3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

Photography

Day 124/365: Spring Daffodils

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Day 124: My daffodils are blooming!

My garden is starting to bloom, I’m so excited! These were the first daffodils of the season and I thought they deserved a special highlight. I’m going to see how many flowers I can take photographs of this season, most will probably not be in my yard, but around town, ahhh, I can smell the fragrance of lilacs already.  So if anyone from Elmwood see’s me crouched around your bushes it’s just me and my photography addition.

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Day 111/365: Portrait Professional Takes 10 Years Off

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Before & After (click on picture for larger image)

My first self portrait on my blog, only because I want to show the capabilities of  my new Portrait Professional program.  (Click on the image to see a larger view.) However, this program may encourage me to be in more pictures. I like the effect. This is virtually a photographers secret weapon.

The process is fast and easy. In less than five minutes I selected the borders of my eyes, eyebrows, nose, and shape of face. Then the program does a mild adjustment and gives you additional options to enhance even further with slide bars. I can sharpen my mouth, increase my upper or bottom lip width, whiten my teeth and even open my eyes a little more. But not so much that it’s distorted.

Ever hear how the camera adds five pounds? It can be taken off by lengthening the neck and narrowing the jaw and face. The key is to keep as much of the natural features of the face so the person is still recognizable. Otherwise you end up changing the persons identity too much, and creating a Beyonce controversy.

I think Portrait Professional can be used to a great advantage in senior pictures to cover up those temporary blemishes (i.e. acne) that might even disappear before the student gets the final photos returned. I think the image below shows this concept quite clearly. My daughters friend was much happier with the “after” image.

Before & After (click on image for larger view)

 

Day 110/365: Portrait Professional, Before and After

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Day 110: My daughter
Day 110: My Daughter

Thanks to this project I have met new people and advanced increased my post production skills with Photo-shop and new programs. Portrait Professional is a program I found and I absolutely love it!

My daughter doesn’t really need any help looking beautiful, I think she looks that way everyday. But, there are those teenage days when you have shiny skin and blemishes seem to pop up overnight when you least expect them. This program magically eliminates blemishes, decreases shine and can even go so far as changing eye color.

Although meant for professional photographers doing glamor shots, magazine shoots, it’s can provide just enough adjustment to give an extra edge to photographs. I’ve talked to professional photographers who take senior pictures and they swear by it and say it’s definitely the best program they have ever used.

Tomorrow I take a self portrait and see what if the program can take ten years off my face.

Day 108/365: Shopping for the Wedding

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Day 108: A Bridesmaid Prepares

Shoes , check, purse check, Alfred Angelo Bridesmaid dress, check.

Gather the groom, gather the bride, let the wedding commence.

Now that I have past the 100 day mark I think I can confidently enter the Post a Day challenge. Therefore I’m promising to make use of The DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similiar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.

Photoshop Effects: Ink Outline filter, this is quickly becoming my favorite photo.

Faith, It’s Not Just Black and White

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Sometimes faith is shades of gray. As some of you know who have been reading my blog my mother died in January of 2011. It has taken years to go through her things and absorb the life I never learned about. There are some things I still don’t understand, family history I don’t know. But through her death God opened a door.

Faith is God stretches beyond all comprehension
Faith, it’s not just black and white…

Although she made sure my brother and I were baptized, attended Sunday school and church every week,  it was only out of duty and respect to my God Mother Granny Turcotte. After we were confirmed, she never stepped foot in church again. The topic of religion and faith often brought a scornful look to her face and I never knew why because my faith has always brought me a great deal of comfort.

I grew up in a small country church, Grace Episcopal in Broad Brook Connecticut, and God brought me to the Lutheran church in college. My church home now is Missouri Synod Trinity Lutheran in Murdock Nebraska.

Not only did my Mother cut herself from God, but from family and friends. She didn’t think it was important to create relationships with relatives and her children. I rarely saw any of my aunts and uncles who lived in Oklahoma and California. The few cousins I knew as a child drifted as I got older.

There was one family member that consistently and faithfully maintained contact, a niece, my cousin Gail. I found saved cards, photos, and letters in my Mothers desk of an older cousin I never knew and never met.  In February a forwarded letter from Gail arrived in my mailbox, so I reached out with the news of Mom’s passing, including my email address. An email arrived a  week later.

Here is where God’s grace and divine intervention becomes apparent.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Devotional StoriesChicken Soup for the Christian Woman’s Soul:

Gail and I learned quite a bit from each other the next week.  Her Mother (Mom’s sister) was also not religious. We lived very parallel lives and had similar experiences and troubling childhoods with both of us having a difficult relationship with our Mothers.

During the normal course of telling each other about our lives Gail stated that she is a faithful member of Missouri Synod Trinity Lutheran Church in Woodward Oklahoma. This news brought goosebumps, tears to my eyes,  a lump in my throat, and a prayer of thanks to God. How can this be a coincidence? I believe it’s not.

What does it mean? I don’t know. But I do take comfort in this has to be a sign, a message, an indication of God’s hand in our lives. Acknowledgment that to everything there is a purpose. Wait and the message will be revealed. Listen and hear God’s word in the world around us, from the people around us.

Better yet, when you find yourself in church pray for your family, your friends, those who have lost faith, who are lost. The Lord Jesus Christ will find them and guide them home. Gail’s Mother, my aunt, and the last of the five brothers and sisters, died last week. I truly believe our prayers that were delivered up to God were received and now our Mothers are safely and lovingly in the arms of Jesus and are at peace.

 

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