Happy Locversary to me! I got my locks cut....but not off

Today my babies turned 7 yrs old.  Who would have thunk it?  I go back to work tomorrow, so I'll have to add videos, pics and major updates to this post before the week is up.  Check back. Blessings...

My Sisterlocks Slide Show

Here's a slide show from the beginning. There's lots of pics, but they move pretty fast. You can choose to view with music or mute sound. Enjoy!

Locked Wedding Styles & Engagement Photo shoots

Since Jen and I are trying to get our side gig of event photography going, I check in from time to time with Knight Photography, out of Atlanta. Knight is phenomenal and knows how to capture moments with beauty and simplicity. He is a professional wedding photographer, which Jen and I aren't aspiring to be. However, he shares not only tips and fantastic photos, but creative shots, especially the engagement shoots, which Jen and I have and will do.

So we came across a lady who had locks. They looked like Sisterlocks, but could have well been smaller Traditional locs. To my amazement, they were renewing their vows after 30 years! You can check out their pics HERE and see how the bride donned her crown for the special event. Here's an New York engagement session he took and the couple both had locks down their back! I'm really curious as to how both of them will be wearing their locks on the wedding day.

Here's a fotki album of a wedding couple who both are rocking naturals. Real Nice!!!

My god-daughter Kalee is getting married in August. I drove down to San Antonio on Spring Break to take engagement photos of her and her fiancé. I'll be sharing a few shots below for your viewing pleasure soon.

I do photography

When the dust settles from teaching, perhaps over the summer, Jen and I can get our digital photography business up and running. We're getting all our equipment and gear together; we just need to get the dang business plan written so we can have our pricing firm. Until then, we'll just practice on each other. Here's some of my recent work. Make sure you turn your speakers up when you click on the remix. I think I did a good job if you ask me. Well, don't ask me, just let me know what you think. J's just so photogenic. Happy New Year!

Adding a Photobucket Slideshow to your Blog

Sign into photobucket. Sign in to blogger as well. OK in photobucket, when I create a slideshow, I see after it saves, it then it allows me to name it, then appears on the screen. To the right of the slideshow it says, "Share URL, Direct Link or HTML." The one I chose to post into my blog is "HTML Tag". I copy the tag, and then go back into my blogger account. There I sign into blogger and click on "Dashboard". The choices of my blogs comes up there. Where you see your personal blog name and not the LHBE, click on "New Post". The blank new post comes up. Before you paste, click on the link to the right that says, "Edit HTML". After you click on that link, then you paste the slideshow into the post. You know you've done it right when you see the embedded link which will look something like this: embed type="application. shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" src="http://wmg.photobucket.com/pbwet.swf?pbwurl=http://wmg.photbucket.com/
albums/v198/maryee09/Sisterlocks/FtWorth81907/b255167c.pbw" height="360" width="480">

After you see this, then click on "Preview". The slideshow should come up. Now if you want to make a comment/message about the slideshow, this is where it can get a lil' confusing. When you click on "hide preview", the slideshow disappears altogether,which gives the illusion that you deleted it. Don't panic, it's still there. Even when you click on "Compose", it still doesn't show up. Don't worry.

Click on Edit HTML again and type any word at the beginning or ending of the embedded file code. Now click on "Compose" again. You will see your word. It's at that place that you can begin to type whatever you'd like to say about the slideshow. When you click "preview" again, you'll see your message. If you want to create your message at the top of your slideshow, then start typing (while in HTML Edit mode) before the embedded code. If you want your message to be at the end, then start typing at the end of the embedded code. You can go back clean it up by adding bolds. links, etc. simply by going back to the "Compose" area after you've typed a few words to find it in the blog post.

Very Important: At the top left of your screen, you should see the name of your blog, and not the Locked Hair Blog Exchange. If you see the LHBE, you've posted in the wrong blog. You don't have to "re-do" everything you've done so far, all you have to do is go back and click on "Edit HTML" and copy everything that's in the post, go back into dashboard and click on "new post" in your blog and then paste.

Here's what I came up with while practicing going through the steps for this blog post:

Hopefully this will help those who want to add some pizazz to their blogs. If you're still confused, let me know. Technology takes a little practice, but once you're up and running, you just seem to fly!!!!! I wish you well in your continued growth in your locks, with technology and your life!

Locked and Loving It

Is this not a cool picture or what?? My Casio Z750 Camera has it's own internal sfx. This is called illustration. My fellow poet/artist friend Laura Walton took the picture. Man I love this camera.

Here's some more pictures with this cool effect. I think I'm going to work on a mini video with this and see what comes of it.

Free Photo Sharing Website-Photobucket

I wanted to share with those of you who visit my blog about one of my favorite on line photo sharing websites-Photobucket. I started using Photobucket at the suggestion of friends from my Ebay groups community of sellers to upload pictures of items I wanted to sell on Ebay. I've had an account for about 3 yrs and stopped using it briefly when I didn't pay for my premium renewal of $25 (when I was not working). When you have a premium account you can upload tons of pictures no matter how large or small and that was the biggest plus in investing in a premium account. You can have a non-paying account, which is what my was reduced to but since I had a few thousand pictures already uploaded I had reached my limit. They didn't chop me down, but they did disallow me to continue uploading more pictures. I still had the ability to share but I couldn't upload anymore.

Well, a few months went by and low and behold, Photobucket changed their tune. It may have been because of the other online photo sharing communities like fotki, snapfish, flickr, picasa and others just to name a few who were catching on to the photo community craze and were giving away more bandwith for free accounts. Photobucket got smart and did just that, but with some restrictions. Check out all their features here.

• Free accounts automatically resize large pictures that are uploaded. No problem here.
• Your account can be private with a password or public, your choice. If it is private you can email friends and family through Photobucket and they send an email out with the password attached. Then recipients can view the album at leisure.
  
• Another great perk with Photobucket is they allow you to resize photos that actually need to be reduced in size for various reasons. For example if you have a blogger or fotki account and you want to post your picture in your profile, you can upload the picture into Photobucket reduce it 25%, 50%, or 75% and then use the html link for the blog or save the picture onto your desktop to upload later to whatever site you want to send it to.
• A major big plus with Photobucket is you can send pictures via the internet with Photobucket by copying the picutes you upload and preview. Tons of pictures are sent either in their original form or as thumbnails that can be clicked on and they only take up like 5kb in your recipient's inbox. No more sending folks pictures that take a long time to downloand and then a long time to send and then they have to download the pictures to see them. Nope, with Photobucket, the pictures can be seen instantly. The only bad part about it is if you as the owner move the picture around from one folder to another, you will lose the direct link. Other than that, you have a feature that allows folks to save whatever pictures they want or just view them and that's all without clogging up their email with large files.
• They offer contests that you can win $2,500 for your best shot!
  
• You can post your pictures like Picasa to your blogs and myspace accounts.
• You can post "Bucket Stamps" which allows you to create a stamp with 4 or 9 picture max at a time. Like this one of my sister and me. I call it "Sisters".
  

Another feature is called Photo Strip. Here the photos are displayed horizontally but smaller. This feature allows you to create a strip with 5 or 10 picture max at a time. With the exception of the nappy sister, all the pics here are my creations from photo software.

Lastly, Photobucket has the Bucket Show. This is a slide show of pics. You can put up to 10 pictures at a time in the show.

There's no controling how fast the photos change, but it is continuous like the others. The only way these pictures would cease to display is if the owner moved a picture, closed the account, or Photobucket was experiencing technical difficulties. One cool thing about sharing your photos in this manner is it reduces the probability of sticky fingers taking your original photos. Plus it adds some pizzazz to your blogs. There's lots more photobucket has, but these are a few highlights. Check it out. It offers a lot for free accounts.

Opps! I forgot one more feature: The video upload!!!!!!!! Upload your own video and share it with friends. You can embed video into your blog without having to upload it to youtube, google video, or yahoo video, which folks then have the ability to leave unwanted comments of your video. You can do this even through a free account. Sweet!! This is Red, the steer. That's me screaming. I edited it and I was saying, "Ooooo, that's nasty!!" Ugh!!!

Experimenting and Pondering Changes

I thought I'd add some pictures taken within the last week of me experimenting with my camera's continuous shot feature. It's so cool. It takes 25 shots in 5 seconds. You can read more about the camera here. **I didn't pay that much for it, believe me. I got a major holiday hook-up and paid only $134 for it at The Sharper Image in Baybrook Mall while in Houston after Christmas.
Jen also took some pictures of me with my hair in it's free style state.
I think I'm gonna do something curly coming up here real soon. I just need to retighten one patch that's got me down and out. The root beds are so small and fragile (in my humble opinion anyway) that I am just not motivated to fool with em'. Jen suggested I go ahead and make an appointment with GiGi. I'm really considering it cause I also am seriously thinking about two things: #1 combining my locks so I'll have thicker locks and also a thicker root bed, and #2, coloring my hair. Ree-C got me all "lock envy'd up" with her full color and thickness. It's just beee-au-tiful!!!!
My girl Dread_Princess on Fotki has shown me that you can do major styling with thicker locks. Her locks are just fabulous!!!! I mean it! Well, off to bed I go. I have a much needed dentist appointment in the morning. Wish me well!!