Challenge #7: Summer Fun

You think a challenge like 'Summer Fun' would be a piece of cake in July!  Well, the first ingredient of that challenge would be summer.  We haven't had much of that around here this year.  In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find three days in a row that have had real summer-like conditions.  Summer for us this year seems to be all about cold, wet conditions.  The May long weekend was snowy, parts of June saw sub-zero temps and highs of 10, 12 and 14 degrees are common in July.  Even the rodeo and chuck wagon events were canceled at the Calgary Stampede due to adverse weather conditions for the first time in anyone's memory.  Needless to say the Summer Fun challenge has truly been a challenge.

But hey, this is Canada and you have to take what you can get and make the best of it.  So, if the lakes and rivers aren't frozen, we'll call it summer no matter what it's like outside and we'll have some fun.  Which leads me to this weeks challenge.

My daughter agreed to pose for this shot under the threat of being grounded if she didn't.  Her mom happily agreed to shoot her with the water gun while I shot away.  This was shot during early evening and the light was still quite harsh, so I used the burn tool to recover some detail in her face and used a photo filter effect in Photoshop CS4 to warm up the overall image a bit, then used a mask to remove the effect of the filter from her teeth to keep them nice and white.  Some quick work with the spot healing brush got rid of some water drops that I didn't like and a couple of blemishes and that was it.

A simple shot capturing a moment of summer fun.

I printed this to an A4 sized sheet of Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl Paper.  The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 successfully printed this image without issue.  The result was a smooth, warm and soft picture that looks great!  I'm really impressed with the quality of this printer when it works!!