I am finally getting caught up on my personal/blogger life to where I can now talk about all this awesome stuff.  Before I dive in to this and future posts, I wanted to upload and share some of the pics of our stuff when it arrived! 

Talk about excited to see that truck pull up now. My whole family was around waiting to help dive into the boxes of Panasonic equipment!  These are just SOME of the pics. Will write more detailed posts in the coming days!! :)

When I found out I was chosen as an LiHD family, I was so happy.  Well, happy is such an understatement of how I felt.  You see, while most people are extremely giddy to get this awesome equipment, I was more thrilled to be aligned with a company I truly loved.  A brand that we have used in our own family for years.  A brand that is reliable, budget friendly, and respectable.  Maybe it's because I'm a problogger that I see it differently but I'm proud to have the LiHD family title.

The anticipation sets in seconds you receive the notification that you are a family.  It's all you can think about.  How family movie night will be even cooler with a jinormous 54" HDTV & movie theater sound, how I'll be able to capture those football games and toddler moments with the video camera, how I'll be able to take clear, beautiful photos with the GH1, and how I can easily carry my toughbook thanks to the handy dandy handle. 

Then the arrival date is soon.  You're cleaning the house, making sure you have a place to hold that fine TV and buying a new camera bag to hold those sophisticated electronics.  And then it's here.  The day you've been waiting for, for what feels like forever, and it's finally here. 

to be continued...............

I thought I would recreate the tutorial using Adobe Photoshop instead of Gimp since this is what I have but you could easily do this in the GIMP.  

I’ve always enjoyed seeing photos that are black and white with one particular object in color and I’ve always wanted to know how to accomplish this…now I do.

Here’s a simple tutorial color highlighting a flower.

1) Open your photo up in photoshop.  Create a new layer; click on ‘Layer’, new, then ok.

2)Now click on your fill bucket choosing the black color.  Make sure you are working on your new layer and not the image itself.  See the right side in the picture below.  Fill your layer with the black color.

3) Now under your layers tab, click on color towards the bottom like you see below.

This is what it should look like when you click on color.  It should create a black and white look. If it doesn’t, congratulations, you’ve already messed up;)

4) Staying on the same layer, choose your eraser.  Choose your brush size.  I click on the [ & ] to adjust the size.  Now erase the subject that you want to be in color like you see below.  Flatten and viola!

Here are the before and after shots of my flower.