A few weeks ago I invited a friend to come over from Florida and spend the weekend with me in Georgia. We had all sorts of fun.

On Friday we set out to climb down Stone Mountain. We couldn’t have picked a hotter summer day. I thought Florida was hot, but now I know why they call it HOTlanta. Boy did we break a sweat.

Saturday we explored downtown Atlanta, took a tour of the CNN station and went to World of Coca-Cola.

CNN was very informative and educational. We got to see all the behind-the-scenes activity and technology. Aileen particularly enjoyed it since she loves journalism.

We headed to World of Coca-Cola next, but before getting there, we were stopped by an intriguing fellow offering free hugs. “What the hey!” I thought. I handed the camera over to Aileen and got my free hug. But I forgot, you just can’t hand over your huge SLR to your friends.

The blurry picture below was the result. It’s okay Aileen. I forgive you. I also forgive you for the 20 other blurry pictures you took of me too.

Aileen got the spontaneous urge to model at a public park on our way to Coca-Cola. The grown men nearby were watching us and laughing. But hey! So were we!

Even I joined in on the modeling fun.

Some Mexican guys claiming to be professional photographers stopped us and asked if I could take a picture with them. They were also lugging around an SLR. He was lucky I was in a particularly friendly mood and I kindly accepted.

They later offered to take pictures of us. The funny part is that more than half the pictures they took were blurry! So much for professional! Here’s an OK one:

The line for World of Coca-Cola was a mile long. We were literally melting in the sun. The heat index must have been around 105 that day. They should have given us our free Coca-Cola at the entrance not the exit.

The visuals inside Coca-Cola were inspiring. Coca-Cola is, after all, the epitome of great branding. It was interesting to see how the brand evolved over the decades and how alive it remains today; their classic logo-mark, practically unchanged.

We got to taste coke brand sodas from all over the world. The European colas were bitter and gross.

We later met up with some friends for a night of karaoke at Echo Karaoke, a korean-style karaoke joint that lets you rent out a private room for your group. The microphone at this place makes you sound amazing and the disco lights that move in tune to the music make even the worst singing sap feel like a star! We sang the roof off the place. Good times!

Sunday was the big day. White-water rafting on the Ocoee River in Tennessee! I can’t say enough good things about this experience. If you ever have a chance to do it, DO IT!

The raft guides knew the river like the back of their hand and performed all these crazy tricks, like jumping onto the rocks and back onto the raft while it was moving. Insanity.

Don’t worry. We came out alive from that one.

Aileen and I fell in love with our raft guide Ben. What a southern sweetie-pie. Highly entertaining, and well, great eye candy too! Of course we asked for a picture.

All in all, a fantastic fun-filled weekend.

A post on my trip to Chicago coming soon!

I MISS YOU AILEEN! XOXO

I almost overlooked the image in this tutorial, but then I realized it could be more striking if I cropped it in close. Note: If you decide to crop an image, ensure it is of high enough resolution and that it won’t look too grainy/noisy after cropping.

Before:

I opened the selected image in Camera Raw and set the crop boundaries.

After I have the desired crop, I usually go on to the basic editing. My first reaction is to click “Auto” and see what I get. Auto suggested a bit more Exposure so I left the exposure setting as is and started to tinker with everything else.

Exposure: +.50

The image felt a little too cool-toned for me, so I warmed it up slightly by adjusting the Temperature and Tint.

Temperature: 3950
Tint: 0

I knew I wanted this image to be dark and mysterious so my first instinct was to lower the Brightness.

Brightness: +15

The bright saturated colors in the image began to bother me, so I bumped up the Vibrance and reduced the Saturation. I usually drag the saturation slider all the way to -100 and slowly increase it until I get the amount of saturation I want.

Vibrance: +40
Saturation: -75

Now the image is starting to get closer to how I want it to look, but it still doesn’t pack the punch I’d like it to. So a little technique I’ve discovered along the way, is increasing the Recovery and Fill Light and then adjusting your Blacks and Contrast to compensate for the latter adjustments. Be careful with image noise when doing this.

Recovery: +80
Fill Light: +30
Blacks: +30
Contrast: +40

At this point the image is a little flat and just generally dark all over. I want the skin to pop out a bit more. I go to the Tone Curve tab which is the next tab over. I bump up the Lights and Highlights. Now the image has a bit more depth.

Highlights: +20
Lights: +35
Darks: 0
Shadows: 0

For some more intensity, I go back to the Basic tab and increase the Clarity just slightly. This defines the lines and edges in the image. Note: Don’t go overkill on this. This will do a number on the skin and make all spots, pores, and bumps really stand out. However, it can be a great effect if that’s the look you desire in your image.

Clarity: +8

I thought a slight vignette would look great with a dark and moody image like this one. I go to the Lens Correction tab and under Lens Vignetting make the following adjustments:

Amount: -90
Midpoint: 50

The image is looking great and I didn’t even set a finger in Photoshop yet! With some really simple adjustments we have brought a mediocre image to life.

I make my final tweaks in Photoshop, which are really nothing more than some spot curve adjustments and high-pass sharpening. TA-DAAAAH!! Finito!

After:

If you enjoyed this walk-through and would love to see more like this, holler at me in the comments.

I want to thank Shana Victor for posting it up. Only one of the color schemes got posted up on the site. I have both color schemes available for download at this blog post.

PixelGirl Presents is an awesome source of high-quality wallpapers and icons by all kinds of great artists and illustrators.

While I thoroughly enjoy taking pictures of others, it is also loads of fun to be on the other end of the camera. There is something about not knowing what you’re image is going to look like until you’ve peeked into your camera’s viewfinder that makes me all giddy.

While playing model, I try to incorporate my emotions and sometimes embody a character. Sometimes the emotions are real and personal, but most of the time I have to force myself to feel the emotion I want to portray. Ultimately, triggering the viewers’ emotions is my end goal. Other times my goal is just to snap and have fun!

The editing and post-processing is very experimental. I don’t ever process a picture the exact same way.

Here is the latest self-portrait experiment. I bought a mask souvenir during my travels in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and finally got around to taking some pictures with it. Here’s a sneak peek at one of the portraits I just finished editing from the “Incognito” series:

BEFORE: No post-processing

AFTER: Version 1

AFTER: Version 2

Do you prefer one over the other?

Look forward to future tutorials on post-processing techniques.

And this, fellow readers, is what happens when you switch from a PC to a Mac for the first time:

After owning my iMac for some time now, I thought I’d share my personal experience thus far.

What I love

Photo Booth
See above video. Self-explanatory!

Less wires
This was a the selling point for me. I HATED all the clutter of wires on my PC. I can now move my Mac wherever I want because it only has a single power chord. That’s it!

Less prone to malware
Simply put, Macs aren’t popular. Less worrying about viruses.

Software
Access to great quality software that is only available for Mac like Coda and CSSEdit is definitely a plus.

Easy customization
There’s an app for everything. Really.

Software installation
Installing software is SO much easier and faster on a Mac. So is uninstalling—just drag in the Trash.

Eye Candy, Eye Candy and more Eye Candy
There’s no denying that Mac takes the cake in design for both hardware and software. My iMac is so friggin gorgeous I want to make love to it.

Quality hardware
I don’t know much about the materials it’s made with, but it feels hella sturdy and weighs more than me.

No blue screen of death
It’s nice to not fear that your computer is going to die at any given time as it eventually happened with my PC. This baby has been running very smoothly. It is still pretty new so time will tell on this one.

Exposé & Spaces
Ok, this is pretty genius. Exposé shows all open and unhidden windows and Spaces lets you group your application windows easily switch between them. More screen real-estate!

What I don’t love

Finder windows
They frustrate me. I found it so much easier to navigate and switch between files and folders on a PC. I can’t even rename or copy/paste a file during a “Save As” prompt.

Hardware upgrading
Doable, but a pain in the arse if it’s more than RAM you’re wanting to upgrade. This fellow shows you how to upgrade the hard drive on an iMac. Suction cups? Kind of scary if you ask me.

Burning eyes
My eyes BURN from the delicious monitor brightness if I’ve been on for a while. I have to turn the brightness waaaay down, but where’s the fun in that?

Magic Mouse
Sure it’s wireless and that’s dandy, but it eats up AA batteries like nobody’s business. I have to replace mine every month! The mouse also feels clunky and heavy. I’m still trying to find an adequate mouse pad for it since the poorly designed bottom only slides on certain surfaces. I’m currently using a notepad.

Purchasing an iMac

I was going to list “Cost” as one of the “Don’t love” items, but I’ve spent so much more money upgrading my PC and replacing fried hard drives that I really feel the price of a Mac is worth it. Still, I could not bear to pay the full retail price tag at Apple. I was able to get my iMac at a very reasonable price with already upgraded RAM and hard drive from custommacsales eBay seller. The Bing.com cashback saved me an additional and approximate $100 off the price. Everything came in the original packaging and customer service was flawless. Update: Bing has just announced that their cashback program will be discontinued. The last day to earn cash back on your Bing Shopping purchases will be July 30, 2010.

Still Need Windows

As much as I love my new Mac, access to a Windows operating system is still essential in my area of work. To solve this I’ve installed VMware Fusion which lets me run a virtual copy of the Windows OS directly on my Mac so that I can fully test my sites in Internet Explorer.

Bottom line: once you go Mac you never go back.

What do you love or not love about your Mac? Share below!

I am still fine-tuning some details, but I’m so excited to finally have my very own place to ramble and ‘hang up’ my work.

What on earth will you be blogging about?

Well, mostly anything that interests me, such as: design, development, photography, technology, art, fashion, beauty, etc. I may write reviews related to products and services in my field and possibly even show the process behind some of my work. You may also see occasional posts on personal life events. Consider my blog a haven and outlet of my thoughts and inspirations.

If there is something you’d like to see me write about, just let me know.

How did you make your site?

My site is powered by Wordpress. I have to say, this was my first time using this platform and there was a huge learning curve and mounds of research and reading involved, but in the end it was more than worth it and I am ready to keep utilizing it in future projects. The portfolio area is so easy to update now and everything is dynamic and stored in a database. This was HUGE for me, because inefficiency is an INTJ no-no!

Here are some of the technologies I used to help put together my little Frankenstein:

• Wordpress – open-source publishing platform built on PHP and MySQL
• MAMP (for Mac) – creates a local web server environment to work in
• Dreamweaver – used for most of the development
• jQuery – e.g. used for Twitter feed on homepage and pop-up windows
• CSS3 – e.g. rounded corners and button shadows (not supported in IE)
• FeedBurner – RSS feed management tool
• Firebug – Firefox extension for debugging (a MUST!)
• YSlow – Firefox extension for analyzing site performance and speed

Who’s interviewing you?

I’m not sure…I think I may have created a monster.

Wallpaper pack includes the following screen resolutions in 2 lovely shades:

• 1024 x 768
• 1280 x 1024
• 1600 x 1200
• 1920 x 1080

Download
(.zip) | 3.5MB

If you’d like to see other resolutions as part of the pack, just let me know in the comments and I will do my best to get them added.

And now I can say I’ve ridden solely on horses named after alcoholic beverages. First Budweiser, now Tequila.

I didn’t like Tequila…and Tequila didn’t like me. As a matter of fact, Tequila didn’t like any of the ladies. You would think any male species would love to have a pretty girl ride them…I personally know plenty that would. But Tequila was a peculiar horse. He refused to let anything that remotely smelled like a woman steer him. As soon as a man hopped on, it was a whole different story.

Horse grudges aside, at least I can thank Tequila for the nice shots we were able to get while I actually got him to move for a bit. I look ready for a female-starring role in Indiana Jones, don’t ya think? [Indiana Jones theme song plays]