If you enjoy Dave Hill’s style as much as I do and a million other photographers I found a great tutorial at:

http://limeliteimages.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/dave-hill-tutorial/

Check it out and hope you enjoy it.

I’ve been accepted as a Photographer for the non-profit “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”. Here’s more about this fantastic and wonderfully needed program:

Pregnancy and birth are miraculous journeys. This amazing time of life is full of mystery, anticipation, joy, hope, and wonder. Feeling the powerful energy of birth and new life, watching as a new family is born unto each other. These things humble and amaze. These are the things that we celebrate when a baby is born.

But there is another aspect of pregnancy and birth. There is an unexpected
place in this journey where some families may find themselves. When a baby dies, a world is turned upside down. There is confusion, sadness, fear, and uncertainty that cannot be explained. There is sorrow where
there should have been joy. During this time, it might be impossible for families to know what they might need in order to heal in the future.

This is the place where the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation gently provides a helping hand and a healing heart. For families overcome by grief and pain, the idea of photographing their baby may not immediately occur to them. Offering gentle and beautiful photography services in a compassionate and sensitive manner is the heart of this organization. The soft, gentle heirloom photographs of these beautiful babies are an important part of the healing process. They allow families to honor and cherish their babies, and share the spirits of their lives.

The Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation (NILMDTS) administers a network
of almost 6,000 volunteer photographers in the United States and twenty-five international countries. At a family’s request, a NILMDTS Affiliated Photographer will come to your hospital or hospice location and conduct a sensitive and private portrait session. The portraits are then professionally retouched and presented to the families on an archival DVD or CD that can be used to print portraits of their cherished baby.

Our entire network of affiliated photographers graciously donate their time
and talents to our families and we are proud to be able to offer our services at no cost.Your Donations are greatly needed and greatly appreciated.

Please consider supporting the mission of NILMDTS.

A Message to All Professional Photographers:

Are you looking for a way to share your talents with your community? Are you willing to help a family create a lifetime of memories, in only moments? Are you willing to selflessly give of yourself in order to help a family begin to heal a broken heart? The death of an infant happens more than anybody cares to talk about. The Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation is currently seeking to expand Remembrance Photography
Services to all cities in our nation and around the world. It is simply not enough to have 20 or 30 photographers in one area. More photographers, of a professional caliber, are desperately needed to
serve the families requesting our services. If you are a professional photographer and are willing to donate your time and services to helping families who are experiencing the loss of an infant, we ask you to join the NILMDTS Network TODAY by CLICKING HERE

I’ve been doing a lot of surfing lately to find some good Photoshop and photography resources and believe me when I say “Boy have I found some!”. Slowly I’ll be putting links up so that you can find some of these sites – there is just so much information out there to share, it’s awesome.

One such site I found is http://photoshopsupport.com/ which lists tutorials and almost any other Photoshop type of resource you could possibly think of. For this site and others like it I will only be adding a link to it and not recreating the wheel by listing all of the resources that they have put together. So enjoy and if you have some to share and would like me to list them please let me know.

BJ

I wanted to share a wonderful site I have found for Photoshop resources and for sharing: Pay It Forward. And that is exactly what many artists, photographers, designers and vendors do, they pay it forward by providing free templates, brushes and other resources.

You’ll find many great templates that are of course free to download and use for personal use. And if you are so inclined you can also share some of your resources: actions etc (a great marketing idea too by the way).

Check them out and enjoy!!

I just returned from Tacoma, WA. It rained th entire time and was miserable for going out and taking pictures, especially when I didn’t know where to go and was reliant upon my hosts for doing the tourist gig. We did nail down some great places to go next time I go up for a visit, hopefully then (Jan 2009) I’ll bring back some great photos of the Seattle/Tacome Wa. area.

BJ

Here’s another great spot for LightRoom presets – and they are free!

http://www.presetsheaven.com/

BJ

A great group on flickr to post, share and discuss Lightroom presets “Presetting Lightroom”:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/presets/

Give it a whirl – I’ve gotten some great presets from here and I’m sure that the group will continue to share.

I am finally back from moving, a death in the family and personal injuries. It has been a rough last couple of months and now that things are on the downhill slide I can attend to my blog which fell to the wayside for a while.

Look for more Photoshop, portrait and wedding tips.

BJ

I made a Photoshop action that mimics a pin hole camera. You can adjust how dark and what tint you want. (CS3) Right Click on “rename to pinhole.atn” and save as pinhole.atn or rename it after you save the file.

I’m offering it here on the site for free. Enjoy.

BJ

I don’t know if you have checked out anything on the Photoshop Killer Tips website – if you haven’t you should stop by at least once a week or so and check out the tips they’ve posted. Sometimes the tip is as simple as a key combination to close all open windows – but all of a sudden you’re like – BAM! a little bit faster because you don’t have to go through Photoshop and close each individual window.

They’ve also got a podcast so you could subscribe to the podcast and catch the tips that way also. When working with Photoshop, Lightroom or any program for that matter learning keyboard combinations or other things to speed up your work flow can mean a huge time savings by the end of the day.

Check it out. I’ll see you soon with a long list of sites that I’ve put together that have Photoshop brushes, vectors, actions, patterns, textures and a bunch more. Many of them are free which makes them even sweeter.

Laters
BJ