During the weeks prior to our trip to Vegas, we have been quite busy with preparing for leaving. So we did not take the time to note the great work of our friend Nicolas Bouchard, who came to photograph Frank’s family. (Link to his gallery for that day.)

I know we take a lot of pictures in general, but it’s rare enough that we have a nice picture with all four of us on it, or even a couple’s picture! Thank you thank you!

Nic also took group pictures with Frank’s family. And recently, when we were at the annual Halloween party Amelie and him are throwing, he took pictures of each costumed guest, in his small home studio. Cool idea!

The party, as usual, was good fun. This year’s theme was Red Carpet: appetizers, candy, video games and glam decor under the artistic direction of the talentful Amélie.

(Photo credits: Nicolas Bouchard)

Moon tonight. Wow!

“That’s the last one, mommy, ok?”
What! But I love taking pictures of you…! Do you know why I like having pictures of you?

“Because you love me very much…”
That’s RIGHT!!

Aaahhh… there you go!

Frank set us up with a new file server with RAID at home (and if you weren’t sure about sticking a “nerd” tag on us, this new factoid may well have sealed the deal). Anyway, this should help me clear photos off my laptop’s HD, while keeping the archives a mouse-click away. Now, however, Frank is unloading the camera directly onto the file server sometimes, and I forget about these series of pictures.

I was looking at some gorgeous newborn pictures of a photographer’s on flickr — “Scuse me.. Hi! Can you come back in time and photograph my babies when they were still tiny?…” — and I couldn’t recall what happened to the pictures from a tiny home session we improvised with Orly a few weeks back. I found them on the file server!

They needed some Photoshop tweaking, so I tweaked. I found a couple of new tricks recently for enhancing images, which got me out of my rusty old ways. Soon, I’ll take the time to do some step by step manipulation to show you, but for now I’ll just throw it out there all mumbly-jumbly.

Here is the SOOC (straight out of the camera) shot.

Less-than-perfect interior lighting and colours, some blur, but Orly is sweet and cute, so I want to salvage the pic.

Going from memory, I started with the “Image > Adjustments > Exposure” feature to make the picture paler. Then I copied the main layer, set its blend to “Screen” and adjusted the opacity.

After that, I went to “Image > Adjustements > Selective color”, which is my new favourite thing to work with. For the colors “Neutrals”, I removed even more black, and I lowered the Cyan, too, to make the picture a little warmer. For the colors “Black”, I brought back some black. This made the details clearer and sharper. I’m pretty sure I added the filter “Sharpen > Unsharp Mask”, too, to make everything crisper.

I finished it by using the clone tool in her eyes — the reflection from the window combined with the sharpening had made her eyes look tearful.

Ta-da!

Then I used “Image > Adjustements > Black and White” to make it a tinted grayscale picture, and I really couldn’t decide if I preferred the desaturated one or not.

Here’s another one. SOOC.

I used a similar method to work on this one (same lighting, lots of blur), but I added a duplicate layer set on a “Soft Light” blend at 50% opacity to boost the colours a little bit. I also added some yellow to the “Neutrals” colors of the “Selective color” feature, for warmth.

AND, I used the clone tool to remove a big vein on her forehead, and a big mosquito bite.

Sweet!

Tonight, we went out downtown to wander around with the kids and to look at the old cars parked at the old harbour every Wednesday.

We saw a series of old rides.

I’m impressed with the hobbyists who have spent so much love (and money, I’m sure) on these shiny and very awesome machines.

Xavier found himself a ride; he’ll start saving for it right away. It would have been my choice, too.

Orly found herself some wheels, too.

We’re forced to admit Xavier’s interest was wandering more towards boats on the river and the open air aerobics class taking place at the harbour than on the old cars.

Eventually, it was time to walk back to our own un-wonderful hatchback, but we did stop for yummy ice cream on the way. Xavier was pleased, and appropriated my own cone right away. We shared.

What a fun night — and a great way to split the work week in half!