Jan
15
2014Operating a small business is work well loved but often hard and lonely with little support. So during my “big” birthday month, I’m going to be sharing with you some wonderful businesses and each of them will be giving away one thing to one lucky person.
I’m sharing these small businesses because my heart is with the business owner struggling to make it, but really passionate about serving people. Any given day, I may fit that description. 😉
And now let me tell you a little bit about today’s small business owner.
Elise Parker
Here’s the main things I want you to hear about Elise: she has two super powers. Her laugh fills the whole room with joy and she has the ability to make you instantly feel like you’re the only person in the room. She’s also helped deliver a baby in a car 😉
But aside from those super powers, Elise writes her own blog here: Our Stories God’s Glory. Elise is also a writer and editor for both Circles of Faith and the newly launched God Sized Dreams. She is concerned with equipping and encouraging women to pursue all of what God has for them. And on top of all that she coaches others who are on writing journeys.
One Hour Writing Coaching or Editing
Elise is offering the winner to choose either an hour of writing coaching or an hour of editing with her. I’m almost a little jealous that I can’t enter this contest myself.
Maybe you’re not a blogger or author who is jumping for joy and not even reading this sentence before entering the contest. That’s okay. Let me tell you some other people who would benefit from writing coaching or editing.
- The High School or College Student applying for an exclusive internship or scholarship opportunity or an overseas semester
- For the business owner who can’t understand why their website isn’t drawing in interested customers
- For the Speaker or Bible Study teacher who is passionate about what they’re doing, but sometimes feels a failure to connect to audiences
- For the girl who has always written in a journal and wondered silently if her words were good enough to share.
I’m sure their are other categories who would benefit from Writing Coaching or Editing too!
Contest Entry Instructions
To enter, stop by the newly launched God Sized Dreams website and poke around a little bit. Then comment here and tell me how your God Sized Dream would intersect with writing coaching or editing.
Make sure to include a way to reach you if you win.
Giveaway Closes on January 31st.
Winner will be chosen through a random number generator and notified on February 3rd.
Jan
14
2014
Operating a small business is work well loved but often hard and lonely with little support. So during my “big” birthday month, I’m going to be sharing with you some wonderful businesses and each of them will be giving away one thing to one lucky person.
I’m sharing these small businesses because my heart is with the business owner struggling to make it, but really passionate about serving people. Any given day, I may fit that description. 😉
And now let me tell you a little bit about today’s small business owner.
Barbi Haase
Barbi is probably one of the most unique business owners in the area. Barbi has 6 kids and she knows the cost of feeding a large family healthy food! So she devised a solution: she and some friends pooled money and purchased produce in bulk at the local farmers market.
From these humble beginnings, Barbi began a produce ordering cooperative called The Noisy Rabbit. Members pick up a basket filled with produce at a local host’s home each week. A basket of produce averages out to a cost of $15 a week and there’s no way you could get the amount in your basket for that cost at the grocery store! There are branches all over Greenville county and a couple in Pickens and Spartanburg county. One of my favorite parts about being a member was cutting down my grocery store time with 3 young children in the cart 😉
However, my favorite part of Barbi is her heart. More than once a year she organizes special events that deliver boxes to home bound and less fortunate people. At Thanksgiving, nominated families even get turkeys and hand baked goods from members to enjoy. And every branch of The Noisy Rabbit has a “blessing basket” where extras and produce member don’t love are placed and donated to a family in need.
One Week of Free Produce from The Noisy Rabbit (Greenville, SC Local Only)
Contest Entry Instructions
Leave a comment below linking me to your favorite vegetable-heavy dish. It can be a casserole or pasta or a side dish or a salad or even those sneaky desserts with more veggies than you could dare to imagine. Barbi curates an amazing set of Pinterest boards with recipes specific to each vegetable in their basket. I hope you can find something she doesn’t already have pinned!
Make sure to include a way to reach you if you win.
Giveaway Closes on January 31st.
Winner will be chosen through a random number generator and notified on February 3rd.
Giveaway valid only for those living in Greenville County in Greenville, SC (or those close enough and willing to drive to a branch listed on their website).
Jan
14
2014Alright, faithful few in this class, this is it! The last in the series. Woohoo! I’m making this short on words and high on pictures. Remember there are 100 ways to do a clean edit or any editing at all. This is the quick stuff I apply to an edit of my own family. Here’s my SOOC (straight out of the camera) RAW file saved as a JPEG so I can post it here. I try to remember to turn my camera back to JPEG to shoot my kiddos in between sessions, but more often than not I forget :-p
Lightroom Manual Edit
- I did not white balance this image in camera in my blue bedroom with mixed lighting: daylight from the window and florescent from the bulb. (bad Melissa! :-p) So the first think I want to do is use White balance tool on the white in her strap on the left side. You can also use this tool with a grey or black. This is the white balance tool in LR.
- Decide it’s still too cool and move the Kelvin slider to 4976 to warm it up to where I like it.
- Bring Exposure and Contrast up to these numbers.
- Play with the Tone curve until I like it
- This image was super noisy (ISO 6400), so I adjusted the details to the following settings to sharpen a bit and reduce noise.
- Cropped
- Here is a the Manual Edit Before/After
- Then for fun I applied Erin Tole’s Nova Preset (my favorite). Here’s that after.
PSE Manual Edit
- Opened in the RAW editor and made the following adjustments. This is really pretty similar to what I did in Lightroom 😉 If I had shot JPEG, I would have had less control over the noise and I would have done the white balance adjustment in a Levels Layer. I probably needed to do some more noise reduction here than I did because it’s really noisy here compared to the Lightroom edit.
- Opened a levels Layer and Bumped the Midtones
- Still didn’t think this looked warm enough so I added a Photo Filter using the following settings
- Cropped
- Here it is after a Clean Edit.
- Then For Fun I ran Pure’s Golden Sunset Action.
Usually I would do a diptych in PSE to compare images, but I just transferred to a new computer (WOOOOHOOOOOO! I can actually run PSE and LR at the same time!!!!!!! ahem….) and don’t have everything set up to do that yet.
So here is the LR Edit on the Left and the PSE Edit on the Right. There’s really not a whole ton of difference, it just takes a few more steps in PSE 😉
Jan
13
2014Operating a small business is work well loved but often hard and lonely with little support. So during my “big” birthday month, I’m going to be sharing with you some wonderful businesses and each of them will be giving away one thing to one lucky person.
I’m sharing these small businesses because my heart is with the business owner struggling to make it, but really passionate about serving people. Any given day, I may fit that description. 😉
Here is a link to all of the giveaways I’m hosting this month.
And now let me tell you a little bit about today’s small business owner.
Delonna G.
Delonna is also a member of Holley Gerth’s God Sized Dreams Team. I also was able to meet her at Allume in October and this girl prays big prayers. Her God-Sized Dream was to sponsor Orphans through handmade jewelry. Her shop Clothed In Love is doing just that. 50% of profits go straight to children in need!
If there’s one theme I’m noticing with all these business owners, it’s how big their hearts are!
Clothed in Love: Multicolored Bracelet
This is sure to brighten any sour mood and remind you to pray for orphans 🙂
Contest Entry Instructions
Leave a comment below telling me your favorite piece of jewelry you see on Delonna’s Facebook Page.
Make sure to include a way to reach you if you win.
Giveaway Closes on January 31st.
Winner will be chosen through a random number generator and notified on February 3rd.
Shipping is for US only. International winners will pay their own shipping if they win.
Jan
10
2014Operating a small business is work well loved but often hard and lonely with little support. So during my “big” birthday month, I’m going to be sharing with you some wonderful businesses and each of them will be giving away one thing to one lucky person.
I’m sharing these small businesses because my heart is with the business owner struggling to make it, but really passionate about serving people. Any given day, I may fit that description. 😉
And now let me tell you a little bit about today’s small business owner.
Justine Register
This giveaway series is pretty much in honor of Justine. She’s been coaching me for the past two months and whispered the encouragement I needed to face my fears of failure over and over. Believe me, there has been a ton of failure in the past two months 😉
Here’s a little testimonial I wrote for her site to give you an idea of what she does.
Justine came into my life when I was right at the crossroads of deciding my direction in professional photography. I had difficult choices to make about marketing and pricing myself to actually make a living. But mostly I was facing fear. Fear barking whichever way I went: pursuing the dream or giving it up. I was scared to move.
Justine helped me move. In our four sessions together (and in between), I developed a marketing strategy and took huge steps toward implementing it. I walked into OBGYN and midwives appointments and dropped off coffee table books. I talked to OBs about how I could serve them. I asked a midwife center if I could help them by hosting a birth photography giveaway and placing images from that session in their waiting area. I had the courage to call some folks who were targeting my target market and make real steps toward mutually beneficial relationships. I applied for a Nasha loan to replace flooring in my studio destroyed by a flood. My calendar for 2014 is filled with post topics, email newsletter ideas, and a heart to serve and make an income with my business.
I’m not an organized person by nature. I’m shy and generally intimidated by others in profession fields. In fact, I’m scared of promoting my business on Facebook on my own news feed! I hate making phone calls. And although I had to write a script for every phone call I made, I made those calls because I knew next week Justine would be asking me about my progress.
But not only did she hold me accountable to following through, Justine tenderly talked me through my fears. I never felt as if she thought my fears were irrational. And I always hung up encouraged and motivated to become the best businesswoman that God had designed me to be.
You know the most unexpected thing that resulted from our four calls together? I’m actually teaching a small group of local photographers how to choose their target market and marketing strategies. I can’t believe I volunteered for that gig. Ofcourse, it’s coupled with a Noonday Collection Trunkshow so that my introverted self can escape for some downtime midway through the class before questions. Ha!
In these few weeks of our time together, I haven’t seen a lot of physical results yet. I’m not getting more bookings yet or serving more clients; I’m pretty sure that will come in time. But more importantly, I am different. I’m not longer just a professional photographer; I am a business woman working toward making a living.
If you’re standing at a crossroad too afraid to move forward or back, give Justine a call because that’s exactly what I will do in the future.
Two Free Coaching Sessions with Justine Register
Justine coaches anyone standing at a crossroads (business related or not).
Life coaching is sort of forward based counseling. It helps you work through questions of vision: where do you want to go? And then follows through with charting the course to make it happen. Please check out her website.
Ya’ll, this is an incredible gift. In fact it’s worth $250. I sort of wish I could hog another two sessions all to myself :-p
Contest Entry Instructions
Leave a comment below telling me what your crossroads is. How do you think Justine can help you chart your course through that area?
Make sure to include a way to reach you if you win.
Both Coaching sessions must be scheduled and completed prior to February 28th.
Giveaway Closes on January 31st.
Winner will be chosen through a random number generator and notified on February 3rd.
