Christmas Gifts | Custom Canvas Print and Wall Portraits

Now that Christmas is over, I can share some of the beautiful photography gifts we were able to give this Christmas. The first is a custom 30" x 16" custom canvas from my family's shoot this summer. Gorgeous! My parents live in the midwest, so I didn't even get to see the canvas before it was shipped to them. Fortunately, it turned out beautifully. Maybe someday I'll have a chance to see it in person!

The next set of gifts was two framed wall portraits of my grandparents and my aunt. They are the only family we have nearby, so we've become especially close. Their house is filled with family portraits, but no really recent ones of them. So, when Thanksgiving time came and I took their pictures, I knew that a wall portrait for each of them would be a great gift. I had the metallic prints mounted and sprayed so they didn't need glass in the frame and the linen texture would be visible. They loved them!

 Here's how it looked in the frame:

Special Edit: Custom Matte-like Borders

Recently, we were invited to a special joint birthday party for these cousins, and I had a great idea for a gift: custom 8x10s. Since I already had photos of the 4-year-old boy, I concentrated on getting a good photo of the 2-year-old while he was visiting his cousin a couple days before the party. What a surprise his mom had in store when she helped him open his gifts!

My idea was to create a portrait that was immediately frame-able, no matte required. I thought it would be fun to create the illusion of a 3-dimensional matte with borders and vignettes. Here's how I did it.

1. The original photo was darling, but needed a little help to make it "pop." (That's a fleece blanket in the background hung over the railing. I'm all about impromptu backgrounds.)


2. After saving the photo to my computer, I played with the levels a bit to bring out the vibrant colors in the boy's eyes and shirt.


3. I created another file for the 8x10 print and used the color from the boy's shirt to fill the background. This would eventually become the "matte" border of the 8x10.


4. On another layer, I dropped in the photo of the boy and cropped and resized it so there was a 1" border around the 8x10. Thank goodness for guides! They make measuring easy.

5. Then came the fun part! I created a vignette using the burn tool and a fun brush shape. Although I could have done the vignette with a dark oval and feathered edges (like I did on his cousin's portrait), I wanted this one to have a rougher look. So I did the vignette by hand (well, actually, by mouse). I also dodged a bit of the background to make it blend in better.


6. Finally, I used a pattern and then a filter to create a more interesting texture for the border. And ta da! It's done. (It took me about an hour to do all of this.)


I used the same basic method to create the second custom 8x10, and yes, their parents loved them! (And I had so much fun doing them!)

Falling and Catching

Success! Finally, I have some great falling and catching pictures to show off! The little boy is the son of my good girlfriend and my husband's coworker, and these shots were taken at a company picnic close to sunset. I've been working on getting this kind of action shot whenever we are together and Daddy is playing with his boy. You really need to click on the first photo to see the larger version. I love the bit of motion you can see in that first shot. The second one (actually taken before the first) shows how high that Daddy can toss his toddler. Whoa!


In addition to getting these photos, Daddy also received a fun photo book lately. My girlfriend put together some of the photos from her own collection and some from the shoots I have done with her family to create a photo book for Father's Day. Here's one of my favorite spreads with a couple photos I took to go with the poem, "My Daddy's Shoes." That's one of the great things about having a CD of images from your photo shoot. You can make fun photo gifts like this with professional photos!

Baby Parts Collage

Last month, Jacob designed a wonderful Baby Parts Collage for one of our clients. The collage photos came from a previous photo shoot. Jacob loves the meticulous nature of photo editing, retouching, and designing; so he took a lot of pride in the collage. We had to wait to post it until now because the client presented the finished project to her husband on Father's Day. We hope he loved it as much as we did.