Day 224; Spotted Dress

At Easter this year there were so many adorable little kids in nice clothes, so portraits were inevitable. This little girl was particularly adorable in my opinion, and I managed to snap this photo in the midst of the chaos of the egg hunt. I liked the texture the bushes in the background and the bright, springtime colors.

Day 221; Joy in the Dark

I think I'm going to try to do a series of all my brothers and sister in the same style in the dark. Here you see the oldest of my younger siblings, Joy. Again, it's not as good as the one of Noah, but I still think it was worth trying. Joy has similar coloring to Noah, so the faded holga effect turned out pretty well. Joy was wearing a dark shirt which covered her neck, so it looks like her head is floating in midair, which I don't really like.

Day 214; Russian Nesting Dolls

My great aunt Glenda is one of the most interesting people I've ever met. She travels all over the world, and sends back the most beautiful things. These are two in a set of hand painted Russian nesting dolls which she sent to my sister and I a few years ago. The detail of the painting and etching is really quite lovely, and while admiring them earlier today I decided to make them the subject of today's photo. I set them up in my de-shadow box and used a black skirt as the background. I used the on-camera flash and the black background to highlight the dolls and help their color pop. The biggest thing I would change is that a fold in the skirt hides a portion of the larger doll's base.

Day 203; Doll With the Floral Dress

This doll was for the longest time tied for my favorite porcelain doll. I think it was mostly because she was plain enough that I could play with her comfortably without ruining her (although her hair has seen better days). For the past few years she's been sitting in a box with all the other dolls I outgrew. It's sad that I can't even remember her name anymore. For this photo I put her in a box of packing peanuts which you can see in the corner. I did a focal soften so it would fade into softer focus the farther out from her head you got. I also did a faded black and white to give a gentler light to her dress.

Day 45

Here's another photo from the gymnastics championship. Tomorrow I'll try to post something different, but today I wanted to share at least one more gymnast picture.  It makes me dizzy just watching the gymnasts do fancy flips like this while on the narrow balance beam, but I suppose it must be fun or they wouldn't be doing it right? I used the focal soften, focal B&W, and the dark edges effects on this photo.

Day 44

Here is another photo from the championship. I used the focal soften effect on this photo.

Day 43

Here's another photo in my gymnastics championship series. Shown here is the Oklahoma team congratulating one of their gymnasts after a successful uneven bars routine. Oklahoma did manage to squeeze out the win with Iowa State a close second.

Day 42

On Saturday I had an interview in Ames on the Iowa State University campus. After my interview my dad took me to watch the Big 12 Gymnastics Championship being held in the
Hilton Coliseum.  I took over 200 photos, so I'll probably be posting more. This is my favorite one so far. I used the Focal Soften and the Focal B&W on picmonkey.com to make the gymnast the focal point of the photo.