I compared the features between the 7D with the 5D Mark II, which had recently come down in price, to see which one better suited my needs. Well, let’s face it, I would have loved the Mark III, but $3000 was just a wee bit out of my price range. :) Hey, I can be realistic, ya know.

So in my quest to see what was best (i guess i can be a poet too), this is why I went with the 7D–in my nonprofessional thoughts.

Price | When I purchased it this summer, it was $1500 and the Mark II was $2100, I believe. Now, the 7D you can get for $1270 online at places like B&H Photo. Awesome price! The reason for the drop, I believe, was because the new 6D full-frame camera came out to ‘replace’ the 7D, and has a few more bells and whistles, but still has a price of $2100.

Focus Points | The 7D has 19 points to choose from in three different ways. You can let it automatically choose the focus, choose focus ranges, or choose single points to focus with. And I’m not sure if you can do this with the other cameras, but in some recent research to find out how to get the most out of my focusing points, I discovered that you can ‘memorize’ focus settings by assigning them to buttons on your camera. This is something I am definitely going to check into! I also learned that you can ‘memorize’ the points so that if you are using–let’s say–the range focusing points, you can have your camera know to default to the left side when you have it landscape and move to the top when you go vertical (which is actually the right side when landscape). I am soooo loving that idea! I’ll let ya know when I have that all figured out. :)

The joystick to move from point to point is pretty awesome too. Much easier than having to use your scroll wheel to get around through 19 points (you can still use the scroll wheel too).

ISO | I have read that as DSLRs have gotten better, you can use higher ISOs without as much noise. I believe this is true from camera to camera within a line as well. For example, the most current entry level Canon’s ISO will have a bit more noise than the next one up, and so on. ISO is important to me because I do shoot in low-light situations a lot.

Additionally, and I’m not sure what all cameras have this, but the 7D has an auto ISO. Meaning, that if you set your shutter speed and aperture and use Auto ISO, the ISO will switch as needed so that you don’t have to switch shutter speeds to compensate for lighting. LOVE!

When I first heard about this feature I wasn’t exactly sure I would really want to use it. But I can tell you, it has definitely come in handy! I recently took photos of Jordan’s play. Any of you who have photographed stage events know how challenging this can be–especially on a play and especially with an older camera that only has 1600 ISO. The light is constantly changing. And over the past few years of taking play photos, I can’t tell you how glorious the Auto ISO feature was! I set my aperture and shutter speed and let the ISO compensate for the change in lighting. Before I would constantly be switching my shutter speed trying to get the right shot. But since the ISO allowed it to be faster or slower according to the light, I didn’t worry about a thing. I loved it!

Continuous Shooting | All I can say is wow. This baby can shoot fast!!! And it has two different speeds–slow and fast. All my photographing family is quite impressed with this. Zach and Kass both shot sports in high school and still enjoy shooting skateboarding or other moving-type sports. This feature is quite impressive.

Size | I knew that the 7D was bigger when I bought it and it felt really great in my hand. But I didn’t realize how much better it felt in my hand until I went to switch lenses on Zach’s camera with mine (his is an XTi too). I have small hands, so it’s not so much of an issue for me to handle the smaller camera, but that bigger grip makes all the difference! And when Zach tried it with his man hands? He was in absolute heaven! So he took his 70-200 2.8 (big, long and heavy) lens off his XTi, which felt totally unbalanced, and put it on my 7D and the balance change was amazing. You just don’t realize how much of a difference it can make!

[ pretend there is a comparison photo here. it will appear when i have better lighting--less gloom + more sunshine. ]

Larger Display | Because the camera itself is bigger, the display on the back is significantly bigger. Love that. Now remember, my other camera was five years old. Kass’ T2i had a bigger screen than mine, but this is bigger than that. I also love that with the push of a button you can get your most popular setting choices on that display. It looks something like this:

This bigger display also makes a huge difference to me considering my eyes are changing. Yeah, I’m getting older. What of it. ;) Love the ease of use there. I wouldn’t use it for everything all the time, but it is pretty sweet to have those features you commonly use all there on one screen.

Brief Review Summary Between 7D + 5D Mark II | Through all my research, the 7D is better than the Mark II. The main reason why someone would choose the Mark II over the 7D is for its full-frame capability. The 7D–and most ‘cheaper’ DSLRs–will have a crop factor. Meaning you don’t  get the full view in your photo. This is the only reason I–and most of the reviews I read–can see to choose the 5D Mark II over the 7D. Really, the 7D is so much better over all. Now, the Mark III is a whole other story. ;)

When All Is Said And Done | Now, I know that when considering what camera to purchase, spending an extra few hundred dollars is not in everyone’s budget. In fact, most of the time when people ask me what they should buy considering their funds, my recommendation is to buy the entry-level–body only–and spend a little more on a good lens. Kit lenses really aren’t much to get excited about and by spending a little more, you can get something so much better. I’ve always thought it was more important to invest in lenses than cameras. And I do believe in all that as a rule of thumb still.

However, if you have the choice (aka. money) to upgrade just a little? Get the 7D. You won’t regret it.

I thought today would be a great day to share some more because they were such fun pics to take.
These are some of the ones they picked as their favorites.

I decided to share the vintage-ee looking style since it kind went with the theme of the day. And this first one is one of my faves–mostly because it was one of those impromptu shots as we were walking over to the other train. Tip #47: Always keep that camera ready because you never know what serendipitous photo op might come your way.

If you missed the others that I shared, you can find them HERE and HERE.

Serendipitied across this combination of Lightroom Presets.
Presets are like Actions for Lightroom.
(LR Presets from MCP Actions)

Loved the way the way they transitioned this photo.

And with Preset names like Waffle Cone and Toasted Marshmallow,
how can it just not look scrumptious?

They worked perfectly for this photo shoot.

 
Loving learning about what Lightroom can do.
But the hard part about learning a new program is the time it takes.
However, by learning it, it will cut down on editing time in the long run.

Ohhh the paradox of it all.

That’s why I love Actions so much. First of all, I’ll admit it, I’m lazy. Why go through all the steps when a click of a button will do that? This theory of mine goes way back to my WordPerfect days when I would create macros to do what we needed to do in our team. We’re talkin’ twenty years ago, so you can understand where I’m coming from when I say I have the urge to always simplify my process. :)

So I’ve used Photoshop Actions for a few years now and recently bought MCP Actions Lightroom Presets too.

Love ‘em.

Don’t know what I’d do without them.

Can make your photo look awesome with just the click of a button.

But while I could go through and look at what it did . . . um . . . too lazy . . .and why? lol

However, recently I took Erin Cobb’s Clean Color class. Bought it when Karen Russell posted about it being half off (I hope you guys were able to ake advantage of it!). Could not resist the opportunity to grow my skills. After all, ‘grow’ is my ‘one little word’ for the year. I looove looking at Karen’s photos. They look dreamy and beautiful. I want perfect lighting like that in my house. ;)

All I have to say is: loved the class.

For some reason, that editing process resonated with me. I still have yet to go through some of the JS.com classes, so I can’t compare the general editing process. But I loved everything she shared. The whys and wherefores. It just totally gave me a better understanding as to what is really going on with some of those Actions and why you would do certain things. Of course, while she simplified only two steps of her process into an Action, I have to say I’d want to put the whole thing into an Action and tweak as needed. ;)

I’m still watching and rewatching the video though. Which is another thing I loved about it. You download it to your hard drive. It’s in my iTunes, so with File Sharing between my computer and devices, I can watch it on my iPad (while it’s on my hard drive). Love that.

As with most things, you can’t retain it all the first time.

So here’s a few things I like when shooting and editing and some favorite things I learned from Erin . . . and maybe even a little bit of the whys. ;)

Shooting RAW vs. JPG

First, I have to say, that I love shooting in RAW. And, if I have the space (I really need a bigger CF card), I much prefer to shoot RAW+JPG so that I can easily share the JPG because most people I know don’t have PS to handle viewing the RAW image. The best way I can explain the difference between the two is to put your two hands out and look at your fingers sticking straight out. Imagine each one contains information about the photo you took–the pinkie has the contrast, the ring finger has the white balance, your middle finger has the exposure and so on. When you shoot in RAW, all of those components are saved in that file individually so when you want to edit it, you’re more or less only editing that one piece of it. Now take your two hands and clasp them together–interlocking your fingers. When saving it as a JPG, all that information is now connected and the file is saved at the best guess that your camera has when assessing the photo. You don’t have as much flexibility to alter the separate components of the information saved in the file. The quality of your photo will decrease more if you are editing a JPG vs. a RAW. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to look bad, but the more you make changes to the JPG, the more the quality will change.

So that’s my philosophy on RAW and JPG. What I found fascinating was that Erin says she shoots in JPG. I just assumed that any ‘professional’ photographer always shot in RAW, so I thought that was pretty interesting. And, in fact, in one example she mentions that she can’t fully recover some of the information of the photo (I think it was blown out) because she’d only shot it in JPG. But in RAW, that information is there and you can recover it much easier.

Another thing to note, because your camera is not assessing ‘the best info’ to compress into a JPG when shooting RAW, your image won’t look as enhanced, which is fine because you’re most likely to edit it anyway.

So, food for thought there.

Using Actions vs. Erin’s Process

Like I said, I love editing a photo at the click of a button. However, I loved going through the process of what Erin did. Totally helped me to understand the whys and wherefores of what’s often going on in the Action process. I thought I’d compare Maggie Holmes’ Simple Color Boost action with going through the basics of Erin’s process, and while I didn’t necessarily notice too much of a considerable difference, there was some–particularly with the skin tone. Which is another thing Erin taught–how to get a good skin tone. Love that little nugget of info.

So I thought I’d try it out on some engagement photos I recently took of my nephew and fiance. I don’t know if it’s that much of a difference, however, one thing I see is that I was able to get a truer representation in color with Erin’s process. The Action seems to have more red in it, as can be most notably seen in the face and the color of the jacket.

Of course, this was my very first attempt at the process, so who knows where I will go from here with perfecting it.

The other thing is, because I’d only brought one card and because they had multiple outfits which meant lots more photos, I switched to just shooting in JPG somewhere along the way so that I could make sure I had room. Rarely do I do this, but it was necessary at the time. Like I say, I need a bigger card. ;)

Using the Liquify Tool

This was one of my favorite things I learned in Erin’s class. I know, it probably seems silly to get excited about that. I have always tried to use the Clone tool to modify things, doesn’t always work. But if you notice her booty in the original, I think through a combination of things, it bunched a little funny. So I used the Liquify tool to push it in slightly at the top where his hand in and bring it out slightly at the bottom part of the dress that shows.

The original original was actually more blown out than this one I’m sharing. But using Camera RAW (works with PS), I took the exposure down 1.35 so that I’d have a better base to start with.

And then I had to add my vintage twist to this. I used Seventies (26% Opacity) and Soft & Faded (45% Opacity) from The Pioneer Woman. These are free Actions. Gotta love it when two of my favorite words are found together–free and actions. ;) She also has a Burn action to go around the edges, but in this instance I used one from Totally Rad Actions. More favorite actions, but not free. These were actually the first actions I ever owned. Love ‘em.

A Couple More Action Examples

Here’s a couple that I shared on Facebook. And, gosh darn it, I can’t remember what I did on the one of them between the trains! But I love it. I usually write down what Actions I use or I’ll save the PSD file with the layer combination. But I think in order for me to use the Fresh+Colorful action from The Pioneer Woman, I had to flatten it…so then I lost the layers of what I’d done. Urgh. One day I’ll spend more time on it to see if I can’t recreate it.

So there’s a lesson . . . always write it down . . . right away!

(This one I used the same process as the train one above.)

Okay then. That’s the photo lesson for today. :)

….like this:

This is a star trail. And while I’ve seen them going across the sky before, I’ve never seen it going around in circles. It’s a bit trippy. Kind of blows your mind just a bit. You can see just a blip of mountain down there in the right corner. I think it was about 11:00 at night when I took this. What you do is focus your camera on the North Star and leave your shutter open for 30 minutes, give or take. It seems really weird to think we’re going around in circles like that. I mean, I know we’re on an axis and spinning and all that, but to see it represented this way? Sooooo weird!

Kind of looks like a vortex of some kind.

I had used my 50mm lens on this at the recommendation of the teacher–because it is the better lens of the two that I had–but I wished I’d have used my 28-135 instead so I could have gotten more of the  mountain in there as a reference point–I would have gotten more sky too. Kass used her wide angle and it looked really cool with the mountain in there. You’d have thought it was daylight, that’s how much detail was there.

And I’m fascinated about the different colors of stars there.

Pretty crazy, right?

So many things to share!

When it comes to scrapbooking, there are two key elements:
the photos + the stories.

For me, that’s where my focus is all the time.

And I like keeping things clean so your attention is always drawn to the photos first.
That’s just my thing. :)

That’s why I’m just so excited about all the broo-ha-ha for today!

So let’s maybe start with the sale!

Just look for the items with sale tags in the store!

And remember, these are on sale for today only!

These babies have got to be, by far, one of my most favorite scrapbooking elements.
Speaking of keeping things nice and neat. Of course, you can always add lots of character
to them too.

If you’re new to the site want to see what all the excitement is about,
check out the Tutorials link and you can see just how easy they are to use!

And speaking of just how easy they are to use,
here’s a gorgeous page by Miss Laura Vegas!

[ Shapes | Life Additions #2 (title) / This+That: Spring (flower) / Storyboard #6 ]

Oh that Miss Laura did one of my very favorite things!
I adore white on white! It gives it that faux embossed look. Yummmm. Love it!


Now, here is a little video that Laura created to show you how to manipulate your template!

And one other fun thing from Laura. I asked my fabulous creative team to share their
five favorite whatevers. And here’s Laura’s!

_________________________________________________

Okay. Next up?
Here’s what Laura wanted me to make.

It also comes with the word ‘thanks.’ Of course you can add whatever words you’d like.
Laura wanted to be able to use them on cards. :)

To download this for free TODAY ONLY, click HERE.

Oops. The day is over, but you’ll be able to buy the set when the week is done.


_________________________________________________



So, some of you may have noticed a very scenic photo of mine on Facebook that I took this weekend. I told you I’d share some details, and now is that time.

A few months ago I signed up Zach, Kass and myself to participate in a photography excursion through the Conintuing Ed program of the local university. The destination? Capitol Reef (Utah). It’s about three hours from here and very scenic. We’d never been before so we were really excited to get to go and learn some great tips from some photography experts.

Sadly, because Zach’s Del Sol internship to Alaska started that same weekend, he couldn’t go. He was bummed to not be able to do both. But I have a hunch he’ll get to take a few good photos up in Juneau. ;)

Anyway, so off Kass and I went to far off lands. The great thing about Utah is its diversity in scenery. Salt Flats, to majestic mountains with rolling rivers, to wind+rain created red-rock hills and mountains. We were in the latter. Come to find out, the people putting on this little shindig were from our local camera shop…who I’ve gone to several times over the years for my special photos and camera repairs. They have always been wonderful to work with!

Our main teacher was Rex Allen (as well as Tony+Justin who were amazing too). Through conversation, while we were all together, Rex asked if I knew Jessica Sprague.

Um. That would be a YES!

Rex is the owner of

 
and they partnered with Jessica to bring you a printing site from within JessicaSprague.com.
You can find that HERE.
And HERE are some details about printing from JessicaSprague.com

Can you say small world???

And you know, all you photo template fans that like to take your templates to get printed? And there are templates with odd sizes? And often when you send it to a printer they maximize the entire space of the photo size you chose so it cuts it off? And so then you need to save something like a 5×10 template on an 8×10 page so it won’t do that? Yeah. These goes don’t do that! YAHOO! You just need to put in the Special Instructions to ‘Print Full Frame’ and they’ll take that 5×10 template photo and put it onto an 8×10 and leave the 1.5 white space on each side. Can you say Hallelujah?! :)

Here’s a little somethin’ about them just so you can get to know them better too!

As professional printers we take great pride in printing high quality prints for our customers.  Each order is done and inspected by hand to make sure that everything looks great!  We mostly print 12×12 & 8×8 scrapbook pages – which are printed on true photographic paper.  This is awesome because it gives your print archival qualities making them water proof, scratch resistant, and have a shelf life of over 100 years without fading!  What a great way to preserve your memories!! :)  We also offer other great services in addition to our fabulous prints such as gallery wraps, metal art and photo cards and many more.  We offer 100% money back guarantee – if for any reason you are not satisfied we will reprint your print or refund your money.  Honestly, we just LOVE what we do!!  Hard drives fail – so preserve your precious memories by getting them printed and being able to enjoy them with your family and friends for years to come.  

And so what do you think when you get two minds like that together on a week like this?

Uhhhh . . . yeah.
That would be this:

They are graciously giving one lucky winner an 11×14 gallery wrap.
It would look something like this (baby not included ;) ):

Can you imagine giving that away as a Mother’s Day gift?
How perfect would that be??

To enter, leave a comment in today’s post with your name and where you’re from
(U.S. residents only again–sorry),
and I’ll draw a winner on THURSDAY morning.

And don’t forget that yesterday’s Project Life giveaway is still going and ends tomorrow!
Check it out in yesterday’s post.

And I will share more photos later of my trip…on account-a the post just gets even longer than it is, but here’s a photo of one of the places we saw, Temple of the Sun….and Temple of the Moon is to the left of it. The whole trip was a lot of fun and if you live locally, you should do it next year. We also did light painting and star trails, which were cool. I’d never done it before. Like I say, I’ll share more on all my trip next week some time. But for now, take a gander at this leave-at-4-am-go-over-hill-and-dale-in-the-dark-on-the-dirt-road-less-traveled photo. Seriously, that road was crazy! Let’s just put it this way, Rex wanted people with 4-wheel drive to drive that 26-mile dirt road. I can see why. ;)

[ this contest is now closed ]

So this is the original photo. It was a foggy morning,
as it is on many days on the coast–even in summer.
Go inland about a mile and it’s bright and sunshiny.

Next I added a ‘folded brown paper bag’ image that we used in Jessica’s class.
She also shares where you can get more of these too.
That layer is at 82%.

Next I lightened the image using an action from Totally Rad Actions, called ‘Lights On’.
These are seriously the best things ever.
It’s set at 74%

Then I used another action from TRA called Boutwell Magic Glasses.
It just kind of brings things into focus more…makes it sharper…more defined.
That layer is set to 64%

Last step for the photo editing…I added a TTV (Thru-The-View Finder).
I did a little blog post on that a few months ago HERE, but I learned about them in Jessica’s class.
I set this to 88%.

And then just for fun, I had added a text layer to make it look like an old-timey postcard.

Ta-da! There ya have it! Photo editing can be so danged fun!

So, okay, next weekend is National Scrapbook Day! Tuesday is May….where is this year going?!?!?
So, I think there needs to be some fun a-happenin’ next week.
What do you think?

Maybe y’all should tune in Monday.
Not sayin’ nuttin’ else. ;)

]]> http://www.kerribradford.com/2012/04/27/florence-photo-the-progression/feed/ 14 http://www.kerribradford.com/2012/03/08/stage-photograph/ http://www.kerribradford.com/2012/03/08/stage-photograph/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:10:02 +0000 Kerri http://www.kerribradford.com/?p=2649 So, I’ve gotten some questions about taking stage photography, and while I’m definitely no expert, I’ll share with you what has worked for me over the past few years that I’ve been doing this.

First off, I have to say that there isn’t a magic number for everyone. I wish there was. It’s just that there are so many variables involved that you have to adjust according to those. For example, when the big fall play occurs, there is an orchestra pit and around the pit is a ‘runway’ of sorts–they call it a thrust–so the actors can come out in front of the pit and sing there, closer to the audience. That means I have to stand farther back. Although, when I shot Children of Eden, I did one standing back and one day sitting on the steps between the orchestra and the stage. That helped, but I couldn’t get the wide shots. I also took my son’s camera with his wide angle lens as well as my own with a normal lens and would just pick up whichever camera I needed at the moment. That’s a luxury of having a photographic family though. ;)

Take Photos During Dress Rehearsals
This is my number one tip. It is by far the best choice. You may get a couple people that aren’t in full costume, but you have the liberty of moving around–getting close–and not getting in the way of the audience. And if you can go more than once, do it. If you know the play, then you’ll know when to get ‘that one’ shot. It’s worth it. Trust me. Even if you go to a run-through vs. a dress rehearsal it’ll get you familiar with the play and what the actors are going to do. You can even practice with your settings.

Also, by attending the dress rehearsal, you can get close. And the closer you can be, the better because of how the light goes into the camera. If you’re standing 150 feet away with good settings, it’s not going to make as much of a  difference as when you’re standing just 20 feet away.

Be Above Stage Level
You don’t want your photos to have to be competing with a black wall. If you can get your eye level above the floor by standing on something? Do it. That’s what I do when the orchestra is there. The drama department has acting blocks and I stand on that with my camera on a monopod.

Equipment
This is the tricky one. Of course the better the stuff you have, the easier it’s going to be to get the shot and have it turn out. This is what I recommend, if possible:

• A camera that can shoot an ISO of at least 800-1600 without getting grainy.
• A fixed aperture lens, preferably a 2.8. This allows you to take a shot and let more light in quickly, causing a brighter photo and less blur.
• A monopod, particularly if you’re having to stand farther back. I don’t like a tripod in this situation because it’s not as flexible. Also I’m usually between like rows three and four and a tripod gets in the way.
• NO FLASH. At all possible costs, avoid this. I’m not saying don’t ever use it–there may be a couple times you might like to try it, but generally, I’m a no-flash kind-a gal.

Settings
Again, this all depends on your situation. But this is what works for me.

• Aperture: 2.8
  
  
• ISO: 1600-3200, or 800 if you feel like 1600 gets too grainy.
  
  
• Shutter Speed: Depends on if there’s a spotlight or not. Lights are dim, etc. This is my variable that changes all the time. Constantly keep your eye on the view finder and the information that’s provided in there. This last shoot I knew that if my shutter speed for ‘no spotlight’ was set to 1/30-1/40 that I could get a decent shot. When the spotlight came on? It was around 1/100. I was able to be right in front of the stage for this shoot.
  
  
• Remember to check your photos in your view finder from time to time to make sure they are turning out.
  
  
• RAW+JPG: Shoot in this mode if you can. But please note that you need to have photo editing software that can work with RAW, like Photoshop. Shooting in RAW is one of the best things you can do.
  
  Basically, if you shoot in JPG, your camera looks at all the information that it takes to make a photo, assesses what it deems best, and saves or compresses it all into one lump sum. If you shoot in RAW, you camera takes all the information and keeps the information and saves it individually within that file, so to speak. It just means that all the information it takes to make the photo is saved ‘as is’ and you can make changes to it easier and lose less quality. The more changes you make to a JPG, the more quality you’ll lose.
  
  The downside to shooting in RAW+JPG is that you are saving two file formats and therefore it takes longer to save and such.

Here’s a couple of examples of how quickly you can make a change using the Camera RAW program.

This is a screen shot the original photo in Camera RAW. As you can see, Dallyn Bayless (our Broadway star—seriously) looks a little blown out, the background is a little dark, and it looks on the blue-ish side.

But now, in this screen shot, I’ve changed the Temperature a little, I took the Exposure down, and I added a little Fill light to brighten up the background. All done with a few little slides of the buttons there on the right. And because it was saved in RAW, I’m changing those individual components of the photo shot as is and not changing the set setting that the JPG would have been saved at. I hope I’m making sense with that. :)

Okay, so Dallyn still may not be the ‘sharpest’ looking at this stage–partially because I’ve zoomed in to show you it closer, but there’s other things you can do in PS to help there. This was just the first photo I could find out of the 1000+ photos that I took over three days that could get close to what I’m trying to explain. :) This was him standing at the back of the stage and me standing out in front of the orchestra pit . . . so lots of distance between us.

When I shot Children of Eden, it was a BIG production. There was a lot of darkness and itty bitty lights and low-lit scenes–and many times changing within a few seconds of each other.  I think that by far it was one of the most difficult ones to shoot. Luckily, my dear sweet friend Loni Stevens let me use her Canon 5D with that 3200 ISO and her Canon F/2.8 L series lens ! I don’t know what I would have done without it. Even with all that fancy stuff though, it was still a hard one to shoot.

Editing
Because a photo with no spotlight looks so much different than one that does, if you want them to look more alike, you have to do some editing. Here is the before and after of the photos I showed of Jordan yesterday:

As you can tell, there’s a difference. :) You can always change your White Balance to something like Tungsten and it will remove yellow and add blue, BUT, when the spotlight is on, then you’ll have a blue photo and it often seems to get more blown out. So I just prefer to keep the White Balance set to Auto and make changes to it later. I will have to save what I do to edit stage photos for another post. This one’s getting long as it is. :)

Okay, so I think that’s all I can think of at the moment. If I think of more to add about stage photography, I will add it here in this post. And like I said, I am not a photo expert, this is just what I’ve found to work for me. If anyone would like to add their two cents, it would be most welcome!

You use the templates pretty much the same as the others you’ve been using, but you’ll notice, there’s a couple of unique ones–the one with the black/grey line, in particular. This one you can have a little creative fun with. You can change the color of the squares to accent your photo, maybe take down the Opacity a little so you can see the photo through it, add a name, photos, journaling . . . tons of possibilities!

I used the color picker (the “eye dropper” tool) to pick colors from within the photo and then “painted” (the “paint bucket” tool) the dark brown and the cream into that little strip of squares. I also added a drop shadow to set it off the page a little–give it some dimension. As you can tell, I also changed the Opacity so you could see the photo underneath it.

I think this template is one of my faves. :)

I debated posting about this story, but then thought, “I have a voice. Maybe this will help someone else. I should tell people.” Because I had never heard of this.

We had a very scary incident this week. My in-laws were an inch away from being scammed out of a great deal of money. And when I say “an inch”, I mean, they had actually wired the money but were able to get it back almost immediately after sending it. Beyond lucky.

The somewhat short version of this story is someone called them, claiming to be Zach (who had a cold), and told them that he was in jail. “The mission president” had allowed “Zach” to attend the funeral of a Canadian companion’s family, who had been killed in a horrible car accident. A ride to lunch with a couple of the guys, a speeding incident, and finding marijuana in the car had led “Zach” to jail. Even though he was innocent, the very kind “sheriff” told them bail money was still needed to get him out.

“Zach” asked them not to tell us because he didn’t want to get in trouble, so they weren’t allowed to tell anyone. Well, of course if we had heard this story we would have totally known otherwise for many various reasons.

They had wired the money and she called me once for something else and then within five minutes called back to see if I’d heard from Zach that day. How lucky was it that it was an emailing day and we’d just started emailings–and he was quite late in emailing too.

She realized that she’d been scammed. She called and had the money wire cancelled immediately.

Now, this woman is incredibly intelligent. All she could think was, “I never thought it would happen to me.”

Apparently this scam is common among grandparents of college students. After talking with the mission president (the real one), he said he hadn’t really heard about it happening with missionaries though, but after passing the incident along to the higher ups in the church, they informed him that this happens 2-3 times a week!

The crazy thing is, these people knew “enough” about missionaries and I don’t know if they guessed that Zach had had a Canadian mission companion or knew he had. But my in-laws knew he had. It all sounded so convincing. And how did they know that they had a missionary grandson?

On top of that, they called the following morning at 6 a.m. asking if they were going to send the money! They didn’t give up!

Dan says, “There should be a special place in hell for these people.”

We’ve had lots of questions, ‘what if’s, and ‘how did they know’s.

I want to do my part and get the word on this scam out to everyone so that it will happen less and less and discourage these scam artists. Especially tell the grandparents who have older grandchildren in college or on a mission. Because like I say, my incredibly intelligent mother-in-law never thought it would happen to her.

And I just want to add that as I was typing all this up, Zach’s mission president allowed him to call home this morning and we got to talk for about 15 minutes. So that was just a super fun surprise! I haven’t heard his voice since Christmas. We’re officially at “less than three weeks” now for him to come home.

Can’t wait. :)

Have a wonderful weekend!