Continuing on with our best of Ella series below is a list of great photography posts and ezine articles.

How to Take Great Group Photos: part one by Bobbi Jo Grunwald

How to Take Great Group Photos: part two by Bobbi Jo Grunwald

Take better everyday photos by Rebecca Cooper

Perspective by Noel and Moon

Pictures that Pop by Noel Culbertson

Taking photos of kids being kids by Rebecca Cooper

Capture Action by Noel and Moon

Get great shots of tiny tots by Elisha Snow

Focus by Noel and Moon

Photographing Babies by Elisha Snow

Light by Noel and Moon

The week after Christmas is always a tiny bit complicated for me; on one hand, that amazing sense of anticipation that behaves much the same way as adrenaline is over for another year, leaving me happy but a little—OK, a lot—worn out.

 

But on the other hand, I start to think about projects. Oh, I love projects. While so many people are busy writing New Year’s Resolutions, I’m scheming about my next project for the upcoming year. You already know you’re in luck because Ella Publishing Co. has designed an amazing project for you to participate over the course of 2012 and beyond! Today I want to share just one more thing I love about the 2012 Take Twelve photography and scrapbooking challenge.

 

I’ve told this story so many times I feel like a broken record sometimes, but it’s so important to me that I want to be sure every creative person hears it!

 

Once upon a time a scrapbooker named Shelby Valadez changed my life—I’ve told her this before and I’m not entirely sure she believed me, but it’s true. I was oohing and ahhing (but not yet scrapbooking) on twopeasinabucket.com one day about ten years ago when I stumbled across a challenge group she hosted called Art Inspiration.

 

I watched every week for a few months as people would post a completed layout based on some piece of artwork she would email them. The cycle was so perfect: the email would be sent, a few days would pass, the completed project would appear. I worked up my nerve to ask if I could join the group and was super excited to receive my first inspiration email. I could do this! And guess what? I did. I was hooked.

 

Week after week, challenge after challenge: I eagerly anticipated the excitement of seeing what was in store for the upcoming week. I participated until the Art Inspiration challenge closed its doors, but I’ve maintained my affinity for challenges to this day. Here’s what I love about them:

 

Challenges hold you accountable: especially when you’re part of a group. Check out my post from last week to read more about accountability!

 

Challenges help you narrow your focus: it is so easy to become helplessly overwhelmed by ideas that have no parameters, because you can add and tweak and add some more until you’ve created a beast that cannot be tamed. A challenge usually has a simple boundary—no more, no less. Simple.

 

Finally, challenges are fun: there’s no pressure, only an invitation to get your creative wheels turning.

Check out what 144 distinct memories look like all together from the first year I played along in a “12 on 12” photo challenge. I blogged about my photos every month and scrapbooked them later. This year I’ll scrapbook my twelve photos each month in real time!

 

Now of course the Take Twelve photography challenge will operate a little differently than the Art Inspiration challenge did, but you can count on receiving the same “challenge benefits.” By participating in the challenge you’ll receive reminders to take your monthly photographs, scrapbook layout ideas from Ella Friends, and even opportunities to win giveaways for linking your own layouts for all to see each month!

 

There is nothing quite so sweet as accepting a challenge and succeeding. On behalf of everyone at Ella Publishing Co., we’d like to issue that challenge again today—what do you say?

I've been enjoying going back and finding favorite posts and ezine articles to share with you all. This is the kick off of our Best of Ella highlights; photo editing and projects

Photo editing

3-Minute makeovers by Rebecca Cooper

Free photo Fun by Celeste Smith

Photo resizing 101 by Rachel Gainer

More free photo effects by Diana Chen

Photo projects

Photo coasters by Brenda Johnston

How to make a photo journal by Franciine Clouden

Make a photo cube by Monika Wright

Fun ways to display vintage photos by Jennifer Evans

Photo booth strips by Jennifer Larsen

Make a photo shape collage by Donna Januzzi

Bobbi Jo here with part two of How to Take Great Group Photos

 

3. Make sure you can see each face. This takes just a second looking through the viewfinder in your camera. Take a quick glance at each face to be sure they can be seen easily with nothing concealing any part of anyone (including shadows from other faces!).

Creative posing can help with this, too, as well as moving yourself around. Find the best possible spot where you can see each and every beautiful face.

 

4. Get CLOSE Together. Going along with the idea mentioned in number one, we want to convey a feeling of closeness...so, the obvious solution is to physically GET CLOSE to one another! Look for gaps and try to fill them by having your subject shift slightly, move an arm, or tilt their head. It will change the whole feeling of the photo!

5. Have some fun! I know it sounds cliché, but really having FUN makes for the best and more memorable group photos. Remember, that they don’t have to be looking at the camera to get a great shot! Let them interact with each other naturally. Tickle fights are usually a great start, unless it’s great-grandma - though, maybe even then ;) Have a few knock-knock jokes up your sleeves to get them laughing. Have the parents tell a joke to the kids, or have them sing their favourite song. Having them sing their “A,B,C’s” gives you a lot of great expressions. I have even resorted to telling them that I need to change a few settings so they can just relax for a bit – then I secretly start shooting. I find these group shots are the ones that families love best.

I hope these tips give you a little more confidence when photographing groups – whether they are groups of 2or 3, or groups of 20 or 30!

Visit me on my blog, It Works For Bobbi, for more fun Photography tips, as well as Photoshop tutorials and lots of free printables!

I have been a professional photographer for the past 6 years and the number one question I get asked from other professional and hobbyist photographers is...HOW do you pose groups? GREAT question. I struggled with the same thing for a long time, but I have since come up with my four favourite tips that really make for interesting group photos. These tips will work with any group size from 3 to 30!

1. Pay Attention to Hands!

Hands play an important part in the language of the portrait. Especially when photographing families, we want to portray a feeling of closeness and togetherness. That means we want to see the subjects interacting with each other and looking as natural as possible. Try not to have arms or hands hanging straight down. It looks about as fun and exciting as it sounds. BLAH! Instead, encourage those you are photographing to put their hands into their pockets, around shoulders of those next to them, or have them hold hands.

2. Stagger the head levels. This is so important in creating an “interesting” group pose. We want to avoid lining everyone up like they are being arrested. This is supposed to be fun! Pose short people next to tall people, have tall people sit, crouch, or kneel, or have moms hold little ones in their arms. Try to be considerate of the elderly who may not be able to crouch or kneel, though.

A great way to get a bunch of different levels in your group poses is to use uneven footing. For example, if you can find some stairs – it’s a guaranteed way to get lots of levels. Or you can use benches, stools, chairs, the floor – whatever is at your disposal! Be confident in asking your subjects to sit here or try kneeling there. It’s not written in stone, people can move! You’ll find you’ll love the results of using lots of levels in your group shots.

Come back tomorrow for three more tips. I hope these tips give you a little more confidence when photographing groups – whether they are groups of 2or 3, or groups of 20 or 30!

Visit me on my blog, It Works For Bobbi , for more fun Photography tips, as well as Photoshop tutorials and lots of free printables!

We have reached our 6th and final day of Boot Camp.
 

Thank you for joining us this week! We laughed, we cried, we journaled, we designed, we stamped, we edited, and we had a ball. Yes, we were inspired in Boot Camp, but we never perspired!

It's not over yet! Here's today's schedule:

06:00 Stamping Drill
Nichol Magouirk will take you on a emboss & resist journey that will inspire you to dust off those tools (or buy some new ones) so you can create these looks yourself! Utterly amazing.



Our morning sponsor is us, Ella Publishing and we are offering a $50 gift certificate.

12:00 Lunch Break
Pop back in to the Boot Camp Barracks for Wendy's final storytelling segment.




18:00 Photo-Editing Drill
Maggie Holmes will share insider secrets for how to make your subject's eyes really sparkle! Her steps will bring dark eyes into the light or give a good pair of peepers that extra punch to make them REALLY shine. And as a bonus, you'll also learn tricks for whitening your subjects' teeth! (Without dental trays or any messy chemicals. ;)



Our evening sponsor is Shutterfly who is giving away a $25 gift card and Big Picture Classes who is giving away a spot in Doable DIY Decor, a new self-paced class.

If you're already registered, don't forget that you have until October 1 (one week from today) to enter our daily giveaways. So keep following that inspiration, creating your pages, and uploading them for your chance to win.
 

We have LOVED seeing your work so far, and hearing your reactions to our 10 previous drills and 5 lunchtime inspiration sessions. If you'd like to register now and play catch up all next week (at your own pace), we'd love to have you. Wouldn't you like to enjoy firsthand everything you've seen here on the blog this week?

Over and out!

First of all, let us say,

Happy Elephant Appreciation Day!

Have you hugged an elephant today?

In honor of this once-a-year event, please use code ELEPHANTSRULE to save 10 percent on any purchase today only! Boot Camp recruits can use code ELEPHANTASTIC to save 20 percent on any purchase (must be logged into your user account for the code to work)!

And also, Boot Camp continues! We're having SO much fun in the barracks, with inspiring new ideas posted daily.

Here's today's schedule:

06:00 Stamping Drill
Nichol Magouirk shares everything you ever wanted to know about stamping with word and phrase stamps! You'll see layouts, tags, journaling spots, file folders, titles, the works! It's amazing, fun, and inspirational.



And our morning sponsor is Lawn Fawn, who's giving one lucky winner a package (valued at $64) that includes some of their newest sets: Many Thanks, Happy Haunting, Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum, Making Frosty Friends, and Winter Fox.
 

12:00 Lunch Break
Pop back in to the Boot Camp Barracks for a bonus inspiration video from "Storytelling Sergeant," Wendy Smedley. Every day this week, Wendy shares a fun and inspirational nugget about storytelling. Here's the layout she discusses today:




18:00 Photo-Editing Drill
This evening, Maggie Holmes is back to show you the hard way AND the easy way to add that oh-so-popular urban effect to a photo. (And with Maggie showing you how, the "hard way" really isn't that hard at all.)



Our evening sponsor is maggieholmesdesign.com, who is offering her awesome Color Mix Action Set (for either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) to one lucky Boot Camp Recruit. Valued at $35.

Yes, you can still sign up. Since you have until October 1 to turn in your projects to enter the daily giveaways, it will be EASY to play catch-up all through next week. PROCRASTINATORS ARE WELCOME! Register for just $33 now.

If you're already registered, log into your user account and visit the page http://www.ellapublishing.com/bootcamp11. (You must be registered and logged in for the link to work.)

Thanks everyone for joining in! We're having an amazing time!

Once I got into scrapbooking, I also got into photography. Quite simply, I wanted better pictures for my scrapbook pages. Now I follow as many photography blogs as I do scrapbooking blogs, and I learn a lot online that helps me to improve my photos. One of my favourite photography sites is the Pioneer Woman. She gives great photography tips and tutorials, as well as shows some of her beautiful photographs. But one of the best parts of her blog is that she has created some amazing actions that she gives away for free.

What are actions? (I didn't know either, up until recently.) They are a series of steps in photo editing software (typically Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, which I use) that can change your photo to give it a certain effect. So if you want to make your photo sepia toned, black and white, brighter, or sun-kissed (among many others), with just one or two clicks using actions you can do so. Many photographers use actions, and there are many for sale, but PW gives hers away, and I have all of them and use them all the time. From simple actions that boost colors, to fancier actions that give some really stunning effects, I'm hooked.

Here's an example: 

OK, so as much as I love this photo I'm not about to make a scrapbook page with it. (You think?) But I do use actions for a lot of the photos I use on my scrapbook pages. I love the effect of mixing color and black & white photos of the same subject/person on a layout, and I do that a lot with pages of my kids. I use PW's black and white action BW Beauty as I love the clean black & white photos it renders.  Like on this two layout I used just two photos of my older daughter, one in color, one in black & white:



Here I had a pile of good shots of my younger daughter and I couldn't choose just one. I ran BW Beauty on some of the photos, to differentiate the photos one from the other, as they were all so similar, and also to add a little visual oomph to the grid for a simple page.



Lately I've been doing some art journaling type pages for my personal scrapbook album, and I've been having fun using some of the more unusual actions for the photos. (By the way, SOOC = straight out of the camera, that is, without any effects on the photo.)


Cool, eh? I actually used two actions on this last photo, first Colorized, then Edge Burn, which ended up being my choice to make this scrapbook layout:



For this last photo I first used Boost to make the colors and contrast bolder, then I ran the Seventies action. I tend to use one of the boost or fresh colour actions before I run the other funkier actions as when the original colours are strong (too strong for my taste for a "normal" colour photograph) they heighten the effect of the action. (I do use the Lovely and Ethereal action on many of my photos, it adds a little oomph but not too much.)

I loooove how it came it out, it really made the photo perfect for this LO that I did with it:



A couple of things to note:
Installing actions can be challenging. The PW actions come with detailed installation instructions, and if you follow them closely, you should get it right without too much frustration. But just beware that it's a lot of steps and if you don't get one step right it messes up the whole thing. Just seeing the installation instructions can put you off, but it really is worth the trouble.

Don't forget to flatten your layers after each action. You can do this by (in Photoshop Elements) selecting "merge layers" or "flatten image" under the layers tab.

Actions have added another dimension to my photography and to my scrapbooking. If you haven't discovered them yet, give them a try!

Photo booth photos are hot--you can use real photo-booth photos, make digi ones, or hand cut photos into a photo booth strip. Big Huge Labs has a free option that is easy to use.

First, I signed up for a free account. Next, I followed the directions on the screen, which allowed me to upload 4 photos. The directions were not explicit on how to create the strip, so I clicked around until I figured it out: After uploading 4 photos, you need to click the image you want and the spot you want it in. Finally, you choose the finish you want: black and white photos or vintage aged. Interestingly, you can also choose both at the same time. Here's what I did:


The photo on the left is both black and white and vintage aged, the middle strip is black and white alone, and the strip on the right is vintage aged.

Once you create the image, you are given several options. I saved it to my computer, then opened it in PSE 7 to print them out. I had trouble adjusting the size of the strip, so I printed the strips on the biggest paper I had, which is 8x10, to make the strips bigger. After I printed them, I added them to this layout:



This was certainly a quick way to make a fun, photo booth series of pictures to use on a layout!

Photographer Kelly Willette also shares photo-booth tricks in her final Spring Training video. You can still sign up for just $30 and enjoy all the content (videos, downloads, bonus content, and more) through June 30th! Sign up here.

Welcome to day eleven of Spring Training! Everyone is free to participate in our daily blog challenge and giveaway. Not signed up yet? There's still time. Sign up here to enjoy access to all the videos, downloads, and bonus content through June 30th! There's still time to enter all of the second week's amazing giveaways...

If you're already registered, click here to visit the Craftnasium. (Note: must be signed in to your user account for the page to load.)

Note from the Coach

"Today I will be brief, I want you to remember that photography is also fun. Use it to showcase personality and family quirks. I have enjoyed participating with you."

Interested in the full lesson? Click here to learn more.

FREE Bonus Inspiration

For more examples of this challenge to help you with today's exercise and challenge, check out Keshet's entry on Write.Click.Scrapbook.

THANKS to Today's Sponsor

Thanks to today’s sponsor Kelly Willette her self. She is giving away a copy of her eBook, Finding the JOY to
one lucky winner who enters today's challenge!

A second winner will win a copy of Year in the Life by Write, Click, Scrapbook.

Daily Discounts

Today only, save $1 on Year in the Life by Write, Click, Scrapbook.
Use the code LIFEINSPRG at checkout.

Today's Challenge is
Create a layout with actual or faux photo-booth strips.