I love the seasons and the changes. What I don’t like is winter and the countless opportunities we have for turning our bodies into a feeding ground for a random virus or bacteria.
Three weeks ago I developed a little sniffle, I didn’t think anything about it. I had it for approximately a week. The following week, all hell broke loose. 5 days of almost 24 hours of bed rest. I’m not talking sitting in front of the TV laying on the couch, I’m talking sitting in bed, feeling miserable, sleeping bed rest! Follow that with a week of horrible head congestion and a cough that felt like you were about to dislodge a lung and you really wonder what the hell hit you.
Antibiotics were no good (most likely a virus), decongestant was useless, as was any other drugs I attempted to use to cut off the advancing army of germs. It’s colds like this that make me VERY happy that January is a wedding-free month.
I guess it’s just my luck. Going from an INSANE holiday season and my accident, to the cold with a deathgrip. I should be good for the rest of the year now since I’ve gotten all of the insanity done and over with!
I ran into a client the other day that told me how much she enjoyed seeing my blog. We got to talking about photography and photoshop and all the things a lot of people do to make pictures look good. She asked me how much time I spent working on editing pictures for my blog.. My answer? Little to none. The pictures you see here are as they came out of the camera, with the exception of the spot colored (black & white with color accents, like the red ‘57 chevy in the picture below) and random special effects which I mainly use on my model shoots. Other than that the only thing I normally do in photoshop is do minor retouching of the faces (soften wrinkles, remove blemishes), resize the image, add my logo and upload the photo to my webserver. That’s it.
I have to get on my soap box now..
Photoshop wasn’t meant to take bad pictures and make them “acceptable”, it was made to take good photos and allow them to be enhanced and turned into great photos. Not every picture needs photoshop, so I don’t believe in editing every single picture. The exception to that rule is retouching for cosmetic reasons.. There isn’t much you can do about skin problems the day of a shoot or a 2 year old that may had only looked at the camera once out of 40 attempts. That is where the skilled hands of a photoshop artist come in handy.
It’s no secret, I want to help others in need any way possible. Recently I volunteered for Operation Photo Rescue (www.operationphotorescue.com) The organization helps those in need recover their beloved images that have been damaged by natural disaster. Recently, the organization has been working with Katrina victims to restore water and fire damaged photos that cannot be replaced. I just finished my first photo restoration and I’m looking forward to working on many more to come. If you know anyone that is capable of editing and restoring images, I urge you to have them contact the fine people at Operation Photo Rescue via their website listed above.
Up until April 1st at every bridal show we attended a drawing was offered to brides for discounts on services for their wedding. April 1st we randomly selected the winners for our first ever drawing. Originally there was to be 1 grand prize winner ($1000), two first place ($500) and four second place ($200) winners. I modified the prizes slightly. The grand prize winner remains the same but 1 additional first place and two additional second places were added. Second place was also raised from $200 to $250. Congratulations to:
Sara Dubczak of Crown Point, the Grand Prize winner!
Denise Talbert of Crown Point, Kelly Keiser of Crown Point and Janna Scheeringa of Highland were our first place winners!
Cristen Lain of Chicago, Breanne Case of Lafayette, Lindsay Shelby of Crown Point, Joey Morris of New Lenox and Julie Krooswyk of Lansing were our second place winners!
Congratulations to all!
