POTD 192/365

I know I've mentioned before how my dear friend, Shannon, was kind enough to provide us with homemade, organic, baby food for Charlie's first foods.  He has loved every one of them, but he is running out of the vegetables so today I bought some at the store.  I bought Gerber stage 2 green beans.  I thought the stage 2 would be chunkier but really they looked pretty smooth to me.  Anyway, I served them to Charlie for dinner tonight and he. hated. them.

Really, this child of mine who cannot EVER get enough to eat would NOT finish the green beans.  He made horrible faces (see below) and gagged on two or three occassions.  Then he clamped his mouth shut and wouldn't open it!  I found it HILARIOUS, but the rest of the people who live here family said they felt bad for him and ordered me to stop.  So eventually I stopped, but first I had to grab the camera, of course.

This one is sooc (straight out of the camera).  I know, I know, he's pretty cute, huh?

This next one I blurred the background a bit (using a mask) and I adjusted the exposure in ACR (even though I shoot strictly in jpeg).  Seriously, that has got to be one of my new favorite tricks...the ability to edit in RAW.  I also tried sharpening the eyes a little bit, but I couldn't really see a difference.

I had been reading (on what my mom calls "the world wide web") about using "actions" and really wanted to try some.  I finally got around to experimenting with a couple today.  I downloaded some free actions from a great blog called CoffeeShop.  On this photo I ran the CoffeeShop Creamy Black and White action and the CoffeeShop Rounded Corners action.  I like how they turned out, and it definitely gets me excited about all the tons of other stuff there is out there that I can play with.  There is SO MUCH stuff Photoshop can do, and it is really fun just scratching the surface!

What do you think?  I kind of like the rounded corners.  What are your favorite actions?  Any other awesome tips I should know about?  Anybody need a couple  of (unopened) containers of Gerber stage 2 green beans?

{ps i'm blog hopping with before/after at pixel perfect}