Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Picture Perfect Michigan

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Holland, Michigan for a good ol' fashion family vacation.

It was awesome.  See what I mean?



This was my family's fourth trip to Holland, and I've decided that Michigan is just one of those places that gets more magical with each visit.  I'm not sure if there was one event in particular that made it so special, but somewhere between swimming in Lake Michigan, eating too many blueberries to count, riding bikes everywhere and watching sailboat races, I fell in love with Michigan all over again. 
 
And since I was in such a picturesque place, I whipped out my camera every five minutes to try to capture some of the beauty.  It felt like a sin not to snap as many pictures as possible while on our adventures!  I also tried to master the manual setting on my camera to step up my photography skills.  Honestly, it was really fun to pretend like I was a professional determined to get "the perfect shot", and I've loved sifting through all my photos since I've been back.

Which leads me to a website I wanted to share with you in this post...

Having taken so many photos, I've recently been inspired to turn my pretty good digital camera photos into BEAUTIFUL photos by playing with them using my recent obsession, Pixlr.  Pixlr is basically an online photo editing program, similar in layout to Photoshop.  On Pixlr, you can create new images or enhance existing ones.  I love Pixlr because it's FREE, easy to use, and has given me some really cool results.  Below are some of my photos from the trip, with a few filters courtesy of Pixlr.
My sister and me!
The pride and joy of Holland, Big Red
Pops on a beautiful bike ride
My brother and me in South Haven

Cousin time at the beach. (Grace needs big sunglasses, too!)

Boogie boarding time

My favorite picture of the trip!  This is literally what the scene looked like!  The only feature added to this is a vignette around the edges.  Awesome.

Heaven.

Stopped at Notre Dame on the way up

Sailboats gliding on Lake Macatawa

As someone who has always loved playing around with Photoshop, tinkering with Pixlr has been a truly enjoyable learning experience and has made me want to get better at digital photography in general.  There's so much to learn and so many effects that I can use to grow better in this hobby!  

(A special thanks to goes out to my boogie-boarding brother, sun-bathing sister, blueberry pie-baking machine madre and jet skiing-professional pops for making the experience so special!)