Fellow OSPer Ashley Brockinton and her family were in town for a friend's wedding (that she was actually attending not shooting believe it or not), so they stopped by my place to hang out for a little bit. Ashley and I had been emailing a lot the past few months through OSP, so it was exciting to finally meet her in person.

However, I couldn't resist her precious daughter Isabelle! She was wearing the same color dress as a fun new hot pink rug I just got in my studio, so it wasn't 10 minutes into our visit before I insisted Ashley let me grab my camera to get some shots of those gorgeous blue eyes of hers! (I also took some family portraits for them afterward that you can check out on my blog.)

those are adorable! brilliant

btw, i love your business name/concept. i just finished reading the eldridge's book (i browsed your site and am gathering that's where it's from ;-)) !

Those are AMAZING photos. I just love how all your photos the colors litterally seem to leap off the screen (and print I'm sure) without being overwhelming or over done!

I always love seeing your work Scarlett, as always the photos are beautiful

scarlett - those are absolutely BEAUTIFUL - what a gorgeous baby, but what an AWESOME photographer!

<3 kristy

pretty nice! great color in these!

but wait - studio lol? something we all don't know?

Even though I just saw these on your blog, I had to come back and see them again. Gorgeous!

Great color, Scarlett!

Nicely done!

Scarlett - lovely, as always. I'm a big fan of yours! How do you get those colors SO vibrant???

DesignChic- Yup, Captivating was a big inspiration behind the choice name of my company. Plus, what bride doesn't want to look captivating on her wedding day?

Jen- Thanks girl! I'm glad to know it's not too much. That's cute though, leap off the screen. ha!

Kristy- Thanks so much!! She definitely was a gorgeous baby! You would have never guessed she was actually crying most of the time wanting her mommy. You can't blame her!

Tim Co.- Ha.. Well, for the new year, I'm making some changes in my condo to convert it to my "studio I live in." :-) I'm trying to start calling it my "studio" instead of my "home" to get used to the idea. Baby steps.

Jill- Awww thanks for the double props!

Amber- Thanks! I know you are a purist, so that compliment means a lot coming from you!

Stacy- Awww.. don't say you are a fan, say you are a friend. :-) Believe it or not, it's very easy to make the colors pop. I shot all those pics with my 85 1.8. In Bridge, I bump the exposure a tad, bump the contrast all the way to the right, bring it into photoshop, run a combo of Kubota's Cross Process and Itty Bitty Action's Cross Process. Fix the amount on each. Oila, I'm done.

I love love love the colors in these! I may just be me, but these seem a bit too sharpened. I love to use sharpening on images, but these seem just a bit too much.

Other than that, I'm in love!

JK

I love how EASY you make it sound You ROCK! Love your blog and the family pics are priceless... you're so nice to do that.

Scarlett,

These are fab! Love your pink rug!!

I gotta go check out your blog now.

Yeah! Thanks so much Scarlett. We had such a great time. I love the pictures! We're especially crazy about the one with the Zebra chair- it definitely captures her arrnd would look very nice some where in our house as a huge print. Isa says she's sorry for being fussy at first and that she just needed a Cherrio fix. I can't wait to see the rest!-Ashley

Oh-Sam and I just figured out why your dog's name is Rhett..... DUH! You and I should have gotten a picture with him- Scarlett, Rhett, and Ashley!

Ummmm.....Scarlett, so why do you get to be talented at everything!?

These are totally amazing. I really love the way you do your color. It's gorgeous!

I've missed you!

Those are great, she is such a beautiful baby, and look at those gorgeous blue eyes!! The color and contrast in them are amazing, love them!!

Wow! I could look at these all day. I love the pink, so adorable.

Scarlett, beautiful, great work! You are rockin' it now!

Gorgeous Colours and beautiful baby! You did fantastic!

Josiah- Thanks for the sharpening tip. Actually, the regular size picture, I didn't even sharpen, I tend to just do it for the web images because of how they lose sharpening when compressed to a smaller size.

LuckyRedHen- It really IS easy! I promise! ;-)

Kayla- Thanks! I got that at Bombay Kids of all places.

Ashley- Yay! I'm glad you like them. The zebra one is my favorite too. And yeah, it's Rhett... great idea for that Gone With the Wind pic. Oh well, next time!

Davina- Thanks doll! I've missed you too! Hope to see you again soon!

Kate- Thanks! I know she was a beautiful baby! Having a photographer mom, she was used to modeling already too.

Jamie, Mike and Jacqui- Thanks! I'm having fun with it!

wow those photos are just stunning, i was browsing and saw a snippet of the top photo and the color just said open! lol. its totally girly the colours but the vibrance and sharpness is brilliant. did you by any chance use photoshop much for the saturation, color balance and levels?

a these photos are great im saving them to show my girlfriend! o and her favourite color is pink!!!

Allow me to be redundant. GREAT JOB!!!! LOVE the color. You rock

Awesome compliments, thank you Ross and CLPark! Here's what I posted earlier about my steps:

"Believe it or not, it's very easy to make the colors pop. I shot all those pics with my 85 1.8. In Bridge, I bump the exposure a tad, bump the contrast all the way to the right, bring it into photoshop, run a combo of Kubota's Cross Process and Itty Bitty Action's Cross Process. Fix the amount on each. Oila, I'm done."

A lot of people think it has to do with saturation, but I honestly never touch the saturation.

Then for my blog pics, I run Kubota's Magic Sharp on them since you lose a lot of sharpness in compression.

Also, one last trick that Jill Higgins taught me. To really make eyes pop, draw your lasso tool around the entire eye (not just the color part), use the filter "Unsharp Mask"... it really helps you to see the flecks in the eye and make the eyes pop!

Below, I thought I would post a "before" picture to show you the wonders of Bridge and Photoshop.

Thanks for the before and after.

Did you shoot this RAW? It's my understanding that Adobe Bridge is a raw editor, right? Is it possible to use the brilliant settings on a .jpeg as well? Very unrelated to your photos but I thought you might know!

And...where could I get Adobe Bridge Raw? I've done googling, but came up empty.

P.S. I looked at your site and it's absolutely beautiful, the colors and everything. I will be following your blog from now on.

J.

Thanks Jamie for the compliments on my site! And thanks for joining my list of blog readers. Be sure to comment from time to time so I know you were there!

To answer your questions. Adobe Bridge comes with Adobe Creative Suite 2 and above. And yes, Bridge is for Raw. You can view JPEG in it, but you have to open JPG in Photoshop to manipulate it. And yes, I shoot in Raw. It REALLY speeds up the editing process because you can batch process your changes rather than opening JPEG one by one and making changes. For albums and special photos, I do bring each photo into Photoshop and cross process them. But for the stuff I would upload to Pictage, I just apply corrections in Bridge.

Hope this helps!

ha ha scarlett, your a genious, i could imagine how happy you where to write this all down! if i come across your threads again ill call you the tutorial master!

ill definately use the eye stunt for ym photos! but the kubotas action pack disappoints me because i bought DJS showit effects and so many people even DJ himself use kubotas actions. sadly for me i cnanot afford another fun pack like that so ill just do my best otherwise, thansk for the tips and well ill be watching for more tutorials and before and after pics!!

Jamie P - bridge comes with creative suite but also comes with photoshop, it is basically for raw but i like it as an organiser for jpegs and raw files. also try apple aperture, its a neat little program or even the free beta version of lightroom, atleats with that you can get a free training pdf and download!!

check the adobe website - www.adobe.com
and the adobe labs website - here you can get a free photoshop cs3 download and if you are really ncie ill let you into a secret on how to get a longer duration than 30days, so you can learn it more. i cant not help it im in a russian area, a land of bad things with software and stuff!!

Beautiful!

Love love love the pink.

And that last picture is priceless.

Ha ha... it's funny to be on "the other side" now. I feel like for so long I've been picking other people's brains so helping others is the least I can do. I know I'm certainly thankful for everyone who has helped me a long the way.

Hannah- Thanks girl! Yeah she was ready to go after she got her Cheerio fix.

well im thankful for that help along the way!

Hey, Ross, do you have a website? I'd love to check it out.

hi scarlett, how to answer this without saying laziness?? well actually i dont have one YET, the big keyword there. im making it at the moment, so far i have made my template, got all the photos sorted and the text for input but putting it altogether nope, thats not done yet! also because im in moldova and the speed is like the old dial up! so id wait a day to upload everything! but when it is up hopefully in a few weeks when im back to london area(civilization) ill send you a PM for the site.

btw your sites very somewhat pink, are you sure that your title pretty in pink should be a title description for your site? but for some rason this vibrant pink is growing on me! its just so fresh. keep up the beautiful freshness. o btw where did you get those borders for your pics or did you make them? the brushe that was used is very nice!

Love the first shot and the last, they are my favorite's. Beautiful job!

Awesome, can't wait to see the website. Thanks for recognizing my "color marketing" with the pink. Check out Matt Antonino's website all about that marketing technique.

And I got the borders from ittybittyactions.com




Thanks Crystal!!!

Great work! I've looked over those shots countless times already. That last one is hilarious! Great capture on all those!

well scralett when your display window turns from a nice blue background desktop image to crazy bright pink you CANNOT not notice it even if your color blind! lol.

thanks for the link, ill look at them, hope they arent too expensive!

btw my girlfirend loves your site, i knew itd work, atleast its one good thing to explain why ive become so square eyed since i started using OSP! addicted, on a forum whats wrong with me???!!

Awww.. that's great to hear you keep looking at it. What an awesome compliment.






Ha ha, yeah OSP definitely becomes an addiction, but such a great place to learn and grow!