A Day in the Life

I am an avid reader of quite a few photography and photoshop blogs. One of the people I follow closest is Scott Kelby. He is a photgraphy and photoshop genious and not to mention a savy business man, but I digress. I was reading his blog today and he had such a good post I had to include it here.

This doesn't look too bad!

OK, so yesterday I heard from a friend that it was reported that the government spent an estimated $360,000 for that “Photo Op” debacle which had the President’s 747 flying low over New York City (good plan!), escorted by a fighter jet (luckily the President wasn’t on board).

I heard what they wanted was a shot of Air Force One (of course, it’s only called Air Force One if the President is actually on board, so we’ll just call it “Big Blue and White 747?) flying over the statue of Liberty with Manhattan in the background. There were probably more cost efficient ways getting that image, and so in literally less than two minutes I hacked together the composite you see above in Adobe Photoshop CS4, using a background from iStockPhoto.com and an official White House shot of “Big Blue and White 747? from their web site.

Now, here’s my plea to the White House. Rather than spending $360,000 somewhat foolishly (wink, wink), whatdayasay we work out a deal?

I’m trying to raise money for furniture and household appliances for an orphange in Kenya (run by Americans), and I’d be happy to actually take 90 minutes (or more; whatever it takes), and really do the compositing job right, and all you have to do is buy a freezer for around, say $360. You can keep the other $359,640 or give it to GM.

Anyway, by next weekend my schedule will have freed up, so if you’re interested just drop me a line here or call my cell phone (you know the number).

I will spare you my thoughts about how this is another example of the current administration spending our money for absolutely ridiculous things but just know I am mad about it! At least Scott Kelby thought of a good way to look at it, and his picture looks pretty good!

So Andrea took the Photoshop class from BYU and loved it. She has been playing around with Photoshop ever since. I think it is neat because Photoshop skills are a thing that you can always use. And if she can compensate for our poor photography skills that is great all in itself.

It is that time of year again when everyone is trying to send out a Christmas card as a year in review. It is a difficult job to find a good photo of the whole family. This year, Andrea took on the job of making my families Christmas card. She touched up all the photos, and made us all look better. Take a look and let us know what you think about Andrea’s first Photoshop Christmas Card.

Today I began my first post-graduation class at BYU. I decided to take a class on Photoshop when Zac suggested it would help him in his web design pursuits. I’ve also been wanting to learn how to use the program to edit photos as well. So today we just learned the basics (Zoom, resize, creating and changing text, etc), but I am so excited. My husband thinks I am a nerd, but I really love going to class and learning something new. So since I don’t go to classes anymore, this is really fun for me. Plus I’m learning something that I may use in my real life. I’ve already created an awesome birthday party invitation with my new photoshop skills, and soon I’ll be retouching photos like crazy and designing stuff for Zac’s websites.

I posted the invitation so you could all see how amazing Andrea is at Photoshop after only one lesson! – Zac