Mammoth and Tahoe= fun times! 4/22/11

 It's always a privilege being in mammoth getting to hang with my mom's side of the family.  Every year we go to mammoth and visit my moms side of the family and often times I am so focused on my snowboarding, I forgot how much of a blessing my family is to me and how much they mean to me.  If I had to give any advice to people out there.. it would be don't take your family for granted. You never know what could happen in the future so appreciate their presence everyday and don't let the little things work you up because in the end they aren't that big of a deal compared to life itself. 

     With that being said, this is my little cousin and she is 14 years younger than me.  She had a long car ride to mammoth and was passed out on the couch there so I figured it was a perfect opportunity to get some pictures of a peaceful child at rest.  Don't rush through your childhood.. soak all of it in!

family: the most important people in an individuals life 

I was experimenting a little bit on this picture and turned the clarity down some rather than up a little bit.  I like how the face is a little more dull and how it really emphasizes the smoothness of a child's face.  If I could go back though, I would of not turned down the the clarity quite as much.  I then obviously desaturated the picture and turned up the contrast some. 

I like the depth of field a lot on this picture and how the couch before her is all blurry.  I turned down the vibrance some on this and then bumped the contrast up some.  I then lightened her face a little bit and bumped the exposure a hair.  And then I turned up the clarity a little. 

I like this photo except for the fact that her right cheek looks like it has pink on it from  the reflection of her shirt.  I tried to fix it some but it didn't work out as well as I thought. By all means though, its still a really cool photo. 

This one is a little better.  I like how I put her knee in the shot also and got that out of focus.  It shows the direction of where her body is going yet it's blurry so it leaves all of the focus on her face still.  I bumped the contrast, the clarity a hair and turned down the temperature a little.  On about all of these pictures of my little cousin, I turned down the temperature because the color of the light above made the picture more yellow than normal. 

This is my little cousin Sterling.  Since there are three very similar photos, I am  going to talk about this one and it will kind of represent the other too.  Ok so in these photos, I put his face under a light to try and light up both sides of his face. It did a pretty good job of lighting up his face.  As far as editing went though, I bumped the contrast a little, and turned down the exposure, then used the vignetting tool to darken the corners.  I then used the bandage tool to touch up his face.  After that, I lightened his face with sampling a lighter part of his face and using the paint tool to lighten up some of the darker parts of the picture. 

A bear.. photo credit: Paul Haran.  I was in so much shock from seeing this bear outside of my friends house.. I forgot how to use my camera so I gave it to him real fast hah. Hopefully that won't ever happen again. 

This is a picture through a pair of my sunglass of lake tahoe.  I set the exposure the part inside the sunglass lens would be a little under exposed and then the outside would be a little over exposed.  I had to do that or else part of it would of been way to dark or way to over exposed. I then just sharpened the picture a little bit and bumped the contrast some and that's about it. 

I like this picture.  The water colors are incredible and so summer warm feeling yet there is still snow in the mountains off in the distance.  I bumped the contrast, used the vignetting tool, and cropped it some. 

Same applies for this except the darkening of the edges.

I got my inspiration from an influential artist and business man in the snowboard industry.. Corey Smith

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