Archive for Photography

Fabness

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Fabness is an awesome new company that has much to offer! They specialize in canvas prints, canvas sets, wall art, photo block, and house signs!

We were priviledged to be able to review their 10 x 15 rectangle canvas print.

Quality! Their canvas print is excellent! It is high quality and more than I could have asked for in a photo on canvas! We loved how the photo wrapped around the edges of the canvas too … not just stopping at each corner. It added depth to the picture!

Below is a photo of the canvas print we had done. But our photo does not do the work justice … you have to get one done yourself to be able to admire the quality of the work!

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This canvas was given as a gift to one of our friends whose race car is depicted on the canvas print. He LOVED the end results. He even stated that this would be such a great idea as a trophy for winning a race. Needless to say he was thrilled with the canvas as much as we were!

Overall, we were exstatic at the ease, fast shipping, and overall ordering process. It was SO easy to upload our photo and submit what we wanted on canvas to fabness. When we placed the order we were originally saddened because it said it would take at least 14 days to get our print. However, I do have to say that our canvas arrived MUCH quicker than that . We received it a week after ordering! That was so fabulous!

The overall price of the canvas’ range from 49.00 all the way up into the 799.00 range depensing on size and quantity. But over all this is premium craftsmanship at a great price.

You can peruse their website athttp://eastmon.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=61&aff_id=168

They ALWAYS have different specials running. I urge you to check out their website!

They also have a fabulous WEDDING special going on!

Use the code FABNESSWEDDINGS at checkout to receive 70% off plus free shipping. Just click the link below to start shopping.

http://eastmon.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=61&aff_id=168

 


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Beautiful Sunrise – Wordless Wednesday

This was the beautiful sunrise this past Saturday on my way home from doing the paper routes. It was gorgeous and the photo does not do it justice at all.

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Winter Wonderland – Wordless Wednesday

This is a photo of our friend’s pretty lane a week before Christmas. We went to her house to pick up eggs since none of the hens we have left are laying. Sniff. Sniff. Anyhoo….I just had to stop to take a photo of the winter wonderland.

FFR Pretty Winter Lane

It’s been bitterly cold the past few days. All the animals have been hunkering down in the barn.

How’s the weather where you are?


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Tmart MP3/MP4 Review

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My husband and I both have MP player products from another company and my

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daughter always wants to use them.  Well, the cost if they break is not one we can absorb at the moment. I’m sure there are other households with a similar issue. Tmart has a much less expensive alternative. For a fraction of the cost you can purchase a 4GB 2″ LCD Screen MP3/MP4 Player with FM/Camera Function. 

This MP3/MP4 player is about 4 inches long about 1 ½ inches wide, super light also. It has several functions including, music, video, photo, and FM radio. Included in the box was ear buds and USB cable. It takes pretty good pictures and videos. The sound quality is acceptable also.

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Tmart’s MP3/MP4 player comes in 9 colors, the one I received is purple. I was surprised by this inexpensive device for one that it has a camera & video and it autoflips.

I do wish it came with more instructions, not just a single quick start guide and a plug to charge it via an outlet. I think this is a good stocking stuffer for new music lovers in the house.

You can order Tmart MP4 players today, currently it’s only $19.99!!


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Kittens, Kittens and More Kittens! – Wordless Wednesday

Ok all you cat and kitty lovers….I couldn’t resist posting an all kitty post after the photo shoot we did for the SHEBA post yesterday. I just kept snapping and snapping hoping to get some good, non-blurry photos of them! They are at such an adorable age. I don’t get to observe them like the children do but I love it when the children come tell me stories of all the antics and things they are up to. Like tonight, my son came to tell me that Badger is sleeping inside one of my husband’s old ratty running shoes! Why wasn’t the old ratty shoe tossed when he got his new ones? Guess they were meant to be here for the kittens! Too bad the garage is so dark or else I would have taken a photo of the kitty in the shoe!

FFR Freckles washing herself
Freckles washing herself.

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Sweet little kittens.

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Severus is our Tom cat and you can see the resemblance between him and Badger, eh? Oh and Sevy is our only male cat now since all his kittens appear to be females!

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Badger licking her lips.

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Freckles sitting pretty.

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Badger sitting pretty too.

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Selene sitting pretty.

Amazing that I got a shot of each one of them sitting so nicely. Full bellies helped! So remember that as a photography tip! These are their six week old photos.


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Mailpix Review Update AND Twitter Party


A few weeks ago I posted a review of a new online photo company called Mailpix. I wrote about the ease of ordering and the wonderful system they have to upload and order photos and photo memory gifts. Well, I am back to share with you the items I actually ordered and received.

We ordered a number of items from Mailpix. And although I do not have a photo of everything I will share what I have.

I must say that the orders came faster than I expected. I did expect them to come slowly because of the Christmas holiday but they were right on track with what they noted as their standard shipping times. I was very pleased! The packaging for the photo gifts was very nice as well. They came packaged in Styrofoam containers to ensure safety of the porcelain items. The only item packaging I had an issue with was the 8×10’s … they came in your standard cardboard mailer… and we received them on a rainy day so the edges o the photos were a “Tiny” bit warped because of moisture…but we just put the photos under a big book and they flattened out and were just fine! I cannot blame Mailpix for the weather… but I do wish they were double wrapped or something to hinder the weather issue.

The Above picture is how the mug and ornaments came packaged.

The first thing we ordered was our annual Christmas Card. Yes I did say Christmas card, not Holiday card… my husband was very adamant in finding a layout that said Christmas instead of Holiday…and Mailpix had a great assortment of both layout…of course we opted for the Merry Christmas layout. The cards turned out AWESOME. Although I forgot to remove the red eye on my son in the picture, I must say that the quality was as good as any photo card I have ever gotten. Had I remembered to remove the red eye and press the “enhance” button they would have been the best cards ever… but that is user error!

 

The second thing we ordered were a few 8×10’s of some pictures we took of sprint cars we took over the summer. My husband usually gets his 8×10’s printed at Walgreens and let me tell you … these were BETTER! With the cropping and enhancing I was able to do with the picture they look like professional photos! We are very pleased!

The third thing we ordered was the photo mug. This turned out very nice as well. Not as awesome as the printed photos but VERY nice. The quality of the picture seemed a bit off. Now, I am not sure if this is because the item is on a porcelain mug and I should not be expecting the same quality as a printed photos…or if because these were scanned photos as opposed to digital images. I really do not know. But overall I am pleased with the outcome.

 

The fourth item ordered was out yearly photo calendars. These turned out PERFECT! The quality was s much nicer than the company we have used before. The pictures are crisp and clear and our layout looks great! Sorry I do not have a picture…I forgot and wrapped them :(

Lastly, we ordered a few of their snowflake ornaments. Overall the ornaments were fine. The one I have pictures below was the best of the bunch. It is not very “photoastic” because the white does not photograph well but it turned out okay! However, with that said we did order two more and one I had a problem with the photo being off centered on the snowflake. I would have liked a perfectly centered picture but it looks okay. The picture itself is centered in the circle but the “stamp” of the picture on the porcelain is off centered. There was one ornament we ordered as a gift for my mother-in law that will not be sent… because the picture is NOT centered in the frame of the ornament… it is not that it is not stamped correctly it is that the photo is actually skewed to the side of the photo layout. I KNOW it was not like this when I designed the ornament so I ma not sure what happened between my ordering the ornament and the processing and shipping …but the end product did not look as I expected from my layout in the Mailpix software. This was disappointing. The good thing is that Mailpix offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee, so I have emailed the company about the issue. The bad? I will probably NOT get a replacement in time to give as a Christmas gift :( ***Update talked to customer service this AM and they are sending me one Next Day so hopefully I will get it in time to mail it out to my mother-in-law…keep your fingers crossed! ***

Overall we were VERY pleased with the company and have since placed another order for some more items! So even though one of the items we were not pleased with the overall quality of the other items as a whole have made us loyal customers.

DO NOT FORGET:

We are co-hosting a twitter party TODAY with Sasha from Mailpix…the information is below:

When: Wednesday, December 19

Time: Noon-1pm CST, 1pm-2pm EST, 10am-11pm Pacific
Where: Your Twitter account, TweetGrid, Hootsuite
Topic: Photo Memories
Prizes: 5 photo memory related prizes from Mailpix!
Hashtag: #photomemories

RSVP here.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.


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MAILPIX.com Review

 

With the holidays upon us… Mailpix.com offers a wonderful outlet to create wonderful holiday gifts, holiday cards, prints, and more. Mailpix.com is an online photo-processing center. They offer great prices on all your photo needs.

This holiday season they are running some wonderful promotions…just enter the promo codes at the link below. Additionally, you can enter many promo codes, at least one for each product ordered.

Here is the link to Mailpix.com’s holiday deals (scroll down for deals): http://www.mailpix.com/

 

They have so many photo products and gifts to choose from …including but not limited to:

Mugs

Fleece Blankets

Ornaments

Calendars

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!

Of course they also have all of the traditional items for photo lovers…prints, canvas prints, photo books, etc.

For the Holiday season Mailpix.com is also offering a Free deal for potential customers who want to try out the site. This is a great way to try out the product without monetary investment. Please see the deal at this link: http://www.mailpix.com/deals/giveaway

Our Review:

I enjoyed using Mailpix.com…it was a fast easy way to get my photos ordered for Christmas. I liked the ease of uploading my pictures to their site. The pictures are stored in your account by folder you name and can be used from project to project…all you need to do is drag and drop the photo into the selecte4d project you design.

We choose a few products for this review. The first one we choose was a photo Christmas card. The hardest part of the process of the Christmas card creator was to choose from the many designs and templates available…there were SO many. I was also very surprised that their text covered a variety of language for variant tastes… from Happy Holidays to Christmas Blessings. Concurrently, for those who celebrate holidays other than Christmas they do have “winter” cards and also a nice selection of Hanukah cards.

The second selection we chose was their calendar option. I found that this was a very reasonable price on their website…only 9.00 (with promo code) for a 8.5 x 11 calendar. We were very impressed with the selection for the calendars. The graphic and layout choices were wonderful. We of course manipulated our layouts to fit our tastes. This was very easy to do on the website… just delete unwanted boxes and replace with new ones! One other thing we REALLY liked that they had an instant picture editor that would crop and fix your pictures then replace them right away… I know I used to have to edit the picture in different software and then resave the picture and upload again…this process was much easier.

The Cons:

There were not many cons to this website. However, the site did make you download Microsoft Silverlight in order to use their site (which was not a big deal for me, but could be an issue if you are low on memory).

The only other con is that you have to wait to get your pictures. I am used to using Walgreens photo department where I create pictures and gifts online and then pick up the next day from their photo department. But this is not really a “con” but an impatience issue on my part J

 

Overall, we really liked the ease and variety of Mailpix.com. I cannot wait to get my pictures…, which will be here soon, and I am sure I will be happy with the results. I will let you know in about 6-9 days.

 

Visit these links to learn more about Mailpix and follow them via social media:

https://www.facebook.com/MailPix
http://twitter.com/mailpix1
http://www.mailpixblog.com/
http://pinterest.com/mailpix/

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.


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Blogging & Photography

There is a unique experience when you visit a blog or website that is visually appealing. I visited one this week when I was working for a new client (Yay! another one! :-)). This client is a professional organizer and I am doing her social media. A part of that is coming up with content and I visited another site, which happened to be a blog and I immediately thought, “Wow, this person is organized. I like the look of her blog.” It wasn’t only visually appealing in her blog design but in her photos. Photos are so important to blogging. Not just any photos either. The better they are the more appealing it is to visit a blog. That is a part of the reason why my oldest daughter and I took a Photography Bootcamp class, plus the fact she is very interested in photography. When the local Amazon deal came up for this class regular $150 down to $35, I knew it was a deal I couldn’t pass up and a way to give my daughter exposure to the nuances of “real” photography.

Driving to the Photography Class

First, we forgot the camera manual. It was a requirement for the class and we found out it was required because if the teacher, a professional wedding photographer, needed to help a student but did not know their camera he could consult the manual. This made us have to turn back home five minutes into our drive, making us late. Second, we would have only been 10 minutes late but could not find the building where his studio was located. I tried calling the photographer, but of course he had already started teaching and was not answering his cell phone. A couple calls to my husband because remember I don’t like Google maps on my iPhone and prefer words over pictures, and he could only help so much being at home. He told me, “It’s gotta be there” and my daughter and I started thinking, “We’ve been scammed!” 15 minutes of driving up and down Plaza and American and we finally found the building, which we drove by multiple times not noticing the number on the sign in front of the parking garage! Talk about an “UGHHHHHH” moment in my life.


Photography Bootcamp

Once inside the huge building, we found the classroom thanks to security. We missed the first half hour of a 3-hour class. Thankfully even though the teacher had covered foundational information we needed to know, such as ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture, we quickly caught up by doing. For that first half hour was all lecture, however, was explained again as we put that information into practice by taking photos. So we began using ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

The following photos show the difference in shutter speed and aperture:


ISO 800, F 6.3 Aperture and 1/25 Shutter Speed Settings for my sick boy who was willing to be photographed.


ISO 800, F 14 Aperture and 1/4 Shutter Speed Settings for my sick boy who was willing to be photographed.

ISO

ISO for those of who who do not know photography lingo is for lighting and measures sensitivity of the image sensor. (Definition from Darren Rowse’s Digital Photography School) Had to look that up since I missed it last night!

We also learned that there are different settings for ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 and on upwards of 6400 or 8000 on our camera, which is a Nikon D5100. The office classroom was rather dark so our settings pretty much stayed at 800 for the evening.

Shutter Speed

The shutter speed is simply the speed at which the shutter moves to take a picture. The lowest setting on our camera I believe is 1/200 and the highest 5 on our camera, if I looked it up correctly! Shutter Speed is important when taking photos of things that are in motion.

Aperture

“Aperture (A mode on manual settings) controls how many things are in focus.” (Thanks again to Darren Rowse, whose definition better than our teacher’s who used depth perception.) But I did understand that aperture is mostly used in things that are stationary.

Manual Settings

The three things above are all a part of using the manual settings on a camera, instead of the “Auto” function many of us use. By using manual settings you can get much clearer and more precise photos. There is a RAW setting that can be used which allows you to blow up your photos to poster size without losing the quality of the photo and probably other things that I am forgetting. It’s pretty cool though. Oh and also by using the RAW setting because the photos are very large they will take up a lot more disk space on your memory card than JPEG photos, which compacts the photo automatically, if that is the proper definition. But you get the point. Remember, I’m a beginner not a professional. I don’t even want to call myself an amateur any more after that class!

Post Production

Finally we were taught a bit about post production, Photo Shop and using light room software.

This is just a summary of the things we learned. I, in no way, claim to be an expert after taking this photography class. I share this in my simple terminology just to share my experience. That is all.

We learned a lot and are glad we went. My daughter went to the barn yesterday, do you think she used “Auto”? Nope, she was practicing what she learned and used manual settings. She said it is hard, it takes longer to download and edit photos but the quality of photos are worth it in the end!

I am working on getting some comparison photos done but need my daughter’s help because I have not figured out how to edit RAW photos yet!


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Breakfast & Dinner – Fun with Food Friday

My daughter and I are still taking photos. Besides the children we like taking pictures of food. Due to a local Amazon deal, we are taking a 3-hour photography boot camp at the end of the month with a local photographer. We are looking forward to it and hoping to pick up a few new tips. Maybe you will see an improvement in our amateur pictures! Ha!

Drum roll please….for some breakfast and dinner shots taken by yours truly:

Pancakes for a Large Family

Sizzling Pancakes

A Golden Pile

Ready to Eat

Little Hands Peeling a Clementine

Soaking Pinto Beans

Pinto Beans and Rice


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Week 2: Fun with Food Friday

I introduced Fun with Food Fridays last week. It is simply me (or my daughter or a combination of the two) taking pictures of food. This week’s feature includes clementines, bananas, and peanut butter and honey popcorn.

Clementines


by moi

Peanut Butter Honey Popcorn

by moi

Unripe Bananas

It’s hard to remember to take pictures of food when you are trying to feed ten hungry people!


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