax and not worry about all the assignments and general stuff of everyday life. Plus I got to see my best friend today :)
3. My preferred method for blowing off steam when I'm frustrated is yelling. and punching things ... I'm not sure.. I don't really think that I get frustrated that often...
4. Currently I am craving sleeeeeep and laying down, my shoulders, legs, back and eyes are killing me
5. The thing I love most about my mum is that there is no other like her. I can have the best chats with her and the best shopping trips (you know it's true mum ;) and often it feels like we're the same age, she's just smarter and knows more about life. It's awesome! I love youuuu mum!!
6. If I was going to write a book about my life, the title would be "Spazzmania" - i dunno why, it just would be.
7. If I were to eat one thing for the rest of eternity it would be food? duh!

And here is the photo I promised....

 

Now I am going to collapse into bed! Goodnight :)

Wedding day

Hello! Coming to you live from Maccas free wireless, on my way to shoot a wedding!
Yesterday I missed delightful dishes due to crazy procrastination interspersed with work...
So to make up for it, I promise I will share when I get home tonight with one image from the wedding and also a fill in the blanks.. No matter how tired, I promise!!

Working...

{via}

At the moment I'm feeling a little snowed under. 

It's now the month of Mad May where everything is due at once and it's just a hectic crazy time of the year. 

I have a To Do list the size of both my arms outstretched (which is pretty big coz I'm like an orangutan or something) and as yet I haven't crossed anything off.

I have Flashbox work and College work and it's so confusing which one is more important .. on the one hand I have clients who are expecting results and the other lecturers and my own education to think about.

Decisions Decisions!

Today I have decided to work on my Essay which is due in a week. Remember that one I wanted to hand in on my shirt? Yup.. still going on that!

So here's to a day full of work and work. 

[edit] I just found this lovely quote to give a more positive spin - and yes, I was distracted already by Pinterest.... shame

{via}

Photoshoots + Eating out.

Wowee. I did not realise that today is Friday. That really crept up quick.
Probably coz this week was so jam packed!!

I'll give you a run down.

Monday

I don't actually remember that far back... Hmm where was I? Probably stayed home all day in my PJs!

Oh no.. I remember now!! 

Monday was the day I made paper with my buddy old pal Lara. Which came out nice... real nice! I'm getting a stock pile up so I can be ready to print when the few stockist I am getting make their orders.. (that's pretty exciting news by the way! I have one definite and 2 possibles..!!)

8:15pm Dinner at Mad Mex... Um if you haven't tried this... DO.. sooo good!

9:00pm movies to watch Unknown.. Which was pretty decent. 

Tuesday

9:20 am Airport to drop Lara off 

10am Continued on to Nelson Bay for a job thingy that I got.

It's taking photos of clothes for a surf shop that sells online and then deep etching them. 

Sweet gig.. Pretty chillaxed and interesting..

Wednesday

10am Interview for retail job. Running late.. Hectic... First interview ever {I know.. crazy right?!}

Went well.. I guess.

Thursday

1pm Photoshoot with Gideon & Kimberly at the beach. Was a super nice day! 

6:00ish pm Dinner & drinks at Monkey Monkey Monkey.

Menu consisted of Brushetta {that was so yummy!}, Pizza with pumpkin, garlic aoli, spinach and goat's cheese, a Chai milkshake {so good} and Mr Peck had a lychee & something else frappé.

Friday

12:30pm Photoshoot at Manly Beach. Found out on way that I didn't get the job. No worries... {ok maybe a little disappointed...}

Shoot went well. Nice cloudy but bright light. Got a little sunburnt! {the curse of white freckly skin}

4:30pm Traffic on way home crazy and we're both tired so we decided to stop for rest & food. 

I forget the name of the place but they had some nice pasta dishes!

Mr Peck got Pumpkin Gnocchi & I got Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli. 

Good! {photos from Ipod.}

6:30pm Almost home. I drove & Mr Peck slept :)

{sorry hun, couldn't resist hehe}

Photoshoot.

Hello.
Today Mr Peck & I {aka Flashbox Creative} went on a photoshoot. Much fun & delightful weather after such an odd week of rainy/cloudy/stormy weather..

Here's one of my favourites from the day {although there are a lot!!}

oh.

I'm feeling so uninspired!
All I want is some chunky chunky wool + some knitting needles then I'd be right.

from yokoo

Gotta say I love her chunky chunky knitting skills & crazy photos .. super dooper cute!

Today I went for a job trial/job thing. Which went well + I'm happy!
I kept praying for some work + this is an answer to prayer. Also tomorrow I have another interview. Hoping it goes well.

I also just sent out some emails about my cards + did some heavy but targeted facebook liking/commenting which gained me 3 fans right away.. so that looks like the go. I'll have to hit that up regularly + then maybe some will actually buy my cards! {I wish I could sound more pro + popular + say that I have sold billions. .. But that would be stretching the truth.. just a little itty bit}

Hmm..
So not much to share.
I was thinking in my head on the way back from said job that I should start learning how to code online shops + make me one of those.  I hand code all the websites I design + definitely need to keep teaching myself new tricks.

Oh. And the other thing that I have to code is a brand spankin' new website for Flashbox.
Mainly just for the wedding photography side of it. To make it more appealing + capturing.
And more weddingy. And show off our photography skills a little better.
Fun!

handmade recycled paper.

Hello.

Last week [or maybe the week before last] I was at home and running my card ideas by my mum.

Always a great idea to do this because if your mum is anything like mine, you will come away with infinite new ideas & inspiration.

Which I totally did.

One of those ideas was instead of buying water colour paper to make my cards out of [which was ending up way way too expensive] why not make the paper.

Brilliant! Because what I really wanted out of my paper was for it to be a little bit rough and full of texture and looking like a sketch page... 

So after much time in-between that was filled with lots of other stuff to do [which I wasn't too happy about - I just wanted to try it!] I finally got around to making some! 

We used to make the stuff as kids and had a bit of a kit so I used that and some scrap paper I had laying around  [I'm thinking I might be able to source free scrap from college.. they just chuck it anyway - that means FREE paper :)]

Here's a look see at how it turned out [I should have taken process photos.. next time]

I only made 2 pieces to start as I wasn't sure how it would print/look/work but I am totally happy with it [apart from the creasing - not sure where that came from ;) and the dimensions of the sheet of paper are a bit different to my design so I just have to adjust that]. 

I want to also experiment with different fabrics in the middle of the paper making sandwich instead of the standard fly screen stuff... so instead of the squares I can get a linen effect or similar.

The other great thing about homemade paper is you can do any colour, any texture, any additions [such as perfume, cotton, leaves, glitter etc] that you wish and that goes with you're design.. Awesome..!

And of course, you just can't beat free!!

I'm trying to think up of a name for my cards too.. like 'such & such' by Flashbox Creative.

So any ideas are welcome!!

free brush download. again.

Well, I don't think that my free brush download lasted for very long... that link probably expired after a day or something I guess..

So now I've uploaded it to my Deviant Art site (that has not been updated in a very very long time, so don't judge ;) so you can follow this link to get it from there.. or simply click on the image below :)

Disclaimer:
These brushes are for personal use only. Please do not use them for commercial purposes or for profit. 

featured.

Hello All.
Been away for the weekend.. again!!
This time we went camping with my bestie Steph & her husband. The location was really cool - right next to a rushing river (that was so loud you couldn't hear anything else - awesome!). Only problem was it was wet... and by wet I mean it rained the whole time! But super fun anyway!

It's nice to be home & clean! 

But the point of this little post was to let you know that one of my Valentine's Day cards got featured on the Storenvy blog! Yipee! So that has bumped up views! 

If any of my readers want to purchase a card, I have 2 shops you can go to -

Storenvy (which has most of my cards - or will have - because it is free for unlimited listings [only problem being it is in $US but that's fine for you US readers!]) 

-&&-

Big Cartel (which only has 5 listings for free and that's all I want at the moment until I know it's working for me... [but it is in $AU])

I have a range of cards, not only Valentine's Day cards... so please go check them out..

Shoppe!

Hello.

I'm kinda excited to say that I put up some cards in an online store.. which is great.. except that I haven't had a chance to take pretty pictures of them (which I'm thinking I will do today if I get to it!).. and I can only put 5 up at a time (for now, unless I decide that it's worth paying for the shop)...
But better than nothing!

Please go and have a look!
And totally buy something if you likey!
And if you wanna see my other cards, email me! or comment me!

Photo Editing Tutorial Part 2

Hey-yipee-oh...

Welcome to Part 2 of Photo Editing Tutorial.
In this part we're gunna look at touching up and colour correcting.
If you missed Part 1 be sure to check it out!

One of the easiest ways to colour correct is to adjust the levels and curves of an image.

These are pretty much the only things I ever touch on an image (after adjustments in Camera Raw) and what I always include in my actions. 

Usually I use Auto on the levels but sometimes if it's obvious, I adjust the levels by hand.

As you can see above, the levels are shown as a histogram and the right side of this is pretty flat. When it looks like this I usually drag the marker (that triangle thing on the bottom of the histogram) over to where the 'mountain' starts.  This kind of bumps the whites in the image up. If it's flat on the left I'll drag that over the where the 'mountain' starts on that side also, bumping up the blacks. Do a bit of experimentation and you'll see what I mean.

With the Curves, you can do all sorts of interesting things with the colour channels.  This is where you can have some fun with colour correction. At the moment I'm enjoying some cross processing (which is a term left over from the old days of film processing where a film was processed in the wrong chemicals.

As you can see above, the coloured curves are crossing each other. Below is a before and after of what this kind of processing does to an image.

Again, just experiment! You can also find heaps of resources on deviantART and other sites... Google is your friend!

Ok, now comes the time to touch up images of people... When you're doing wedding photos and the client wants some that are going on the wall, you want them to look their very best.  Sometimes when you're sitting funny or your head is on a certain angle you get lumpy, bumpy or bulgy bits that aren't very flattering. This is where the Liquify Tool (found in Adobe Photoshop) becomes very very useful!

Here's an example- 

It's that easy... try it! But don't go too heavy & be careful.. it's very easy to make it look fake!

Blemishes and stray hairs are a thing of the past with this tool.
Check it out -

It looks just like the brush tool, but kind of clones and blends over the blemish so you get a smooth appearance that looks like the surrounding area. Too easy! You can use the clone tool as well, but once again be careful or you'll make the skin look like plastic! 

And that ends this short tutorial on photo editing. 

Hopefully these short tips have helping in some way!

Photo Editing Tutorial Part 1

Hey Blog.

I just wanted to take this time to share a few of the things I have learnt about editing photos while being a photographer, specifically for weddings.  They are only short tips and if you want to know more, let me know.

You can see some of my work at Flashbox Creative.

Some of this stuff I'm sure you will know already but hopefully I can share something new with you. I've put together a list of top tools and processes I use to try and speed up the process of editing over 1000 photos per wedding. And if you know something I don't, please please let me know! Sharing is caring, and I don't think enough people (especially pros) do enough of that theses days! How are we supposed to learn things if people better than us aren't sharing and teaching?

So here goes:-

Taking a photo in RAW is similar to capturing an unprocessed negative on a film camera.  RAW does not compress or process the image at all (as JPEG does).  It captures a lot more information than a JPEG and thus gives you greater room for editing. Any decent DSLR camera will have the option to shoot in RAW.  

Once you have your RAW images you have to convert them into JPEG form to print or for general use.  But before you do this it's a good idea to do all your editing.  For this I use Photoshop's RAW editor called Camera Raw. Other programs have different plugins but Photoshop's version works great for me!

The easiest way to work through your RAW images is explained in my next point - use Adobe Bridge.

 Bridge comes with the Adobe Creative Suit and is excellent for processing your images.  You can do all sorts of things from Bridge such as give images labels or ratings so you know which ones need more work, or which ones you're happy with.

You can also do a Batch or use Image Processing which is very very handy when you have a lot of images to get through and want to apply similar editing for all the images.

So after you've selected your options you click run and Photoshop automatically goes through and applies these settings to the the images you want and you have time to get on with other work!

Actions are a great way to automate colour correction or processes you want to add to you images.  By saving your processes as actions you can achieve the same look with lots of photos without having to remember how you did it or run through hundreds of repetitive steps.  You can use these actions in conjunction with the Image Processor and Batch tools found in Bridge and edit 1000 photos with one click and a little bit of waiting time (in which you can get more important things done.. like knitting!)... very handy!

I'm not going to go through how to use them because there are hundreds of tutorials that already do that (and probably better than me). Try Googling it and I'm sure you'll find hundreds! This is mainly an overview of what you should be using to speed up the editing process.

Hopefully you've found these tips useful! Stay tuned for Part 2 in which we'll look at touching up images using Photoshop.

resistance is futile

I'm loving this shoot a lot..
so here's another few!

If you love them just as much, you can book Flashbox Creative for your wedding, engagement, portrait or other photo shoot :)

editing again!

Hey blog.

Editing again. Can't talk.

Flashbox Creative updated

So today & yesterday were spent on updating Flashbox Creative's website.
Every wedding we shoot gets better and better but we are not quite amazing yet. Still striving to get there.

At the College Mr Peck & I attend, there are some lecturers who do some amazing, amazing photography work and I have been looking at their photos lately wishing I was that good! I think the key is to get the right equipment and the problem with that of course, is money.

We'll get there one day though :)