February 13, 2012

a million blown-out photos and one sick baby


This past weekend, Charlotte and I went on a whirwind weekend vacation to Ohio to visit my aunt and uncle. We were tagging along with my mom, grandma and sister, Abi, so Friday morning Ryan went to work late so he could cook Charlotte and I a farewell breakfast of biscuits and gravy (one of his many breafast specialties).

We left Friday afternoon, after spending about twenty minutes playing jenga with our baggage in the trunk. If you ever wondered if you can cram a million bags, suitcases, a pack 'n play, stroller and wheelchair in one sedan trunk IT IS in fact, possible.

On the way down we stopped to eat, which is when I noticed that Charlotte was burning up. Crazy over packer that I am (see above paragraph), I had a thermometer handy which promptly told me my baby had a temp of 105.5. ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE POINT FIVE. In addition to being an over packer, I'm also an extreme worrier.

Meds (also in my bag, another point for overzealous packing) took the fever down, but it was persistent all weekend. Not only did I feel bad that my girl was under the weather, I felt kind of bad that we don't see my aunt and uncle very often and their house was invaded by this tiny human that screamed at the top of her lungs 90% of the time she was awake.

It was fridgidly cold, but we ventured out in between crying episodes for a short walk. My aunt and uncle live in the country; they have quite a bit of picuresque acreage plus a vineyard. Abi tried to give sledding a go during the walk, but the snow just wasn't packed down enough to really get going.
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I took a couple hundred pictures while we were there, but most just for the sake of messing around with camera settings. I'm trying to expose my pictures as light as possible without blowing them out. Exposing them to a lot of light gives the skin such a nice creamy look that I can't really duplicate in editing in any way, shape or form that I've found so far. And obviously, it's better to get everything right when you snap the photo anyways instead of screwing around a lot in post production.

None of the pictures in this post are edited. It takes so much time- I only do it now when I'm taking pictures for someone else or I do "posed" pictures for C. Even when I do edit, I've learned to not have such a heavy hand- to enhance the picture but not make the tweaks look unnatural.

These two photos exposed nicely...
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Two more paces towards the sunlight without adjusting my settings, and this is what I got...
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Lesson learned- really pay attention to how much small changes affect lighting and adjust accordingly.

I'm bummed this is kind of blown out, it's so cute! She loves her Aunt Abi.
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Finally adjusted for the brighter lighting in this one...
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As you can see, Charlotte didn't really crack many smiles during our little vacay. I only got little sad faces between cries. Heartbreaking.

Just look how pathetic she looked playing with her toys. Poor kid.
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During the one(!) nap she took, I snapped some pictures of Abi in the vineyard.
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I played around with a little sun flare in these shots...
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I'd like to try some more pictures with this effect. I'd like to try a lot of new things photography-wise.

Even though baby was sick, it was a nice little sojourn, if only to have a little free time to just visit and snap a few photos.

Charlotte's fever went away today (of course, now that we are home). However, it was replaced by a lovely all over body rash and a possible diagnosis of roseola. Yippee the life of a mom is never boring I tell ya.

All she will drink right now is juice.
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So thankful she's taking her sippy cup again. I'm trying to push fluids, which just so happened to coincide with the weekend she decided to start shaking her head "no" to everything, so it hasn't been an easy road.

She got a little pep in her step for a minute or two today. Enough to yank a blanket off of the sunroom couch for an impromtu nap.
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She then promptly decided she needed to get her pillow pet as well for maximum comfort.
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Ahhh.. that's the ticket. Head first.
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This picture is crazy blown out but I kind of love it that way.
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Can't wait 'til my sweet girl feels better and is back to her mischievious little self.

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