Week 22 by Robin

Bugsy Loves Gracie

...and Gracie loves Bugsy. :) Kissy Kissy!.... Actually, he is licking her ears and you can see how she loves it! I was more interested in telling the story, so it's more of a snapshot rather than a work of art :). I mostly used Topaz Adjust and B&W.

Week 22 by Becky

My Ever Faithful Model, Lexie

I just could not figure out anything to take a photo of. Saw Lexie laying at the top of the stairs waiting for me to come up. So I was playing around with the ambient light coming in. When I couldn't come up with anything else for the week, I decided to use her. Ran Topaz Adjust and Topaz B/W.

Week 22 by Judy

A Beautiful Place to Worship

Went to Savannah, GA for a girls only mini vacation this past week. Savannah is a city of a lot of interesting history, beautiful old buildings, and great restaurants. It was difficult deciding on which photo to post this week, as I had several photos that I liked of the Savannah area. However, this is such a beautiful church I decided to post one of it. This photo is of the inside of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. A beautiful Catholic church built in 1876. If you are ever in the Savannah area, be sure to visit this cathedral.
Applied Topaz mild detail filter and lightened the photo a little.

Week 21 by Judy

Happy Fall Ya'll

I took this at a local church's pumpkin sale. The weather here is finally starting to feel like Fall - I love it!
I applied a little bit of a vignette to the photo, which I just learned can be done very easily in Camera Raw, and a low strength of Topaz's small detail filter.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Week 21 by Robin

Chuck E. Cheese

I was hired as a photographer at a child's birthday party at the brand new Chuck E. Cheese in town. It's a wonderland of fun for the little ones! Very nice! The children in our party were all beautiful, happy, helpful to each other and very well behaved! I was very impressed and delighted! I have many nice photos, but don't dare post any online without their parents permissions. So... good ol' Chuck E. is my photo of the week. Notice how "space age" and mellow he is now! I remember when they had dorky, annoying, mechanical dancing mice and whack a mole stations! I used a heavy application of Topaz Adjust to make him sort of cartoon-y!

Week 21 by Becky

Peek-a-BOO

Good thing I was home where my camera is. My sister noticed this Anole peeking out between the slats of my hickory rocker on my front porch. As soon as she showed me, I knew I had my photo for the week. Decided to convert it to black and white, since he really is a dull brown lizard against a reddish brown rocker.

Week 20 by Robin

Interesting Moth

This moth has been hanging around the front yard for days. Cool markings and "hair". I tried and tried to ID it, but can't find it anywhere. I've never seen this species before. Anyone else?
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Judy found it! It's a Hieroglyphic Moth!

Week 20 by Judy

October View

This photo was taken in Clayton, Georgia. It's a beautiful area. I was there visiting my brother and his family with my husband and some good friends.

Week 20 by Becky

Jumping Jack Flash

Wednesday night after work I was walking around the yard at 6:30pm. It was quickly getting dark so I was forced to use my on camera flash. I was also carrying around tin foil so that any light that came from the flash could be redirected by the tin foil. I came across this Rainbow Fly minding his own business on this leaf. Snapped the shot. I guess the flash scared the fly so much that it jumped off the leaf. Not the best focus on the fly since it moved, but the movement shows it jumped off the leaf in response to the flash. I named the fly Jack :)

Week 19 by Judy

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Taken by using a newspaper photo of Steve Jobs reflected on the back of my iPod Shuffle, one of the many Apple devices that was inspired by this insightful man, and has touched our daily lives in so many ways.

Week 19 by Robin

Got My Eyes On You

Ray called me out while he was working on his truck and pointed out this Praying Mantis. He put up with me shooting him from different angles for a little while then he started to challenge me by shifting his weight around and going towards my lens. OK, enough. We gently took him off the truck and placed him on a bush with many tasty bugs for him to munch on.

Week 19 by Becky

Together We Can Make A Difference

This is a special month that I want to make a special tribute to someone who is very special to my heart. I lost my best friend, my mother, August 3, 2011 to breast cancer. She fought this horrible disease since June 17, 1996, when it was first diagnosed. She was a wonderful wife, mother of four, grandmother of four, courageous and a fighter to the very end. I miss her so very much. I wanted something simple, but with a lot of emotion. I have this breast cancer bracelet I wear that I figured would be perfect. My hand models are my daughter and my son. There is another heart shaped charm on the bracelet on the other side of my daughter's hand that has the following words stamped on it "Together We Can Make A Difference". With my two kids holding hands to signify togetherness, the photo came together. It was my daughter's idea to make everything B/W except for the bracelet. I am glad I went with her idea because it gave me the simplicity I was going for and yet at the same time a lot of emotion in such a simple shot. I used ambient light and a black velvet background.

UPDATE 10/17/2011: Received 5th place (out of 106 entries) on www.dpchallenge.com in the PINK challenge.
UPDATE 10/31/2011: Selected as photo of the week on www.jpgmag.com.

Week 18 by Robin

Laughing Dragonfly

A happy little fellow! Found him in my front yard. I took this shot from below. I wish the background was simple, but maybe the brown house, green leaf and blue reflected in a window doesn't detract from the subject too much. 

Week 18 by Becky

TILL DEATH DO US PART

While photographing the ever colorful rainbow flies in my front garden I came across these two ants fighting. Looks like one of the ants was stronger than the other. Shortly after taking this photo the winner dropped the other ant to the ground.

Week 18 by Judy

Give it a Twirl!

This was done using a tutorial I saw on Another "Rich" Collectible Photography website (thanks go out to Steve). The original photo is of gift wrapping paper with a colorful floral design. I took several photos of different colorful things and "twirled" them. I like them all, but this was my favorite so far. Happy twirling!