If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo
This week at I Heart Faces the theme is “Beach Fun!” We don’t live near the ocean, so we have to make do with our “desert” beaches at the local reservoirs. 
I love this picture of Summer. She’s having such a blast splashing in the water! I had just gotten my Lensbaby lens and I thought this would be a fun place to try it out. I love the effect it gives the water.
Head on over to I Heart Faces for more fun beach photos!
**Also, we’re having a fabulous giveaway over at Love that Shot! Be sure to stop by and enter to win a beautiful hand-stamped steriling silver necklace from 3 Little Birds Boutique!
Love Your Shot! | Link-Up is our new weekly feature on Thursdays over at my website, Love that Shot! We’ve got a fun blog link-up party going on! All you have to do is choose your favorite photo you’ve taken in the past week, blog about it with a tip on how you took the photo or how you edited it and come link up. Click on over for some fun today!
This past weekend, my parents and my sister and her husband took a little drive up north to see a Vintage Boat Show. I’m much more of a nature photographer so photographing boats was a bit of a challenge for me! I decided to wander around and capture some nature around the hotel. Then we went inside the hotel and they had these handmade sailboats made out of sticks. They were the neatest things! I totally want one for my house now!
Anyways, I was looking at them and then looked past them and saw the lights in the background and I knew I had to get a picture! Now, I said before, I am a nature photographer and taking pictures of “stuff” is kind of hard! But I think I managed to pull it off. 
I love the bokeh lights in the background behind the rustic sailboat. I used my 50mm lens for this shot and used the wide aperture of f/1.4 to create those yummy bokeh sparkles in the background.
What a cutie this week! Wow, those eyes are just stunning! I absolutely loved the vibrant colors in this photo so I decided to do a clean edit this time. It was super easy and took me less than 3 minutes to do!
1. First I cropped to a portrait orientation. Hey, look! I’m getting better at cropping, lol! Normally I would have probably left the crop alone, but I wanted all the focus to go straight to that handsome little boy.
2. I added a Levels Adjustment Layer and brought the outside sliders in towards the middle, just until they reached the beginning of the upward slopes. Then I grabbed the middle slider and moved it to the left just a little. What this levels adjustment did was brighten the exposure and give the colors a little bit of a boost.
3. Next I ran my Eye Sparkle Action from Love that Shot and very lightly sharpened his eyes and brightened the catchlights. I really go for the natural look with eyes, so I lowered the opacity of the layers way down to around 5-10%.
You’ll notice that I didn’t do anything to the darkness under his eyes. I always leave these sorts of things because I really feel they are part of them. Funny story, when I had my Senior pictures done the photographer took out the darkness and circles below my eyes. We got the finished photos back and something just didn’t look right about me! It seemed like part of me was missing, and we were right- my eyes weren’t “me” anymore! My daughters have inherited the shadows under their eyes and I always leave them in because it makes them unique. So long story short, that’s why I never touch those kinds of things!
4. Next I added a teeny tiny bit of warmth with my Warming Action.
5. Finally I darkened the edges a little bit to bring the focus straight to the little boy.
And that’s it! So easy and quick to do and it gives beautiful results!
Michelle Johnson is a fine art photographer and the co-founder of Love That Shot, a website for photographers with tutorials, workshops and fun products! Find her at her blog, My Two Seasons, and her website, Love That Shot.
Wow, it’s been a little while since I’ve done a photo for I Heart Faces! I got to thinking and I remembered this photo from when Autumn was about 2 years old. I had pulled her hair up after I shampoo’d it and she saw herself in the mirror. She was surprised and not in a good way! She couldn’t talk yet, but I could see what she was thinking in her eyes… “Mom, what in the heck did you do to me???” I thought it would be perfect for this week’s theme!
Head on over to I Heart Faces for some more fun “Surprise” photos!
I edited this with the “Monteverde” texture from the Old World Collection at Love That Shot. I’ll be posting a tutorial on how I did this black and white conversion in the next couple of weeks. It was super easy to do!
