Oh this little one was a cutie pie! Almost three months old and such a personality. I love this age, they make all these silly faces and just look like they are really starting to take notice of everything around them. Mom found me from Give Away Today and I’m so happy she did, her and her hubby were so fun to hang out with! We went to Gardner Village and I love that place. I used to live 5 minutes from there and I was excited when mom said she would like to go there for pictures. So many fun and cute back grounds. Thank you guys for letting me take pictures of your cutie pie baby girl!

Ok these ones crack me up! While mom was getting a new outfit or something, dad picked her and had her in his hand like this. I was like “WAIT, do that again!” and I think these are my faves of the bunch because her looks are just too cute for words! In one she had little bubbles coming out of her mouth…who doesn’t like baby bubbles?!!

This next one is so sweet me. In one you can just see her little lip starting to quiver because she wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad with all the picture taking. She recovered pretty quickly and gave me a sweet little smile!

A color that I’m loving lately is YELLOW! I think it’s really funny because my mom loves yellow and I’ve never really liked it, but yellow is a HOT color these days for fashion! Today I’ve added some fun add-ons…fun scarves, jewelry, hats and headbands! Photo sessions don’t have to be boring anymore! No more “everyone wear a yellow shirt in the exact same style”! Mix it up! Keep it fun! I love the gray sleeveless shirt below and it would look super cute with the yellow cardigan over the top with some fun chunky jewelry. Put your little girl in a dress and throw some leggings under! Take dad’s button down shirt and put a yellow shirt under! TEXTURE AND LAYERS PEOPLE!

I also have seen on a few photographer’s blogs a really fun and neat idea and I’m going to try it! Each week I will give you the chance to get something free, a discount, etc when you book a session with me! How does it work? Simple, If you book a session and show up wearing one of these items, you will get something! Each week you will have the chance to get something different. One week I may have a certain outfit you must show up wearing and one week I may have you choose from the collection. So lets say you book a session today, for September…If you want the discount or whatever it may be, you will need to show up in one of these outfits. Make sense?!!

This week: If you book a session THIS WEEK (August 28th – Sept 4th) and show up wearing ANY of these items below, you will get a FREE 10×10 mounted collage and an easel to set it on! These 10×10 collages are GREAT! I have one sitting in my computer room right now. My mom has a few in her house, my dad has one….just so fun and add so much to a room!

All of these things came from TARGET and AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS.

So, on Saturday I got the chance to take pictures for this family. My friend Susan came with me because it was up in Timber Lakes and I was for sure I’d get lost (plus, she was great getting the little ones to look over at me!). Sure enough, we did get lost, but not too bad, so it turned out just great. The family was staying up there for a little vacation and it was gorgeous there! I think the best thing about what I do is meeting new people. I really love to watch families interact and just get to be around people I’ve never met before! I seem to have some of the best clients in the world! Thank you guys so much for letting me take your pictures and for being a great family to shoot.

YaY! I’m so glad I was able to help last week with some questions! Thanks for stopping by to read! More today!…

#1: I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about the saturation action and erasing back the skin, how exact do you have to be not to get a “halo” type effect and do you do this with a layer mask. The saturation action is done is with the channel mixer. (I used ps7). To make your own action, you open your actions pallet, click on that little arrow in the top right corner, hit “new action” and name it. This will start recording your action. Go to “Image – Adjustments – Channel mixer” and do each step in order as you see it below and hit the stop button. There you go, you are all ready to use that action!

To use it, I always make a new layer by either going to “layer – new – layer” or by clicking on that new layer button (circled above). Hit the play button on your saturation action and then use your eraser to erase the stuff that’s too much. I use the soft round eraser and usually on like 50% or some opacity. You can play around with those things.

#2: I have the 50d and struggle to control noise indoors.  How high can you set the iso indoors? I find inside that if I go any higher than ISO 400 inside then I’ll see noise. Even 400 is pushing it unless I get spot on exposure (but I don’t always). I do use Imagenomic Noise wear for noise those and love it.

#3: When you shoot from further away (I mean so you can see the subject and alot of the surroundings in the picture), are your pictures tack sharp when you look at them in actual pixels in PS? Nope, but if I use my 85mm, then they are pretty sharp. but for the most part, a close up will be sharper then a full body because the pixels are more spread out on a full body (well that’s what I’ve heard…could be totally wrong! lol).

#4: I was wondering how and when you sharpen your images? I sharpen all my images for the web and if the image needs it, I’ll sharpen for print.

When I’m done editing a full size image and I think it needs to be sharpened, I’ll sharpen it for print using USM Unsharp Mask: filter – sharpen – unsharp mask. I play with the settings, but for a general rule, I start at Amount: 150 – 200%, Radius: 0.2 – 0.9 px, Threshold: 0 levels. I duplicate the layer to I can erase the bg and other objects back in after I sharpen.

For web sized photos, I have an action that I made that duplicates the layer (like above/making a new layer) and then uses USM ( My settings for web sized images are Amount: 200%, Radius: 0.3px, Threshold: 0 levels.

Like for prints, I duplicate the layer in my action so I can erase the edges and pretty much everything besides right around the body/face.

So there you have it! If you have any questions for this upcoming week, let me know! m@melissadavisphotography.com

Today it’s all about the girls! I love ETSY.com! If you haven’t been there, you MUST! Check out all these cute home made things you can find for your girl!

Here are some of my faves that I found that are pictured above! I love the fun and quirky thing and also sweet and girly!

Little Miss Muffin: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6519903

Vintage Lucy’s: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=17367

Little bits by Lisa:  http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5595670

Sweet Plume:  http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6781773

OH I’m so excited for my first Q and A Tuesday! I’m just going to jump right in and I warn you, I might ramble!

#1. What lenses do you use and for what? I have a Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 and a Canon 85mm 1.8.

My Tamron is on my camera 90% of the time for easy access to pictures of my kids. I use it for newborn sessions because they are almost always inside and I need to be able to get that 28mm range. And to be honest, I use this for most of my sessions. HOWEVER, I do not love this lens by any means.

Pros: The zoom factor. I like to zoom and I like to have that full range from 28 – 75mm covered by one lens. Cons: It’s not very sharp and I’ve for sure out grown this lens. I love the look of wide angle distortion, but it’s just not quite wide enough to get there. As an alternate, I’d love the Canon 24 – 70mm 2.8L, but it’s WAY out of my budget!

I LOVE the 85mm because it’s sharp and the bokeh is to DIE for, but it’s not very practical (for me).You have to be WAY back (and I like to be close). I like to talk to my clients while I’m taking pictures, so being so far back, I feel like I’m yelling and am not able to give much direction. But every time I put this lens on and work around those things, I LOVE the images it produces.

#2. What is a decent amount of blog views and do you find that by increasing blog viewers you actually get more clients? Oh boy, I have no idea what a decent amount of blog views is! I do know that I average about 48 a day right now and I don’t think that’s very much and would love to have more. I’ve never had a lot of blog flow, so I can’t really say if it helps actually get more clients.

I have however just recently (literally like a month ago) gotten some advice on how to help the search engines find my blog better, and I’m hoping by doing those things, it will increase views to my blog and therefor get clients coming my way!

What I’ve learned (about my wordpress blog):

* I can add new tags to each post so search engines will see those tags and will find me better.

* If you scroll over the image below you’ll see it says “Utah county photographer”. I NEVER knew how to do that before, so I’ve been going back into my old posts and changing my images to say a key word I want search engines to find. The more time you have key words, the more you’ll be found.

#3. So my question for you (for Q and A Tuesdays), is your processing technique. It looks so simple but yet it just pops! Is it really as simple as it looks? Yeah, it really is! I’ve been doing the same things to my images for YEARS. Do I always do the exact same thing? No, but I do these next steps to every single picture.

I chose that picture to be my example because it was a tad underexposed to start with, and as much as I’d love to say that I always get great image sooc…I DON’T! So that is the basics! I do those three steps to every picture regardless of the picture. Curves and contrast help bring out color! I do try and get images the correct exposure sooc, and when I do, again, those steps just help make images pop. For example:

sooc & edited with just those three things.

Lately I’m loving the look of burned edges, so I’ll burn the edges. I also have a quick low saturation action that I run and then erase in skin tones and anything that may have gotten a little too neon.

So there you have it! Thanks for the questions! I’d love some more or else I can’t do my Q and A Tuesdays! lol. m@melissadavisphotography.com

Until next time

Oh here we are at my second Fashion Friday! I got an add for The Children’s Place the other day and their clothes are so fun! Today is all about the BOYS! Some times I find it harder to dress my son than I do my daughter. Girls are so easy, but I found these amazingly cute things for the boys and now I want to go shopping for my son!

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again…adding layers and texture to your clothing for pictures really looks great. It used to be “less is more” and now you can really play around with fun colors, textures, and designs! So fun!

So, I’m adding yet another fun thing to my blog to make it less boring he he. I get a lot of questions as a photographer asking anywhere from “what camera do you shoot with?” to “How do you get the eyes to look like that?”. I thought it would be fun to start a Q and A where I take all or some of the questions I’ve been emailed through out the week and answer them every Tuesday!

Please send any questions to m@melissadavisphotography.com OR you can click on “contact” up above and fill out the form.

And a post can be a post with out pictures! These are totally just snaps. They were taken on my daughter’s 5th birthday of them buying their first ice cream all by them selves. It brings back so many fun memories of being a kid and the anticipation waiting for that ice cream guy to drive by!

I’ll be honest, this has nothing to do with the ice cream guy, but when we would visit my grandma and grandpa out in Tooele, the mail man would throw candy onto their yard for me, my sister and my brother. He came about the same time each night and I remember just watching out the window for him so excited to be getting gum or whatever candy it was that day!

Onto these cute snaps of my kids! (speaking of…….I hear the ice cream man now. He knows this is a GREAT street for ice cream sells! LOL).

Okay and one more. Do you ever just have a picture that speaks to you? I LOVE this picture of my son. I love his smile. I love the light. It’s a snap from my daughter’s birthday party and my sister in law was painting faces! I don’t play around with back lighting very much, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE sun flair and back light. Did I mention I LOVE it? oh, I love it!

Until next time!

This is my husband’s partner at work and his new gorgeous wife. I met them for the first time a few months ago and what fun people. They have both been married before, so they had a quick court wedding. I kid you not, I was not prepared for this tiny, now windows, low light room (so I pre-apologize they aren’t the best in the world…good thing your sister had a video camera he he he).

After the short ceremony we headed to Murray park to take pictures. They cracked me up the whole time we were taking pictures, they are so fun!

OH this handsome guy was a little HAM! He climbed right up onto the tree, sat like this and just started talking up a storm, giggling and being a little cutie! If only kids were all this easy

Little brother on the other hand was having nothing to do with it! We sat him in the tree and he started crying. Sweet guy was tired! I did get him to look at me for a split second while he was watching the baby ducks and I think it turned out really cute! Those EYES! These kids have some amazing eyes!

Then there was little sister. What a cute little bean. Look at that cute smile!

Ohh you guys, I’m so excited! I really want to keep this blog rolling and when I’m working very part time doing sessions, I feel like I’m  not posting enough! So, I’ve seen this done on a few photographer’s blogs and I think it would be really fun to have Fashion Fridays! I know some times it’s hard to choose what to wear when we are getting our pictures taken. Do we match? Do we dress up? Do you do bright colors? So many questions!

So every Friday I’m going to do some searches for some fun ideas that might be great to have for your next photo shoot!

Okay so lets throw mom in a cute (still summer, just a tad fall) dress and dad in some comfy jeans.Totally casual, but a little something different then the every day wear. Little punches of color here and there tie back into mom’s fun dress! Even the kids match, but everything matches with out actually all wearing the same color shirts. A sweet little white dress with some of the colors in moms dress and a blue tank under a cute buttoned down shirt for brother and sister. Even baby can look great with the family! Mix and Match…let dad wear a red shirt and brother wear green! The best trick I’ve found when dressing my clients is to start with mom in something that has lots of color and work your way around that.

All these ADORABLE clothes can be found at Old Navy! OldNavy.com