Shoppin the Photos

I am trying to improve my photo shopping skills and I'm not sure if its working or not, but I'm having fun anyways.

I took several pictures in Mammoth when we went there a few weeks ago and really liked a lot of shots I got. It is easy when the scenery is so beautiful! Here is a picture I took at Mono Lake. The rock formations are called Tufas and wikipedia tells me Tufas are "rough, thick, rock-like calcium carbonate deposit that forms by precipitation from bodies of water with a high dissolved calcium content." I just thought they were cool looking.


I decided to turn it into black and white because there is so much contrast in the picture with the rock formations, and so this is what I got when the computer took away the color.


Then I realized there was an option to chose the filter type I wanted to use to convert it to black and white. Default was blue, but I could also try yellow, green and red too. My photo class from high school was starting to come back to me and as I tried the different filters I got this picture by using the red filter.

I think I need to do some more research on this to see what else I can do to improve my pictures. I'll make sure to get to that right after I finish Christmas decorating and shopping, plan a wedding and get all my school work done. Hmmmm, this could take a while.

Mammoth Pictures

A few weeks ago, Mike and I went to Mammoth Mountain in California with our friends Kim and Ty. Kim is my friend who I met when I first started working at Boeing and we both moved to California for work. She moved to Ridgecrest, CA (2.5 hours North of LA in the desert) and I moved to Lancaster, CA (about an hour north of LA also in the desert).

It was the first weekend of ski season, but since none of skied we just enjoyed the scenery. If we did ski we would've been disappointed because there was only one run open on the mountain. Anyway, I just wanted to share some pictures from our vacation, so here they are!

Below is a picture of June Lake. (8 miles north of the ski resort)


Kim and I at Mono Lake (15 miles north of the ski resort).


Next is a picture of the hot springs we saw.

This is convict lake. It is my favorite lake because I love the way the mountains dip down around it. I have some pictures of this from the last time Mike and I went to Mammoth when we lived in California and it looks so different because it was barely cloudy out last time.

Thanks for checking out my pictures!

Engagement Photos

Yeah, so we got engaged a while ago, but its never to late to get engagement photos done! I had hired our photographer and included in the package was an engagement photo session so we met her at Tower Grove Park and she just started snapping pictures. I felt so America's Next Top Model!This last picture we took kind of as a tribute to Mike. He is always wearing his sunglasses, yes even indoors with no lights on sometimes. Probably not the picture we'd use for the newspaper announcement, but its fun to have. He was tickling me by the way, that's why I have the double chin face going on! :)