Going with my whole love of colors, I have a new color palette mix using Chasing Dreams free Color Palette templates. 

As always hope that this inspires a color mix for you! Or better yet, download the templates and play around and find your own color palette!

Cowgirl Love

Southwestern Palette

Lilac Love

So very absent

I challenge myself to post here more often. I put out our hard earned $$ for this site and here it sits, like a red headed step child most of the time. Forgotten, left behind, neglected.  I can use the term red headed step child because my first born has red hair, and I am irish, it gives me the right ;). Not dissin red headed step kids promise!

So, back to why I am here, school semester is near to over, we're in the last few weeks and the end of the road is near. At least for a month then it will be back to the grind.

I have been busy busy, hence my neglect of the site. I could put up all the pics that I have taken since summer, but they definitely fall into the description of Photo101 and lack the beauty, spontaneity and simple life that I am used to exhibiting.  I do have a couple to share though, ones that I worked on despite being pressed to finish homework. Sometimes you gotta break the rules right?

Day 5 - Look to the past

Photography is, as Photography was.

You know your a true photographer if you trust in yourself enough to pick up a 35mm and use patience to get... just... the right..... SHOT!

Study the masters, read up on how they got famous, their styles, their techniques. Talk about truly inspiring!


My favorite artist to study is Ansel Adams, even though I do less then half of my photography in black and white, his style still impresses me and he is still a god in the photography world. I view his images and try to put myself in his shoes, imagining his perseverance in waiting, for the exact moment for the perfect image.

Do I brake out my 35mm and test myself? Yes... and will be more once I have my darkroom set-up. There really is no more awesome sound then the click whir of a 35mm as you take a picture.

Day 2 - RTM!

Read the manual.

How many photographers have read their users manual when purchasing that shiny new camera? I know I didn't, not at first. I wanted to learn everything through use. Now I keep my manual in my backpack and refer to it as my cambible.

Todays second day of Photographic Inspirations once again comes from Photopreneur

2. Read the Manual
It’s not just Photoshop that can do all sorts of things that you don’t know about. Your camera probably has more settings and functions than you know… or know what to do with. You might find a lot of new ideas in the middle of your camera manual.







The following picture is totally OOC (out of camera).  From reading my manual I was able to start taking pictures that turned out perfect totally OOC with absolutely no need for post processing, aka, no photoshop at all!

Day 1 Inspirations

So, we're going to try for a 2 month period of Inspirations, using the list on this site. As well as any other idea that comes to mind!


I have found Inspiration to be the driving force behind my work. I can sit and look at bridge for an hour, trying to pick out just the right picture to work on. But if I have no inspiration, no goal in mind, my day can end with me doing no editing at all. So onto day 1 of a trip to Inspirational photography

1. Play with Photoshop
So much of photography these days happens after the shutter release has been pressed. There’s probably a ton of things that you don’t know how to do in Photoshop. Learn something new and see what that does for your photography potential.

I chose to do a lite photoshop edit with this picture. I have had the song "Feeling Groovy" from Simon and Garfunkel going through my head the past few days and it just kept making me think of this one photo that I had caught on 4th street in downtown Tucson last week. A Vox/Flickr friend who lives down Tucson way invited the sister and I to go down for a fun photo session and I am thinking that there are going to be several of those pictures used in this theme.

A single grungy/pinkish layer was used.  Multiplying the layer and then toning down some areas. I really wanted the lightpost to show, but it would have taken just too much lightening to get the full effect.  This is probably about as simplistic as I get with photoshop editing. But it's a start.




See you tomorrow!

A true first, and inspiration

So for my first post, I though the best thing to do would be to inspire myself, and hopefully you dear reader. I spent the evening working on the blog and looking up all sorts of inspirational photography ideas. I finally decided that I am going to start with the first idea from this blog.

1. Play with Photoshop
So much of photography these days happens after the shutter release has been pressed. There’s probably a ton of things that you don’t know how to do in Photoshop. Learn something new and see what that does for your photography potential.

My sister leaves to go back home to overcast wintery snowy Chicago on Thursday.  So I have decided that I will start my trip down inspiration lane that night. I am going to shoot for 1 inspirational idea a day, I can't wait to see how this pans out :D...

So, for a picture that has been inspiring me lately I leave you with some beauty.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Set a goal and work towards it"][/caption]