Kid Pix Summer 2010

Photographing your own kids is so hard. They just wouldn't cooperate. I promised them each a candy bar if they'd just listen to me. Finally . . .

Notice: Lilianne's green and purple nails!



On this picture there was a bit of shadowing/highlights on Lilianne's eyes and mouth area. I fixed it (on the 2 pic) by using a mask, the stamp tool and a bit of dodging. Photoshop is great for these mistakes, but it's not ideal. I should have gotten the picture right in the first place. It could use some work on the neck area too.




I love these of Grace. They really capture her fun personality. These of course didn't come until many shots later.




Isaak was being a stinker, so there is just one pic of him.



I love Kaleb's side smirk and tasseled hair. His eyes are so dark you can't even see the pupils.

Kersplat!

While on our family camping trip, I was practicing with shutter speeds and other settings on my camera.

My Girls

Wow, my girls actually do love each other! This is just while we were on a family camping trip, but I like how it turned out.

Krew-- 1 year old

He's now walking!!!



Love the blue eyes!



He obviously loves his dog.



We're just getting started and he's already tired of pictures! Cute!



My favorite:



And now he wants to throw a rock at me (not really)!

Langkawi, Malaysia

We finally reached our first destination . . . Langkawi, Malaysia.





We stayed four days in Langkawi--the day after we arrived, we went on a long kayak trip through the mangroves. It was cool, but Jeff and I were a bit tired from the travel, and we didn't make the best team. We went with English couple that were on their honeymoon. Let's just say they were much more lovey-dovey than we were.



The breakfasts were delicious and abundant . . . and complimentary thank goodness. Dragon fruit and mie goreng (fried noodles) with a nasty egg (that's Jeff's breakfast).





Oriental Village and Cable cars--very steep cable cars.







Jeff attempting a conversation in Malay (Malay and Indonesian are very close) with a Malay man in the cable car.



My feet are huge in this shot--my wide-angle lens distorted them here. Photoshop can fix that . . . but why? j/k.



What a fun surprise to find these monkeys on the side of the road; we stopped our scooter--I just had to get up close. It was successful until the protective father monkey started to growl at us. We quickly left . . . but not until I got some shots. What an experience!







Jeff and I rented a scooter and drove around Langkawi. It was a fun experience. We got off the scooter to take a picture of this lighthouse and turned to find a couple monkeys on our scooter. This monkey I swear is looking in the mirror. And more scooter exploring . . .





We ended our stay in Langkawi with a six hour boat tour around the islands of Langkawi on the Damai Indah (boat name). It was amongst several Europeans and just one other American family, luckily everyone spoke English. Great fun and beautiful!

Penang, Malaysia

We stopped at a local butterfly farm. There was a huge down pour of rain that day; I was worried that this would make it hard to view the butterflies. I was wrong and it even made the pictures more interesting with rain drops on the flowers and leaves.











These are called monkey cups-- monkeys will drink from them after a rain shower because they fill with water.



We also visited a batik (a wax and dye process on fabric) factory, which was just outdoors under some tarps. It was neat seeing the artists at work, up close.






We also stopped by an old fisherman's village. It was raining pretty hard then, so these shots are not in sharp focus.






A Buddhist Snake Temple--filled with venomous and non-venomous snakes. Here's even a shot with Jeff and the snakes. He didn't dare get any closer to these Vipers out in the open.