Point and Shoot

This is the first post in a long time that isn't going to be about cooking or crafting. I had a little fun over the weekend pretending to be a professional photographer when a friend wanted a few shots of her family for Christmas gifts. Jerusalem Mill village, just across the Baltimore County line in Harford County, was the setting. And I guess I knew I was on the right track, when I showed up at about 10am last Saturday on a perfectly partially sunny day to find four other actual professional photographers shooting all over the place.

I wish I had more time to work on my photography skills, and maybe get back to shooting fully manually all the time, but lack of brain power (full time job, toddler, crafting and cooking, etc) sometimes leads to shooting with those little camera presets. I also want to do a better job of photos for tutorials and other projects I post on the blog. Lighting is always an issue, since it's usually 10pm when I'm doing these things. I'm going to work on improving those in the future.  I find lots of inspiration online from other non-professional photographers who enjoy playing around with their cameras as I do, as well as from others who are professional and who are amazing.

So here are my shots....

And then after I got seriously carried away in Photoshop...

I think they (the "before" shots) turned out pretty well! And I can see how easy it could be to use Photoshop for evil instead of good. In my defense, I never get to do anything fun in Photoshop at work and I rarely have the time to go nuts with my own photos.

BUT before you leave, be sure to check out a fun new blog by one of my favorite 6 year olds. It promises to be VERY entertaining.....

I am six years old. I have a blog. Check out my saw.

...maybe even a little scary. I'm pretty sure that you'll learn something.

Tastee

Just a few quick recommendations for things I've tried recently that could be classified as amazeballs.

This candy bar is the best candy bar you'll ever have in your life. I could write more, but that would be a waste of text.

The Haute Dog Carte in Baltimore, on Falls Road at Lake Avenue (next to Bonjour Bakery) is a great place to stop on the weekend for fantastic fare. I'm not a big meat eater. I'm not even a huge fan of hot dogs, but if it looks pretty and smells delicious I'm willing to give it a try. We stopped on a Sunday afternoon after spending a few hours in the heat chasing Henry around the nature playground at Irvine Nature Center.

I had the HD Signature and it was great. I love their method of putting the dog down in the bread and the bacon/onion relish was very tasty (you know how I luurve me some bacon!). We wrangled up the toddler in the back of the truck and had a fun little parking lot picnic.