Met my local parents at the park for a morning with the twins. I've spent 2 weeks here with them while their mommy took a class that runs from 9-3 everyday. She leaves around 8:30 each morning and gets home anywhere from 4-5 each day. Let me just say, this has been an eye-opening experience!
My two boys were almost 11 years apart. There's a big difference in your parenting styles at 20 and then again at 30. I've said many times that they really had two different moms. I was much more playful at 20 than I was at 30, but I was much more wise at 30 than I was at 20. Which child had the better parent? Hard to say. I made mistakes with both of them, and I've made apologies to both of them, but I have a fantastic relationship with both of them that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
In hindsight, as hard as I thought I had it with 1 baby, as every parent of a newborn rightly feels, it's NOTHING compared to TWO babies! Those newborn months are absolutely insane when they're on completely independent sleep schedules! Many, many, MANY times I wondered how my son and daughter-in-law survived those days. But KUDOS to them for hanging in there, and now they have two 18-month-olds who sleep thru the night and take a 3-hour nap everyday AT THE SAME TIME!!! That alone is life-changing!!! :-)
I always think, on my long weekend visits down here, that this is completely doable, that I could handle this easily. In these 2 weeks, I've figured out how to load and unload babies all by myself, how to keep them together out in public (isn't there such a thing as baby leashes????), how to survive a trip to Walmart, how we can go bye-bye each morning and have fun, what we can do on our own, and what we need to save for times when there are other adults with us. For the most part, I have happy, content babies who are loving their Nana time as much as Nana is, and I would not trade this experience either! So let me just say, for the record, that yes, this is doable, but after two weeks, NANA IS POOPED!!!! :-D
Haha! I'm typing this on Friday, which means I'm going home tomorrow, and I'll be able to return to my "normal" life and do my "normal" things and have my "normal" time and do the things I love to do, catch some sunsets and egrets and Pelicans, spend a couple hours processing photos, ride my bike, maybe play the piano or flute .... but oh my gosh, I cannot imagine not being here with these two precious little people! It is bringing tears to my eyes to write this! What a hole there will be in my day without them!!!!
@frankhymus Care to critique? I loved the intimacy of this shot. Not as much pond and reflection in this one, but still lowered the exposure on the background and increased it on the people. Thinking I probably should have cropped the bottom just a bit so as not to cut off her hand. On both of these park shots, I ran them thru On1 after PS to give them a "pop" I just couldn't seem to achieve in PS. Not sure at all how to do that in PS....
A pop of color? Now you are in one of my favorite places. "Lab" color. That is an acronym, L + a + b for the three channels, lightness, and a and b color. Rather than RGB. It can be a daunting place to go, but an interesting place to start is the so-called "hiraroam" sharpening effect - High Radius, Low Amount.
1. Image | Mode | Lab Color
2. Duplicate the background. It is best to flatten the image before you start this.
3. Filter | Sharpen | Unsharp Mask, and to start, amount = 25 or so (yes that low), Radius 100 or so (yes that high), and Threshold = 3. And watch the effect. Experiment with changing all three parameters and notice the effect each has. You can afford to leave it a little "over the top" because...
4. Reduce the opacity of that layer down from 100% "to taste." You might even settle on something as small as 20-30%.
5. To convert to a jpeg, you'll have to convert back to RGB mode, so Image | Mode | RGB.
Sharpening the color channels? That seems to go against everything pundits might tell you. Scott Kelby for one. Remember how after "normal" sharpening they will often tell you to do to Edit | Fade Smart Sharpen (or Unsharp Mask) so that you have just done "lightness sharpening" and not produced any color shifts?
There are many "actions" in the market that can automate things like this, and you may have one in On1. They never tell you what's going on "under the hood."
1. Image | Mode | Lab Color
2. Duplicate the background. It is best to flatten the image before you start this.
3. Filter | Sharpen | Unsharp Mask, and to start, amount = 25 or so (yes that low), Radius 100 or so (yes that high), and Threshold = 3. And watch the effect. Experiment with changing all three parameters and notice the effect each has. You can afford to leave it a little "over the top" because...
4. Reduce the opacity of that layer down from 100% "to taste." You might even settle on something as small as 20-30%.
5. To convert to a jpeg, you'll have to convert back to RGB mode, so Image | Mode | RGB.
Sharpening the color channels? That seems to go against everything pundits might tell you. Scott Kelby for one. Remember how after "normal" sharpening they will often tell you to do to Edit | Fade Smart Sharpen (or Unsharp Mask) so that you have just done "lightness sharpening" and not produced any color shifts?
There are many "actions" in the market that can automate things like this, and you may have one in On1. They never tell you what's going on "under the hood."
There are so many things you can do with Lab color that are impossible with any other color space. The "bible" for this is the latest second edition of Dan Margulis; book https://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-LAB-Color-Adventures-Colorspace/dp/0134176103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467982868&sr=8-1&keywords=lab+color+photoshop
Warning. It is not for the faint of heart, I still haven't completed more than about half of it, but a bonus is that the book's web site has a complex set of actions that automates much of the wizardry.
Second Warning. This can very addictive... :)