Day 158

I thought I’d share a little before & after with you.  Even professional photographers don’t get a perfect shot every time.  And since I’m a self-taught beginner, I DON’T get it right most of the time.  So, I have to rely on a little help from Adobe Camera Raw & Photoshop.

Here’s the SOCC (straight-out-of-camera) shot.  I needed more light in this photo, but didn’t want to use my flash or I’d end up with some horrible glare.    

So, I used Adobe Camera Raw to increase the exposure and change the White Balance.  I also increased Blacks and Contrast.  Next, I opened it in Photoshop where I ran The Pioneer Woman Lovely and Ethereal Action which softened her features.  I used the clone tool to remove her wispy strands of hair and the edge of the framed photo in the upper left corner. 

The bones of the photo  (composition, pose, styling, etc.) were good but I needed some help in other areas.  These edits took all of 5 minutes and made a world of difference.  Gotta love computer technology!

I wasn’t feeling good today, so I called off sick.  I was struggling with bad allergies and some kind of virus with the following symptoms: headache, tight chest, shortness of breath with activity, etc.  The kids stayed home from summer care too.  Besides the fact that I knew they would be sad about Kenai, LilCrockett was suffering from similar symptoms and I wanted him to have a day of rest.  Well, by afternoon he’d had enough and was itching to do something.  The neighbor girls were babysitting some other neighbor kids and they using their small slip-n-slide.  I told them they could get out our big one and they were very eager.  They played on that slide for several hours, but at one point I made them pose for a group photo.  GothGirl isn’t in this shot because she had went to a friend’s house for part of the day.  I was glad that both of them had a little distraction from the sad circumstances at our house with Kenai’s absence. 

The kids came back inside later in the day and before long, I came across this scene on the couch:

I debated on waking him up since it was too late for a nap and too early for bedtime, but I knew he needed some sleep.  He slept for about an hour and a half and then woke up super cranky.  This boy has never been able to wake up happy….it’s like he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, after falling out of bed, and then being stepped on by an elephant.  It’s not pretty.

So, we went over to the neighbor’s house for another distraction.  Pretty soon, with the help of his buddy Lupa, LilCrockett got out of his funk.  It probably helped that Crockett came home with this new toy as well…a Honda Ruckus!  He’s been wanting one for quite awhile and he’ll use it to tool around the neighborhood and such.