Redemption Time

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting my dear friend’s new baby. He is completely adorable. He’s also the first baby I’ve actually held since I had my own two-and-a-half years ago, and I have to admit, I got a little wistful. Not that I want another baby of my own – I don’t think I have it in me to go through all we’ve been through yet again. I think I just experienced a little… longing? For the peaceful, calm, sweetness of him that I feel like I missed out on with my own… thanks to sleep deprivation and having to deal with the whole NICU and acid reflux thing. He even smiled his first smile for me. Aww…

At any rate, I took the opportunity to snap some photos of him. Which, I have to admit, didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. I had forgotten how squirmy babies are when they’re not asleep, and the low light and slower shutter speeds weren’t exactly ideal for that. Still, I managed to get a few good photos. And I think I’ll be able to salvage a few of the less good ones too. Like this one, for example, which was taken while I was testing for the light (I ended up having to totally push/overexpose the rest of the photos because of the neutral/light scene.)

It started out completely underexposed (remember, this was just a test shot, but it is one of the only ones where he looks like he is sleeping, so I thought I’d play with it and see what I could do)…

First I cropped it, then adjusted the heck out of the brightness and contrast to get this…

Now, if you look closely at the image (as I am prone to do), his hair has developed a bit of a green tinge around the edges with the adjustments. So, I popped open PSE9 and studied up on how to change the colour of an object… and then did it! After I added a nice overall warm layer to the image, that is.

Much better. But, add a few “special touches” in Picnik – like a soft focus around his face, and a warm vignette (which I will soon learn how to do in PSE9, I’m sure)…

And the baby portrait has been completely resuscitated! Check it out closer up…

Isn’t that amazing?!?! Oh, thank goodness for the technical age… And yay me for learning how to work a little of it’s magic!

Anyhow. I just thought I’d share. It feels really good to be able to figure out how to do at least a little bit more of what I want to do to photos. Kind of makes up for the other day’s less-than-stellar results. Woohoo! 😉