My first try...

Last week I took family pictures for the very first time.  I had done candids and couple shots at my sister in-laws wedding, but taking a large family portrait was very different.  Posing people is HARD! Space and shade were very limited.  They were all together for graduation and decided last minute that they wanted to get family photos taken before the one family moved out West indefinitely, so they put all their trust in a complete amateur.  We hurried and put together a time that would work and the photos ended up being taken on a 5 ft wide piece of lawn with bushes in the background and an ugly asphalt parking lot in the foreground. They turned out pretty good considering our limited time and limited ground space for actually taking photos.  They are such a great family and I was happy to do it for them, I just hope they were happy with the results.  My editing skills are super lame so don't judge those.  I still have a LOT to work on for future attempts... if any of you have tips I'd gladly take them, but here are some photos from that photo shoot.  I snapped a bazillion and there were just some poses where I couldn't get a kid to smile or stop making a face for the life of me... oh well, kids will be kids and thats okay!! Enjoy...

normal vs. vivid

I went to the arboretum in Madison to go for a run and take some pictures the other day and I came across this gorgeous tree full of pink blossoms.  I'm not too into photo editing A. because I don't really know how and B. because I love pictures of things as they are to the naked I... I took the picture because I like what I saw right? So why edit? Anyway, I've always gone back and forth between putting my color settings on my Nikon on "N" for normal or "V" for vivid.  What do you guys do? Which do you prefer? Can you even tell a difference? Here are the purty pink blossoms taken on both settings:
Normal (a softer look):

Vivid (much more vibrant):