I had the honor of photographing this young family as the dad prepares for deployment. If you are not familiar with Op Love, you really should check out their site! It’s a wonderful organization and I am proud to be a part of it.  It’s too bad that we didn’t have control of the weather - the wind was AWFUL!! We messed with Miss Kai’s nap time, but she was a trooper for us! Aren’t her eyes beautiful?! Thank you so much for allowing me to capture your family, and Sir, thank you for your service.

Ten thing on my to-do list
(in no particular order)

1. Create 3 wedding albums
2. Create 2 trip albums for my mom
3. Scan about 122 pictures for a slide show for my old church
4. Sew my kiddo’s Easter Clothes
5. Finish organizing my sewing armoire
6. Sort clothes into 3 piles… Good Will, Consignment & Trash
8. Get kitchen bar cleaned off - I don’t even remember what it looks like!
9. Finish up stuff for 3 custom sewing customers
10. Ship some picture orders
11. Take my kids pictures in the bluebonnets before the wither up and die (already kinda late!!)
12. Go on a date with my husband
13. Get pictures taken of our TV and get it listed on craigslist
14. Figure out what I’m going to do about my cats
15. Order a new hard drive (I’m behind on editing because I’m out of hard drive space!!!)
16. renew my CPR card
17. find daycare center for kiddos - class starts June 9!!!
18. Schedule an appointment for physical before orientation deadline
19. Request transcripts from McMurry
20. redesign business cards & order
21. Finish tweaking new blog!
22. re-do website to match!
23. go to bed - it’s 3am!! (can’t sleep, too much on my mind)

So, on my new favorite blog, I heart faces, they have a Fix it Friday. They post a picture and hundreds of people ‘fix’ it. I love tinkering around in photoshop, so I think I’ll starting giving this a try. Seems like a fun way to make sure I blog on Fridays. Along with posting the before & after pictures, I will also share the steps I took to achieve the final look!

Enjoy!
Sarah

Before

After

Normally, I’d work on a picture the ‘long’ way… by hand and not by actions. I was in a hurry today, so I did each of these using actions alone. Now, that being said, I do not believe that photoshoppers should rely on actions. Once you learn how to
to properly work on images, actions can be a great tool for cutting down your work time. But before that, you really need to understand what you are doing and why you are doing it!

Now, for the steps that I took to get this image:

1. Crop to 5×7, just because that’s what I prefer to work with
Used Child’s Play Actions for 1-4
1. Exposure fixer-upper
2. Brighten up buttercup x2
3. Warm me up x2
4. Glowly Color

4. Circled eyes using magnetic lasso and ran a USM set to 100, 3.0, 0
5. Brought down opacity just a bit - to around 86%
6. Ran eye pop action and adjusted to 86% opacity as well (I don’t like eyes to look freaky!)

7. Vignette by Child’s Play
8. Resized for web using Heidi’s resize action.

I timed it, I did this image is just over 4 minutes, and that was with a squirmy toddler in my lap!!

Variations on After
For each of these, I began with my ‘after’ image from above

Used Jess’ Warm Honey Action

Indie Actions Subtle Color & 1/2 kick

Purplish b&w from Child’s Play

So, I discovered this super fun blog last week and decided that I should play along as well!! This weeks theme is “No Flash”. Well, that’s right up my alley!!! They have two categories to enter and I happen to have a picture that fits both! So, here it goes!!

I *Heart* Faces - Kids (Isn’t she a doll?)

I *Heart* Faces - Adults (My super cute hubby!)

Click here to see all the fun!!

I met up with a couple of “local” photographers last weekend to work on a few skills. The sun wasn’t being super cooperative for what we were wanting to learn, so we had fun and made the best of it anyways! I thoroughly having the opportunity to meet photographers near me and enjoy the time visiting and learning! Thanks Guys! Looking forward to next time!!

-Sarah-

This beautiful girl belongs to one of my dearest friends… Misty Green of MG Studios!

This is the beautiful girl’s mama

They should be sisters

Blowing bubbles is her new ‘thing’

This is what I look like ‘working’

I think this is my favorite ‘action’ shot from the day

What’s a meet up without a group shot?

These two beautiful people were married this past weekend! They were a blast to work with and I know they have a long life ahead of them. I don’t usually cry when I’m photographing a wedding, but Nicole’s dad is a minister and helped officiate and he had the tears streaming down my face! I know I wasn’t the only one sniffling either! It was a beautiful ceremony and I wish you guys the very best! Hope the honeymoon is awesome!!

Much Love,
Sarah

We don’t really have any more news. There is a new attending dr today and I was able to sit in on the briefing with the residents - that is totally fasicinating and right up my nursing alley! The swallow function was postponed this morning and changed to a barium enema. Poor girl! She and her daddy are downstairs for that right now. I stayed up here to shower and pump. It was another awful night last night. We got her down about 9 fairly easy because she was so exhausted. Well, it turns out that respiratory ordered the wrong tests to be preformed on her nasal wash, so at midnight they came in and woke her up to do it again. We were fit to be tied I tell ya!! After 2 hours of screaming, one of the nurses came and got her and took her outside in the hall to play (this is the 2nd night they’ve had to do this!) Ugh! Being in the hospital is such a pita!! She was scheduled to have a swallow study this AM, so she was NPO after 5am. It’s now 9:45 and 2 people have told us that the swallow study has been cancelled for today and then the speech patho came in and said she was ready!! AARRRGGGHHH!!! (I think we have a goofy resident, he wears us out!) Poor kiddo is in here for weight loss and they keep starving her and blowing our calorie count out the window! I can’t even begin to explain how incredibly frustrating this is! I believe that we will have a neurology consult sometime today due to Madeline being so hypotonic for her age. Every other physician that we see says that “she is floppy” She has all had several episodes of rolling her eyes back in her head and her body wobbling around. Reminds me of the clown dolls with the round butt… you know the ones… you punch them and they flop back up. That’s what it feels like she would do if you hit her.. she just rolls around sitting up. Totally weird and freaks us out a bit when she does it. Well, a nurse saw the episode yesterday and evidently it freaked her out too. Mike isn’t going to be happy to learn that our release date has been pushed back again! Frankly, neither am I, but it is do incredibly difficult to get into Texas Children’s as an out-patient, so this is bitter-sweet! I do think that once we get her to sleep tonight I will refuse all treatment until she wakes tomorrow. I can’t handle the screaming anymore. Did I mention that I have a migraine??? Again, thank you so very much for all the love and prayers. We feel God’s presence with us and know that we are not alone. We cannot wait to get home, but feel so blessed that we are in the best place for Madeline’s care. Please continue to pray for not only us, but also for Madeline’s physicians.

Love,
Sarah

Just thought I’d give a quick update. We are still at Texas Children’s but hope to go home this evening or tomorrow morning. Doctors are still unsure what’s wrong with Miss Madeline, but after an OT consult today, it seems that they may have a general direction to shoot in… as opposed to the dark where they’ve been shooting for a few weeks. The OT seems to think she has some swallowing issues and liquid is going down her trach instead of her esophagus. That would account for most of her symptoms. If her swallow function test today comes back negative, then we’ll be back at square one. We had a visit this morning from a large group of attending and resident physicians and they all seem to not know the problem, just know that there is one! None of her symptoms fit together. Her white blood count is low as well as her neutrophil levels. One doctor was concerned about blood in her stool and instead it showed a high sugar level, which is a very strange finding with constipation. Normally, that would show in a patient that has diarrhea. Her cough has started up again and this time they haven’t been so quick to dismiss it. We actually have another chest x-ray coming up today or tomorrow morning with plans for repeating her sweat chloride test in a few weeks. She did loose some weight since yesterday, but after 3 huge poo’s that’s to be expected! (And welcomed, yeah for poop!!) In the next few days, she’ll be set up with PT and ECI in the hopes that we can get her gross-motor skills caught up to her age. We’re excited about the ECI recommendation, I know that it will be very beneficial for her. I guess that’s about all we know for now. Thank you so much for all of the prayers! It’s so nice to know that our family has been well thought of!

Much Love,
Sarah

No picture for now, but check back later… I’m sure I’ll get one uploaded