Aunt Status – Boise Idaho Photographer

So we had some excitement in our family this week.

As most of you know, my sister is due on June 9th. On Tuesday night I got a text from my mom telling me that she and my sister (who is currently at 34 weeks) were at the hospital because my sister, was having contractions 8 minutes apart. She was also starting to dilate.

Of course I immediately freaked out and kept calling my mom until she answered.

Turns out she was having more “irritation” type contractions and not actual labor contractions. However, if they didn’t stop the contractions quick there was a good chance a baby would have been born.

They put her on some meds (to stop the contractions) and kept her in the hospital until yesterday afternoon. They pulled her off the meds at about 1am this Thursday morning and monitored her to make sure the contractions didn’t come back. They also gave her a couple steroid shots as preventive measures in case the little one decided to arrive. A 34 week delivery is technically passed the safe point, but they prefer to hold off as long as they can because it’s still in the danger zone. Baby would have just had to hang out in the NICU for a couple days.

I’m happy to report that mom and baby are great. Baby is still in the oven and sister is resting at home. She’s been advised to stay home from work until Wednesday. She’ll then go back to work part-time, and get back into full-time until the baby comes.

So I’m not quite an aunt yet, but I have a feeling it might happen sooner than we expect .

MIA

My post was MIA yesterday. It was the first post I’ve missed since Novemberish so not too bad.

I’ll make up for it later.

Sooo. I’m still MIA, but I’ll be back soon.

Behind the Scenes – Boise Idaho Newborn Photographer

My clients were kind enough to share a video that they did during a newborn session of their twin boys. Originally I was trying to get it to show up here on the blog, but unfortunately you’ll have to head over to watch it because I couldn’t figure out how to get the Flip video in my blog.

CLICK HERE to view the video of behind the scenes of this portrait.

Here is the result of that little video.

Attitude Adjustment

Some of you might have noticed that my post today is much later than normal. Or not.

Usually I write in the evenings and schedule them to post early in the morning. That way I can keep track of my days since I’m doing my 365 project.

Yesterday I had a date with two very important men in my life.

Don’t judge.

Actually, the main reason I didn’t post last night was because I needed an attitude adjustment. I was super tired and kinda cranky and I figured my post would be worthless so I decided to wait.

I also decided to disconnect as soon as I went home. That’s right. No Facebook, Blog, Twitter or email. It was actually more difficult than I thought. Sounds silly, but I kept thinking about how I just wanted to check it one more time. The words of an addict.

I’m happy to announce that I went the whole night without touching my phone. I’m not going to lie, I pretty much ran to my phone in the morning because I was sure that the internet wouldn’t have survived a night without me. Turns out no one missed me.

I also realized that I’m looking forward to our first camping trip where I will be completely unplugged. It’s quite liberating.

Shooting in RAW is the Only Way (IMHO) – Boise Idaho Photographer

It’s only been the last 6 months or so that I have been shooting in RAW. I know, I was behind and thought that all of the RAW files would take up so much space on my HD. Turns out, it is the only way to photograph if you’re wanting to do any editing.

Here is a prime example of why. Take this photo, which was exposed terribly. I had captured a great moment, but wasn’t exposed properly. Normally, I would discard this file but there was something about it that made me want to keep it. If I were to have shot in jpeg, there is no way I could keep it.

Original

I’m not going to lie, salvaging this photo did take some work – work that I do not want to spend on every single photo (especially when you’re snapping 400-500 photos per hour). That’s why I emphasize that you properly expose your images whenever possible.

By shooting in RAW I was able to adjust the exposure, white balance, and clarity in order to create these two images. You’ll notice that they have a little noise, but noise never hurt anyone. Embrace the noise!

Color Version

BW Version

Which do you like best?

I think I prefer the BW version because it gets rid of all the different color tones that were created from saving the photo.

Here is a great breakdown of RAW vs JPEG for those of you who are on the fence about it. If I wasn’t being paid to photograph people, I probably wouldn’t shoot in RAW. However, by doing so I’m able to save images in the situation that they are not properly exposed. 90% of the time it doesn’t matter that I’ve shot in RAW because most of the files are properly exposed. This is a prime example of why I do it. There might be one image I really love, but messed it up. RAW lets me fix it.

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