Playgroup!

One of the things I miss the most with being a stay-at-home mom is interaction with adults.  Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have gotten involved in some playgroups with kids his age...this is a time that I look forward to the most each week.  K on the other hand is usually one of the youngest at the playgroup - and is still somewhat overwhelmed with all the kids running around all over the place (though soon enough - that will be him).  Today at playgroup, there were about 10 kids there, and K was just in awe of everything going on:)

As for the picture...I brought my small lens again cause we were at playgroup and I didnt want my big expensive lens getting knocked around.  Camera is T1i, lens is 50mm f1.4...picture was taken indoors with no flash and: f2.5, ISO1600, shutter speed 1/100...

I also wanted to talk a bit about what I had to do to the picture in post processing...since I'm not one who take perfect pictures straight out of the camera, I try to improve my pictures with post-processing...this one needed it...this was the picture straight out of the camera...

As you can see it is dark and grainy cause he is pretty backlit (the big window was above and behind him - not ideal for taking pictures) and I had a high ISO...I lightened it with curves, adjusted the saturation, then played with the colors, I sharpened the eyes, then ran the entire thing through a noiseware program (I think I overdid the noiseware, but I'll correct that next time), then I sharpened the final picture...whew...sometimes it takes a lot to make my photos look good - did I mention that if you need any photoshopping work done, LMK...its my thing:)

And, because I have a black and white filter on this lens, and I'm trying to get better at black and white photography, here is my black and white conversion, which I really really like!