One last photo.

April 26th, 2008. The last photo I ever took my husband and our son with my husband's papaw. It breaks my heart to look at it knowing that. It's not even that great... blurry, because I was trying to hurry before they seen me. But, it holds so much and is perfect in it's own way.

He died in early June. He'd been in the hospital's ICU for about two weeks after his truck was hit by a bus. He just couldn't hold on any longer and my husband was the only one in the room with him because everybody stepped out to let him have a moment alone. But, he'd seen 'Ma' and had been calling out to her. 'Ma' is what he called my husband's mamaw who passed away in late 2004.

I wish I would have got more photos of them and also some with my husband's dad. They were all in the driveway that day watching our little boy play. I have photos of all of them at different points when we were standing out there. Just not one of all four of them together. I just wish I would have got one good one. But I'm happy for the ones that I did get and they are treasured.

I'm sad that our little boy will probably not being able to remember him since he was only two years old. Our daughter never got to meet him. I was pregnant at the time and we actually found out we were having a girl the day of his funeral. June 10th, 2008 - truly a bittersweet day.

Just take photos of all the people you love in life. They dont have to be perfect for them to be perfect because you just never know. Even if they're a little blurry, they will still be loved and you'll be oh-so-glad that you have anything rather than nothing at all!



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Shutter Sister's Bittersweet Post

Even MORE.... I know you're excited!

Here are some from when our electric came back on and we returned home. My camera's battery died and I couldn't find the charger (found it yesterday though, yay!) so I had to use my S3 IS. Which is nice because I could zoom in a lot farther since I don't have a long zoom for my dslr YET (!!), but you can notice the quality is much different from one camera to the other.

I couldn't get the memory card to load the photos onto my computer so I plugged it into my husband's laptop and they worked there. So these are all SOOC because I don't have Photoshop on his computer. I had to resize and watermark in Paint *ha, ha*

And please remember that all of these (and most of the others) were taken from inside. I'm battling a cold and wasn't able to venture out like I wanted, but did take a few from my husband's papaw's porch.

Oh yeah, and before I stop rambling on and on.. the majority of the following images are going to be HUGE because I couldn't resize right with Paint! Man, I love Photoshop *sigh*

A few more from the storm.

Our mailbox and driveway on January 27th:




What we woke up to on January 28th:




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More photos from the storm to follow soon.

Lights Out {Snow & Ice Storm}

Brr... our electric went off yesterday morning thanks to all of the snow and ice that covered us. So we had to bundle up our two tiny ones and make it down our driveway and next door to my husband's papaw's house so we could use his wood burner.

They started out saying it'd be turned back on by noon tomorrow but then started saying that it'd be February 4th before it'd happen. Thank God that they worked and got it on today! I am so happy to be home!

Our county has been declared a state of emergency because over 65% are/were without power. So please just keep EVERYONE that is being affected by this, no matter where they are, in your thoughts and prayers.

I have a million photos to share but we havent been home very long and these are the only two I've edited so far.


Before.... January 27th, 2009


After.... January 29th, 2009

From SOOC to Fully Edited

I'm really embarrassed to show this photo SOOC!! They're usually not this blah and ugly. I snapped it out the car window today (well, technically yesterday... I just havent been to bed and it's a new day) as we were driving by, and didnt have the time to adjust the settings in manual mode. Had I tried, I would have missed the opportunity to even get the photo at all. So, ya take what you can get.... riiiiiight?!!

I did not like this photo at all when I uploaded them onto my computer tonight. It just looked so... well, like I said before, blah and ugly! I could have scrapped the photo and not thought twice about it. But, I didnt! I thought it had some potential --just needed a little lovin' to make it look alright!


^Here is the SOOC;
only resized to 600px on the long side to share here.



^Here it is having only been edited in ACR;
& resized to 600px on the long side to share on here.



^Here is the photo with my normal editing done to it.
Some of the steps:
•Cropped;
resized to 600px on the long side.
•Cloned out the house with the red roof.
•Original layer duplicated;
soft light on top layer,
lower opacity,
merge.
•Sponged the whole photo on saturate to bring out the colors.
•Messed with the hue/sat to pop the colors a little bit more.
•Sky was too light for my liking, so I burned it.
•Used the sponge/burn/dodge tools throughout photo;
helped to add extra highlights and shadows where I wanted.
•Defogged and sharpened the image.



^Here is the final editing I did to the image.
Sometimes, I like to do extra editing on images to just spruce them up a bit more. This was one of those photos that I thought would benefit from doing so.
Some of my steps (using the last image):
•I blurred the sky to give it a more soft appearance.
•I duplicated the image twice;
high pass sharpen, set to overlay, lowered opacity,
duplicated, set to linear light, lowered opacity,
merged.
•Duplicated layer;
added gaussian blur,
set to overlay,
duplicated layer,
set to soft light,
lowered opacity,
merged.
•Sharpened.

Finally... Fall Colors!

A few from today; shot out the window of the car with my new Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4 lens :-)


















^my back yard

Oldies, but goodies (I hope *lol*)!!

Here are a few before/after images that I worked on today. They're not really all that old; maybe two to three months. Somewhere around that range. Just wanted to play with some landscape*ish photos and so I pulled these from my portable hd.

From Graceland, to You! {& more}

Went on vacation with my parents and two year old son July 14th-17th while my husband was in Ohio attending apprenticeship school for work. On the 16th, we were in Memphis and toured Elvis' home. Graceland was really beautiful and I enjoyed it thoroughly! While walking to the Presleys' grave sites, I got a shot of this statue. Or, would it be called a monument? Either way, it was stunning and I wanted to share :-)







& then here are a few more shots I just wanted to share in this post.

Saturday, my husband finally got to race his laydown for the first time this season. Between work, school & weddings... he's missed pretty much the whole race season.


Before:




After a color boost:




After making it vintage:




*SIDE NOTE* Oh, and our two year old wrecked his little 50 four wheeler there! Pushed the throttle and got away from me (cant really run being 27 weeks pregnant, but I tried really hard - running behind him and screaming the whole way!). He drove smack dab into the fence, flew over the handle bars, smacked head first into the fence and then crumpled to the ground beside the four wheeler. I have never been so scared in my entire life! He cried, but wasnt seriously hurt - just mostly scared of what happened. He got a little boo boo on his hip and ankle, a tiny scratch on his forehead and then a big bruise showed up on his arm a few days later. He could have been seriously injured, but God was watching over him and kept him protected from anything worse.

Ok, back to the photos. Sorry! Gotta share my Mommy experiences sometimes; good or bad!

Did you know that we have a goat? Yup, her name is Nosy... VERY fitting!




& finally, two purple flowers:

A few from May 30th