Their Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Well, they were smiling. But I guess they got tired of saying "cheese."

I was looking through past blog posts and saw the green eggs and ham that I made for St. Paddy's day a couple years ago. I was less ambitious this year, not to mention my kids didn't seem thrilled about the idea of eating green eggs. We wore green, but that was about the extent of our St. Patrick's Day celebrations. 

I did spend a little time contemplating my kids' eyes, thinking about the song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." My kids' eyes sure steal my heart away. 

I've been playing around with my camera lately, trying to get better at taking pictures. I just have a little Kodak point-and-shoot, which I'm trying hard to be happy with, so I've been fiddling around in Picasa too. I figure if I can learn good editing techniques, maybe I can make do with the little camera I have. 

I happened to discover that our bathroom has really nice lighting for pictures between the hours of 4 and 5 in the afternoon. So I made my kids sit on the edge of the tub so I could take some portraits. Owen and Samantha were pretty cooperative. Drew was less so. He thought it would be more fun to monkey around and ham it up. At least it was entertaining.

Here are a few of the best ones:

Owen:

This shot is straight out of the camera. Not too bad, but it doesn't look real special.

I clicked "I'm Feeling Lucky" in Picasa's editing tool. I kind of like the result.

Another "I'm Feeling Lucky" treatment.

Samantha: 

Again, "I'm Feeling Lucky" treatment, plus I used retouch to make her cheeks less blotchy. I know, they still look blotchy but they were even worse before. We got a lot of sun that day.

All I did to this one was a crop and a Retouch to get rid of blotchy cheeks and some Cheeto stains I noticed on her sleeve.

Drew:

No editing here.

SOC

Another "I'm Feeling Lucky" treatment.

SOC

And if anyone is making a horror film and needs a picture for the cover, I've got just the thing: 

Samantha jumped right as I took the picture. Isn't it scary?! It gives me nightmares. Drew and Owen thought it was hilarious so they asked me to take a "ghost picture" of each of them. Theirs didn't turn out, though. Some things are just hard to do on purpose.