We took Caleb’s pedal car out to the street this afternoon to practice…well…pedaling. We had no major breakthroughs, but he did enjoy being pushed around. After Scott exhausted himself pushing Caleb around and trying to teach him to pedal, we resorted to starting him at the top of the neighbors driveway, and letting him speed down the hill (the house next door is vacant). Sounds safe, right? And what do you think I was doing? None other than standing straight in his unpredictable path with my camera snapping pictures, then dodging out of the way at the last second.

I can’t decide whether this one is my favorite weekend picture:

Or this one:

For once I decided not to be so picture lazy.  99.99% of the pictures I post on my blog are straight out of my camera.  Occasionally, I will crop something or brighten it with the Windows Photo Gallery (extremely simplistic tools on the side).  Despite having probably 50GB of RAW files on my computer, I play in the digital darkroom once in a blue moon.  Today, I needed some therapeutic me time, after getting some incredibly frustrated with my adorable subject over dinner.  More specifically the dinner he refused to touch and dumped on the car floorboard.  Food side down.  Anyway, all of these pictures have been edited to suit my slightly larger than life color preferences.

Speeding downhill

Instead of trying to pedal the heavy as a VW Bug pedal car, I think I’ll just pick a flower for Momma

(This grass is in the neighborhood median, seriously, we do cut our grass, in fact, Scott did so today)

I’m sitting still…

…and I’d like to go thataway…

…and I’d like you to push me.  I’ll handle the steering.

I use Adobe Lightroom for my editing.  Here are some side-by-side comparisons of the before and after pictures.  Obviously the edits are on the right.  A few adjustments I made to each picture: exposure, increase vibrance, increase saturation, a little sharpening, bumped up the blue saturation in several pictures, and adding some lens vignetting to most pictures.

These next two had some blown out spots on his cheeks (spots where the sun was so bright it made his skin look white) that I was able to mostly correct

Last but not least, Bobbis (he used to be Bubbus, but Caleb changed his name)  And if you look at his eye closely, you can see my reflection (I was wearing an orange shirt).  Scott said, what are you doing, scratching your head?  No, I’m holding the camera!  haha

I cropped out the majority of this photo, this flower (that Caleb picked for me) was probably about twice the diameter of a pencil.  I thought I missed the focus, but it came out perfectly clear.  I thought it looked kind of cool.

Comments

5 Responses to “downhill speedracer”

    Amber
    June 23rd, 2008 8:20 am

    GORGEOUS!!! They are all beautiful, but the very first is definitely my fav. And the flower pic is not to shabby either. So, when are you going to take this little “hobby” of yours pro? I think you should seriously consider it. I LOVE your photography style. . . and I am very picky about that kind of stuff (from a designer’s perspective)

    Val
    June 23rd, 2008 2:05 pm

    Too cute….all the pics are fantastic!

    And that car……love it!

    Julie
    June 24th, 2008 8:31 pm

    A agree…gorgeous! All are fantastic! Just to put my 2 cents in, with the photos you couldn’t decide which you liked better, I liked the second one- mostly because it was only on him and the other had a knee in it! :D

    Rachel says: Oh I know, I honestly thought about trying to take that knee out! lol But alas, I’m too lazy :)

    childhood is calling : Crumbs In My Couch
    June 25th, 2008 8:55 pm

    [...] between Christmases. She sent me an email yesterday… “…I was looking at your pictures from this weekend and I can’t help but feel like I’m looking into the face of my childhood. I just [...]

    Andrea
    June 26th, 2008 9:56 pm

    Caleb’s hair is super cute. He looks a lot like my son, who is coincidentally close to needing his first haircut. Do you cut it yourself, or get it cut? I seem to remember you posting about having trouble with Caleb letting you cut it. At any rate, is there a “name” for this type of haircut, or something in particular to tell the barber to get them to cut it this way? What a handsome boy!

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