Aspen Trees

A few weeks ago, my dad took me up past Sundance to teach me how to do a few basic things on my camera.  We spent a lot of time taking random test pictures to see the differences when I play around with my camera's settings, so most of the pictures are boring. However, when we were driving back, I saw this beautiful spot that the sun was shining on. I really wanted to capture the color of the plants when the light was shining on them. Here are a few shots that I was able to capture:

Basic Photoshop

Both in high school and in college, I took a few different Photoshop classes.  I recently got Photoshop from my dad and I was so excited to get started again. By no means did I think I was an expert in the matter, but I felt like I knew my way around the program. Apparently, after five years, you don't remember anything! I was completely lost!

Luckily, my dad is a member of NAPP or photoshopuser.com. If you are a member, you get access to amazing tutorials and online classes. Lately, I have been watching some of the tutorials on the site; mostly the basics. Hopefully I will move on to more complex tutorials soon, but these past few days I've had a lot of fun practicing the basics.

Here are a few that I have messed around with. I've included the before and after pictures so you can see the difference that Photoshop makes. Enjoy!

Before

After (I love the light that I added to her eyes)

Before

After

Before

After

Zion National Park

This weekend my grandma took us down to southern Utah. We went to the Best Friends Animal Society. They are absolutely amazing. It is one of the largest no-kill animal sanctuaries in the world. Click on the link to donate, adopt, or find out more.

On our way there, we drove through Zion National Park. It is one of my favorite National Parks. The rock formations are stunning and they have tons of different hiking trails to explore. Below are pictures from our short trip.

I loved the reflection of the mountain in our hotel window.

It started to get cloudy and rain while we were there. It definitely helped us cool off!

Sick Pups

A few weeks ago, poor Koda bear got out and was hit by a car. Danny and I found him right after it happened and rushed him to the emergency vet. We both were terrified because we had no idea how serious his internal damage was, and neither of us were ready to say goodbye. After ultrasounds and x-rays, they told us that he had some internal bleeding and a fractured hip. They monitored him overnight and fortunately, by the next morning his bleeding had stopped. The vet told us that his fractures in his hip were not misplaced and with tons of rest, everything should heal in eight weeks. We were so lucky with Koda. He is such a big, strong dog that the damage was definitely not as bad as it could have been. We took him to the vet yesterday to get more x-rays to see how he is healing. The results showed that he is right on track to a full recovery.  I can't wait to be able to take him to the park again and watch him run around and play.

A few days ago, one of Koda's puppies, Kai, was returned to us. The family just couldn't take care of her anymore. When we first got her back we noticed that she was extremely small and skinny. Her sisters now weigh 50 pounds, whereas Kai only weighs 29. I also noticed that she was grinding her teeth, and I had never heard a dog do that before. So right away, I looked it up online and it said that it can mean a number of serious problems and to take her to the vet ASAP. So thats exactly what I did. At the vet, they checked all of her vitals and everything looked normal. However, they ran a blood test and a stool test to see if anything was wrong internally. The results take a few days to come back, so they sent me home with her and told me to watch for vomiting and diarrhea. Later that night, Kai was throwing up non-stop so I rushed her to the emergency vet. There, they took a parvo test that came back negative, thank goodness. So they just sent me home with medicine and instructions on what to feed her. Since then, she hasn't been throwing up, which is a really good sign. However, when we got the stool test results back, we found that she has a parasite. Fortunately, it is very treatable and she should be parasite-free in a month.

With all that being said, they are both so cute and happy. I took them outside in the backyard yesterday and took some pics of the beautiful doggies. Enjoy!

Joanna Part I

I have been waiting forever for my friend, Joanna, to be my model! Finally, today we got together and went out to the salt flats to take a few photos. Unfortunately, during our little photo shoot, I ran out of memory on my SD card and didn't have my spare with me, so we are planning on going back tomorrow to take some more pics. Luckily, my model is so photogenic that I got tons of great pictures already! Here is Joanna Part I:

Oh, also, some of these pictures are more "artsy" than others. I had some fun making them look different.

And of course, I had to get some pics of myself:

More pics are coming soon!